Sacred 3 bombs on Metacritic

[pateuvasiliu]

All the sacred games were terrible, this is no surprise.

Sacred 1 was a good game.

[TequilaFlavor]

All the sacred games were terrible, this is no surprise.

No, they weren't. Sacred 1 was a surprise hit because it was a really good action RPG at the time and Sacred 2 sold tons of copies and got raving reviews stating it was so good that Diablo 3 (which was in early development at the time) had big shoes to fill. I can only talk about the original German versions, though - that also had superb voice acting by the German voices of Data, Jodie Foster etc.

The bad opinions some people had because both games were very buggy in the first 2-3 weeks they came out, they were incredible for their time later on, Sacred 2 still has some of the deepest permanent customization I've ever seen in an action RPG.

[Cattleya]

Holy cow a 1.5 average with 227 ratings?

How exactly can professionals explain the 62.5 difference in score here?

Two reasons:

1) professional reviewers, for some reason, mostly stick to 5-10. A game has to be pretty much unplayable for them to give it less than that. This means a bad game that would get say, a 3, in any other 1-10 scale, probably gets a 6 from professional reviewers.

2) When a user hates a game, they don't go "Well, but objectively it's not *that* bad, and others might like it, so I'll give it a 6!". Instead they give it a 1 and say it's the worst thing since Big Rigs.

[pateuvasiliu]

Two reasons:

1) professional reviewers, for some reason, mostly stick to 5-10. A game has to be pretty much unplayable for them to give it less than that. This means a bad game that would get say, a 3, in any other 1-10 scale, probably gets a 6 from professional reviewers.

2) When a user hates a game, they don't go "Well, but objectively it's not *that* bad, and others might like it, so I'll give it a 6!". Instead they give it a 1 and say it's the worst thing since Big Rigs.

Pretty much what happened to Dragon age 2 and Mass Effect 3.

A lot of trolls spamming 1.

[Deleted]

Meh, I played it for about 6 hours. I think that the big drop in user scores is that users are speaking with their disappointment. It is not a sacred title, and using the title and calling it the next game in the series is extremely misleading. People feel like they have thrown their money away, and it makes them angry. This makes them vote negatively. Professional reviewers tend to be a little bit more objective, but also more aware that people are reading what they write, including publishing companies, and tend to be more conservative.

If this was a standalone game with a brand new name I think the user score would be around a 5 or 6/10.

There are many worse games out there. This one is a terrible sacred title but it's not the worst game in the world to justify a score of 1/10. The difference is definitely the anger and expectation level of users here.

I would definitely not recommend it at full price to anyone, but at 75% off in the sales I'd say people are going to get enjoyment out of it. Some games like Aliens: Colonial Marines for example, I wouldn't recommend even if it was $1, and hell I'd still give it a 3/10.

[Deleted]

What a damn shame. I loved Sacred 1 and 2 and was super excited when I found out a new one was in the making. And then it turned out to be this crap instead... Thank God I didn't preorder it.

[Dispraise]

Okay, contrast and compare the game to the titles on this list. Is it really a 1/10?

I mean, come on.

[Deleted]

I got pretty tired of getting shafted so I've stopped buying games on release or pre-ordering. Good thing I did, huh?

I really liked Sacred. I didn't like Sacred 2 as much so I was hoping Sacred 3 would breathe some life back into it. Nope! I'll be staying away from this one.

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Complete nonsense. User scores (like in Metacritic) are worthless as they are full of both trolls and fanboys. They most certainly are not unbiased scores.

Who said they are unbiassed? and if you think critics are unbiassed, take your head out of your arse.

I said they were a better reflection of actual game quality, which is somethign I generally find to be the case then the "professional" reviews. nothing more.

[pateuvasiliu]

Who said they are unbiassed? and if you think critics are unbiassed, take your head out of your arse.

I said they were a better reflection of actual game quality, which is somethign I generally find to be the case then the "professional" reviews. nothing more.

They really aren't.

ME3 has 5.1 on metacritic, DA2 has 4.3

That's bullshit and it's just fans being butthurt and voting 1 out of spite.

[Vargur]

There were no survivors.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sacred-3

You may want to stay away from this one.

Yeah, I deleted it at the troll boss.

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Sacred 1 was a good game.

Sacred was awesome. Best action RPG ever. Too bad the engine doesn't allow it to be modded for current standard graphics. It's straining to play at 1024*768 on a 22".

[Fencers]

Okay, contrast and compare the game to the titles on this list. Is it really a 1/10?

I would say so, yes. Sacred 3 is awful.

The combat design is clunky in the actual sense of the word; difficult to use, clumsy, locked directional, limited move set, repeated skill sets, lazy design, etc. It really is cumbersome to fight in this game- which seems to be the main design focus. Furthermore, it lacks creatively, mastery &/or complication in it's actual fight mechanics.

