Sacred 3
By Marc Saltzman,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Violent but mediocre RPG has iffy comments about women.
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Sacred 3
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What’s It About?
Deep Silver's SACRED 3 is an action-heavy role-playing game that follows a band of characters who travel through a dangerous world to fight evil. That evil can encompass everything from human soldiers who serve an evil warlord to fantasy creatures including trolls, orcs, spirits, and zombies. Similar to Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series, this "hack and slash" game is played from an isometric (angled) top-down perspective and has your party of fighters using various weapons and magic attacks to defeat those who stand in their way -- and there will be many. Along with the single-player campaign, Sacred 3 offers a drop-in, drop-out cooperative multiplayer option for both offline (two players on same console) and online (four players) matches.
Is It Any Good?
Although previous versions of Sacred were "RPG Lite" diversions -- especially Sacred 2: Fall Angel -- the third game in the series falls flat. For one, the gameplay shortly grows redundant; players fight enemies, move onto the next part of the map, fight enemies, and repeat. An engrossing story, memorable characters, well-written dialogue, or some challenging puzzles might add more variety and meaning to players' actions. But for a game with decent hype, it's a letdown.
That said, the game is pretty and has good pacing, and the online cooperative play can be enjoyable. But, along with the tedium of fighting batches of enemies, the game suffers from bland levels, including worlds that are too linear. Plus, the voice acting isn't very good (and is potentially offensive, thanks to some sexually loaded comments toward and about women). Overall, Sacred 3 has some merit but isn't worth picking up unless you're a huge fan of the franchise.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the negative language toward and about women featured in Sacred 3. Can you see why some of these comments are offensive? Why would some people feel that they're offensive?
Talk about violence in games. Is it OK to have violence if it's against non-human enemies, such as monsters? Is it OK if it's not very graphic? Is it never OK?
Game Details
- Platforms: PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Available online?: Not available online
- Publisher: Deep Silver
- Release date: August 13, 2014
- Genre: Action/Adventure
- Topics: Magic and Fantasy, Adventures, Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires, Wild Animals
- ESRB rating: M for Blood, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Last updated: September 29, 2020
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