Sacred 2 Introduced at GDC 2007

At lot of happenings during the Game Developers Conference last week. The only item you'll hear about at PMB is the announcement for Sacred 2 for the PC and Xbox 360.

There's a juicy preview of the game at Team Xbox. Any fan of hack & slash RPGs in the mold of Diablo should be excited for this game. I played the original Sacred on the PC back in 2004. Even though it had appealing graphics, a gigantic world, loads of loot to grab and five interesting player-characters to use, the game was extremely rough around the edges. Bugs, moronic side quests, a crap storyline and boring combat were just a few annoyances that kept Sacred from becoming the addictive click-fest that the Diablo series is famous for. Despite being incredibly easy, I never found the motivation to stick it through till the end.

Now the sequel looks like more of the same but I pray that the German developer Ascaraon has learned a few lessons and listened to their fans. Sacred 2 is sporting some lush graphics and looks to be reshuffling the character types (with the exception of the Seraphim and Gladiator classes). I just hope they make the combat more exciting, revise their level advancement/skill tree system and create a world that feels more alive than it did in the original.

The best news about Sacred 2 is the inclusion of 4-player drop-in anytime co-op over Live. From what I've read in the TXB preview, the game barely qualifies as having a solo mode since drop-in co-op is going to be so seamless and, as was the case with the original, the entire campaign can be played through in multiplayer.

All in all, I'm very pleased to know this lesser known title is scheduled to hit our Boxes. Will this be the first hack & slash RPG to hit the Xbox 360? Special!