Every class plays the same, essentially. Except the black guy with a bow, really. The "special" moves are all essentially the same just reskined; a line attack, a PBAOE, a dash, a limited area cleave, etc. Repeated over and over. There isn't even a way to use these abilities in combination for... anything actually.

There other nonsensical, useless and poorly handled mechanics that don't mesh well with the button mashing combat. Such as restraining mobs- it's not logically explained in gameplay, you just can do it from time to time as free damage? It's like pointless as a mechanism otherwise. Or grabbing, which follows the same novelty/gimmick as restraint and executions.

Most boss fights are the same; similar mob, similar skills, with the same attack patterns. And you fight them constantly.

That was just gameplay wise.

Story is poor, writing is offensive, racist and immature. There are spelling mistakes sprinkled throughout, menu functionality is limited and buggy. UI functions are either oblique or cosmetic. Key binding functionality & control schema are illogical or nonfunctioning.

Difficulty is low even on highest setting. The game can be cheeseballed via dodge rolling, blocking has no purpose, etc, etc.

The graphics and font fidelity are nice.

Yea, Sacred 3 is one of the worst games out on the market right now. 1/10 easily by my critical scale.

[Dispraise]

1/10 easily by my critical scale.

It's as bad as Ride to Hell: Retribution, let alone Big Rigs? If I released a game tomorrow that was an exact copy, except replaced all ingame sounds with Tommy Wiseau's dialogue from The Room, and all the textures with still frames from low-budget cable porn, it would deserve the same rating? The game literally could not be any worse?

[apelsinjuice]

Even without the name 'Sacred 3' it's a really bad game, no matter if "critics" give it 6/10 or whatever.

[pateuvasiliu]

It's as bad as Ride to Hell: Retribution, let alone Big Rigs? If I released a game tomorrow that was an exact copy, except replaced all ingame sounds with Tommy Wiseau's dialogue from The Room, and all the textures with still frames from low-budget cable porn, it would deserve the same rating? The game literally could not be any worse?

0/10, though.

[unholytestament]

Big Rigs is over 10 years old now, I don't think we should really be using the "this game is bad, but it's not quite Big Rigs bad" metric anymore.

[Fencers]

It's as bad as Ride to Hell: Retribution, let alone Big Rigs? If I released a game tomorrow that was an exact copy, except replaced all ingame sounds with Tommy Wiseau's dialogue from The Room, and all the textures with still frames from low-budget cable porn, it would deserve the same rating? The game literally could not be any worse?

It is as bad as Ride to Hell: Retribution. Which I played and would also say is a 1/10. Big Rigs I never played, but assuming it is a 1/10 then naturally it is as bad as Sacred 3.

More than one game deserves a 1/10. There are a lot of them out there. Sacred 3 happens to be one of them. The gameplay has no redeeming value in design or execution. It is poorly made, executed and intellectually insulting.

[Nyanmaru]

Hmm... I like Sacred 3 better than Sacred 2. The controls are okay. The bad corny humor and style is right down my alley. It's optically pleasing and given that I rarely get more then 30-45 minutes a day to play games in the evening it's a nice on/off game.

And also, since I didn't like Sacred 2 at all, there were no exorbitant expectations to be crushed and thus no butthurt that the game was different than I imagined...

[Dispraise]

More than one game deserves a 1/10. There are a lot of them out there. Sacred 3 happens to be one of them. The gameplay has no redeeming value in design or execution. It is poorly made, executed and intellectually insulting.

Not saying only one game can occupy the 1/10 slot, that would be silly. But if I can make a game that is substantially worse and still get the same rating, then that rating isn't particularly valuable.

Big Rigs is over 10 years old now, I don't think we should really be using the "this game is bad, but it's not quite Big Rigs bad" metric anymore.

Well, that's kind of a fair point, but it's not that Big Rigs is so bad it makes everything look better by comparison. It's that it can commonly be agreed upon as being bottom-of-the-barrel, which is quite handy for calibrating the low-end of the 1-10 spectrum.

A better standard would be preferable, but it's hard to find a touchstone that people can agree on.

[Kelimbror]

I'm glad I saw this thread. After seeing the footage and reading the reviews, this has been removed from my wishlist so I don't make a large mistake during a steam sale. I can't believe they turned the franchise into this...so bad.

[Fencers]

Not saying only one game can occupy the 1/10 slot, that would be silly. But if I can make a game that is substantially worse and still get the same rating, then that rating isn't particularly valuable.

The rating would represent all games of the same strata. There is no need for a -1 "worse than!". Everything 1/10 would be very poor quality games.

Just as music, film and literature are reviewed. A 0 star film for Kael was a 0 star film. That one 0 star film had a "worse" soundtrack or poorer acting than another 0 star film was irreverent. They are both films of the same strata of merit; 0 star in this case.

Ratings are not suppose to be "valuable" by the way. That is a consumerist view of critique, whereas critique only means to leverage the critic's interpretation of a work's merits academically.