When I was searching for PS3 games that still had active multiplayer servers in 2025, this was a surprising one. I have no familiarity with the series, but was curious enough to grab a copy at a local game store for ten bucks last weekend.
Sure enough, as soon as I created a character (who is, by default, wearing an extremely 2009 fantasy RPG outfit) and logged on, there were online games available to join. Not knowing anything about the game, I opted to play solo to start.
Sacred 2 is, on the surface, a dungeon crawler / loot-focused action RPG that frankly doesn’t run great on the PS3. With janky movement, a cumbersome menu interface, and constant jarring screen tearing, I initially couldn’t understand why anyone would play this on PS3 over something like Diablo III or even Dungeon Siege III. But as I played more, I began to understand.
For one, Sacred 2 is somewhat weird. While the story and most of the writing is kinda whatever, there is some quirkiness to be found, and you don’t have to look too hard. It shows up in the writing from time to time, and in the sometimes bizarre characters.
But the most surprising part of Sacred 2 came when I got lost heading to my first objective. I ended up taking a “wrong” path and finding an hour’s worth of sidequests, and then took another path away from my objective from there. Here I realized Sacred 2 is open as hell.
There’s also quite a bit of choice in how you customize your character build. I haven’t played enough to fully understand the scope, but from the choices I’ve had in spending my attribute points, it seems like there are a lot of possibilities (and a lot of levelling to do to get there).
So this all sounds pretty damn impressive for a 2008/2009 RPG from a relatively small studio. So what’s the catch? Well, as I mentioned earlier, performance is rough on PS3. And aside from some randomness, the writing isn’t terribly compelling. Finally, and maybe the toughest strike against an action-RPG, the combat doesn’t really feel good.
At least with the character build I was playing, the combat felt floaty and lacking impact. Not a total dealbreaker for this era, but somewhat damning when it’s how you spend most of your time in the game.
Still, there’s something undeniable about Sacred 2. I need to play more, but it’s already giving me 7/10 game (compliment) vibes. Obviously it resonated with people enough to warrant a remaster, which promises “refined combat and gameplay.” The remaster releases in a matter of weeks, which gives you time to explore the original and see what keeps people coming back to it on PSN, 15+ years later.
Played and captured on a PlayStation Triple
Leave a comment