Sacred 3 is at the point in the series where a sequel needs to step away from its prior iterations, to prevent stagnation, but also try to keep its integrity. It’s tough being third. While it does manage to radicalize the olden roleplaying game (RPG) style with an isometric action title, it fails to retain the attention due to its repetitiveness. There’s a valiant attempt at crafting something spectacular, but the follow through with aggravating humor and basic gameplay enhancement make for a stale recipe.

It’s story, bad guy wants to kill world, gets paired with some cleverly winding motion comic panels. Characters don’t discuss plans, as much as they banter about the next mission. This team of fantasy warriors, from high-heeled angels to burly barbarians, is then promptly dropped in more fairyland saturation. Locations vary from crumbling castles to enchanted mountains, dark crypts and haze-filled arenas. To its credit, this is where Sacred 3 shines. Though not all landscapes are equally striking, some clashing tones can make for quite the explosion of color. Verdant deserts feel less desolate, while creepy forests become a lot more magical with some veiling illumination.

Unfortunately, the same enthusiasm of splattering every inch of its game with additional effects doesn’t translate well everywhere. During assaults, enemy mobs and heroes fighting can create a cacophony of colors, circles and blasts that blind any ongoing action. There is an element of being overwhelmed that works in favor of the tight action pace, but when flying into the cut comes at the cost of being blindsided, it tends to be not worth it. When projectile barrages or ranged attacks add even more on top of that, it becomes impossible to observe the battlefield. Damage or even death can be unavoidable at times.

Luckily, differing characters can rely on their particular skills to even encounters out. Each person is allotted one small and one big special, which uses a segmented bar, depending on how large the payoff is. For instance, just a big thump can be divided in three nodes, while a big vortex of death will require much more energy to produce. It certainly complements the basic tier of attacks, since there’s only one endless slashing mechanism and a head stomp execution if enemies stumble.

Here’s where it gets interesting though. Factoring in all designs, the broken damage scheme, reliance on skills and the huge enemy packs, there is a tactical element that creeps into Sacred 3. Often, it’s needed to dance through a mob. Hurl a spell one way, dodge to the other side and swoop towards more energy to perform the next attack, while trying to clear enemies for health orbs. That’s pretty frenetic. If there weren’t as many ridiculous difficulty spikes, this would’ve been an exciting element throughout the game, but sadly its structure is too fragile to hold. Sometimes damage is just overpowering, while other times it’s possible to bust through stages three levels higher.

A big factor in that difficulty rollercoaster is the amount of shielded enemies present, which need to be bashed before they take damage. There is rarely time to manage everything at once, so these shields and time-bomb attacks are usually the detractors of any strategic combat. If these two prompts are in the area, the priority always lies there and hits are proportionate to their number; other units in the mob become irrelevant, no matter their size.

Exacerbating things, progressing through levels is both stale in the limited enemy variety as it is in character enhancement. Each fighter has just two skills to choose and only a few more to alter their dynamic slightly. Weapons and armor sporadically become a blip better, but without adding anything of their own. Their percentages may rise, but that’s it.

Then, there are spirit guardians, helpful auras that offer their own little modifier. Some enhance attacks with fire, while others give a chance to cast a protective shield; each at a negative cost to balance things out. Aside from not helping as much, these guardians bring home just how repetitive and full of itself Sacred 3 is. The jesting dialog of characters is already atrocious, but the spirits only spout one “joke” line over and over. “Joke” is in quotation marks, because it’s usually just a word or two blurted out for nothing but shock value. “Sexypants,” the aura shouts three times in a row during one minute of combat. It’s nauseating after five times and unbearable by the hundredth. If endlessly mopping up the same enemies with no tangible progress seems boring, the writing is so horrible that it’s a rare occasion where it obscures any reclaiming quality a game can have.

Sacred 3 is marketed as 16 or older, but its script is penned in a way that no one above 12 years of age could ever live with it for longer than a fleeting moment. It’s non-stop. It’s hell. If the joke attempts were a nail on a coffin board, the frequency would be the hammer plowing them down until the casket was fully ironclad. This is where all the content went and it wasn’t the right priority to set at all.

There is the redeeming factor of drop-in cooperative play, but for that to happen, it’s necessary to stay connected. That option comes with the high risk of disconnections upsetting the frail triggering balance of events, which section off parts of the stage. Pop out a second and the next round in the mission forgets to activate, meaning a full restart. Latency issues are also omnipresent, making enemies glitch even more than they are when playing alone. Again, it’s much more trouble than it’s worth, which is a crying shame, as playing together can be so quick and easy, instantly revitalizing the playing field. Locally playing is by far the better option here, though it does nothing to wipe away any monotony.

There is something as too much of a good thing and Sacred 3 beats that notion to death. Priorities are all over the place; it just doesn’t know what to do with itself. Some color comes off well, but then there are a billion more flurries thrown in there. Combat wants to be tight and entrancing, but then it unjustly pummels one second and lets itself get decimated the next moment with just basic, repetitive moves. Character progress gets automated, making it seem like it’s not even present. And the voices, oh those voices, they make all of it never-ending agony.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed (@Daavpuke)