Sacred 2 - First Impressions

On Memorial Day, I managed to get a great deal on Sacred 2: Fallen Angel for my PS3.  I had received a $25 gift card and was thinking about getting the game.  I went to my local gamestore to find they were moving (the walls were bare in the original store) and they handed me a 20% coupon for the new store.  I went over, waited in line too long (Holiday lines for the loss) and asked for a non-gutted copy.  They didn't have one that was unopened.  The clerk took my coupon, scanned it and the price went from $59.99 to $35.99, so 40%.  I don't know if it is because I complained or some sort of error in the system.  Added the negative $25 onto the total and I got it for $13 bucks.  I can deal with that.

Moving onto the game.  I have a level 14 Seraphim, mainly because that was the first class to pop up.

Likes
- If you like Diablo, Champions of Norrath or these sorts of games, you can stop reading and just buy a copy
- Successfully map 12 commands to the controller
- Large game world
- "Leet Lewt"
- Long skill tree
- Lots of quests, but you can't delete quests you've accepted
- Levels of replay - bronze (easy), silver, gold, platinum, Niob with level caps increasing for each

Dislikes
- I've been playing since Tuesday or so.  Last night was the first night I've had any problems.  It froze once and then "trapped" my character once.
- Six classes, each with two hairstyles or colors or less, not much variety, but the amount of varied armor pieces you get will nullify this
- Not much explanation for skills/runes, etc.
- Sometimes difficult to see things - overhead perspective, camera can be annoying.
- Not an ugly game by any stretch, there are pop-ins, tearing and the "seamless world" ain't always seamless.  So, if you're a purist, look elsewhere.

I haven't delved into the multiplayer yet.

There's a lot to do and a lot of replay value and I stayed up until 12:30 this morning playing (which is late for me).  Definitely worth a rent, more likely a purchase as if you're into dungeon crawling and loot-gathering, you can pop this in during dry spells between games and start another character.