In the interest of full disclosure, I was given a review code for the game by the publisher.
So, Sacred 2. It originally released on PC in 2008 and on consoles in 2009. I played it on Xbox 360 and had a really good time with it even though this style of RPG wasn't really, and still isn't honestly, my thing. I gave it a 4/5 when I reviewed it for About.com back in the day. The original console port had a redesigned controller-friendly interface and worked really well. The game was never especially good looking even back then, though, with rather simple character and enemy designs and bland environments obscured by fog about ten feet away from the player.
What I loved about it was that the gameplay loop was incredibly addictive. It's one of those loot games where every enemy and every chest and every quest could potentially reward you with some new crazy powerful piece of gear. It's all about numbers getting bigger and bigger and enemy mobs dying faster and faster and is very satisfying and addictive. I have to say the quests aren't especially interesting, the world really isn't great to explore, and combat itself also definitely isn't anything special - just hammering attack buttons over and over and over and over and over - but you keep playing for hours and hours because the loot is just too darn good. The game is absolutely massive, too, with a gigantic map and hundreds and hundreds of quests where practically every NPC is part of a quest. It's huge. It's awesome. It's tons of fun. It's honestly kinda too big, maybe, because you can spend a dozen hours in the opening area and then still have 90% of the game left to go. It's crazy.
This was all true back in 2009, though, so what does the new 2025 remaster of Sacred 2 do that makes it worth picking up over the original? Well, not much, unfortunately. The graphics are higher resolution, but it doesn't really look that much better. Characters and enemies still look pretty ugly and simple. The wall of fog is pushed back a few more yards, but it's still definitely there and the environments are still simple and bland. And, actually, you just see the environment popping in in front of you now instead of being obscured by fog, which isn't an improvement. If you're expecting much of a visual upgrade you're going to be disappointed.
The other promised improvements are similarly half-baked. The new user interface is my biggest problem with the remaster. Frankly, it's pretty darn horrible to play on consoles. The UI was clearly made with PC mouse and keyboard in mind, and is barely usable on consoles with a controller. Accessibility is the main problem here as everything is tiny icons and tiny text, and the cursor to see what the heck you're even selecting is just the absolute wrong color and very, very hard to see, and there are no options to adjust any of it. Because of this, keeping track of quests is a huge pain because the menus and overall interface is just a mess. The old Xbox 360 version is much, much, much easier to play because they designed the interface specifically for console players.
Here's another not so fun fact about Sacred 2 Remastered - the console versions don't have any multiplayer at all. The PC version does have multiplayer and costs $20, but the console versions, with no multiplayer at all, cost ten dollars more at $30. You're paying a ten dollar console tax to get less features. The game is okay playing solo, but it's significantly better playing co-op. This is a huge, huge misstep with this remaster.
Sacred 2 has always been fairly notorious for being buggy and glitchy and the remaster is exactly the same! Maybe even worse, actually. It crashes very, very frequently. The performance in even small towns is pretty bad and the framerate takes a significant hit in bigger cities. The sound glitches and stops working if you dare to look at the option menu in-game. Quests frequently bug out and don't work properly. In my playthrough I had to reload my save a half dozen times to finish the famous Blind Guardian quest because one of the band members repeatedly spawned in an impossible to reach area. Achievements also suddenly stopped unlocking even though they worked to start with. It's kind of a mess, which Sacred 2 has always been, but I was hoping for at least some improvement in this area.
I genuinely can't see a reason to buy Sacred 2 Remastered over the original release of the game. The Xbox 360 release is backward compatible on Xbox One and Series consoles and that's the one I would recommend if you want to get into Sacred 2. It has a better UI and multiplayer and the visuals aren't that much worse than this remaster. And at $20 or less it's also cheaper than buying the remaster. I can't find any definitive word if the original is going to be delisted on Xbox - it's definitely getting delisted on Steam, though - but Even if it does get delisted on Xbox, you can still get a physical copy for cheap, which is genuinely what I would recommend over buying the remaster.
This isn't just rose tinted nostalgia about the original release, either. I've been playing the 360 release alongside the remaster over the last week or so just to see the differences and I'm struggling to find anything that makes the remaster worth playing over the original. I'm usually super forgiving when it comes to remasters, too, and would almost always rather play them than the original of most games, but Sacred 2 Remastered just seems especially unnecessary. The appeal of a lot of remasters is purely the convenience of having it available on modern systems, but Sacred 2 is already inexpensive and easily accessible thanks to backward compatibility on Xbox.
Is it bad or unplayable? No. It's just fine. The core loot based gameplay loop is as fun and addictive as ever in the remaster. But paying $30 for "just fine" when you can get the same or better experience with the original release makes it a tough pill to swallow. Maybe PlayStation owners will find some more value in this release, but Xbox fans are probably better off sticking with the original via backward compatibility. If they fix a few things in this remaster - mostly with the UI and adding co-op back in - it might be worth a look, but at launch I'm just not loving it.
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