Sacred 2 Remaster - PS5 Review

Sacred 2 Remaster by developers Jumpgate AB, SparklingBit and publisher THQ Nordic—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

It's 2008. I'm halfway through my second college certification which will propel me onto my career path. My PC is getting older, it's not running the software I need. Sacred 2, which I've been waiting on forever to come out after playing the original Sacred and its expansion, is here. My PC can't run it well either. So what is a college student working full time to do but buy a brand new beast of a laptop for “school” and have the time of their life playing Sacred 2 between classes and work shifts?

Almost 2 decades later I don't have the same problem(s). After a surprise announcement that Sacred 2 was being remastered, I cheered as I had been wanting to step back into Ancaria for a long time and was close to dusting off either my PS3 or Steam copy.

Reviewing a remaster is always interesting. If you’ve never played the original, you are basing yourself off of prior knowledge of the title, or, of the genre in general. If you have played it before, you are basing yourself against prior nostalgia as you jump back in. This is where I find myself a bit happy as I haven’t played Sacred 2 in almost 20 years and from the upgrades that have been made to bring it up to modern systems and pacing? I think my nostalgic and modern day selves are finding a happy common ground.

Sacred, and Sacred 2 after it, did a lot in the realm of Diablo-esque Hack and Slash Action RPGs. I could easily say that they were before their time, sharing more with the open world RPGs allowing you to pick a direction and walk in it. The main quest is to the north east you say? Let's see where moving south west takes us. Oh. Quest! More quests! And more quests! There will never be a shortage of quests on this journey. 

This is where the original developers Ascaron did things differently. They didn’t want to simply make a new Diablo clone. They wanted to make something grander. Sadly, as much fun as I know that I had with the original Sacred, even submitting a whole 6 page side quest as part of a promotional event, it was never as popular as Diablo or Titan’s Quest that came out in 2006. Sacred 2 on the other hand, had more reception and even released physically on the PS3 supporting local co-op. Sacred would return after some time, but it would return in a Gauntlet style stage based adventure.

Back to 2025, and the reason that you are here, Sacred 2 Remaster. 

I think it’s fun. Nostalgia aside, the concepts that Sacred 2 were built off of are still rare to this day. We’ve had plenty of Diablo-esque inspired titles over the years, but few are open world and designed to give you freedom in how you go about your journey. The world doesn’t feel empty. There are loads of enemies to be sure, but there are loads of people just waiting to ask you for your help, or to try to stab you in the back after accepting their quests because you now know too much about them. 

Sacred 2 Remaster offers a total of seven character classes to choose from. There are the Seraphim, Dryad, Shadow Warrior, Inquisitor, High Elf, Temple Guardian and finally Dragon Mage which was added through a later expansion. Each character has their own fighting styles and abilities so I strongly recommend getting to know each one before committing to an entire adventure. Sadly, the remaster, in its faithfulness, does not allow you to respec or undo ability points, so once you’ve chosen something, you’re stuck with it. I do wish this had been massaged a bit, but that leads into the next point.

While not being able to respec a character, where that aspect can shine through is in how specific you can design your character. Nothing stops you from having three different Seraphim and each being completely different than one another. One may specialize in dual-wielding, speed and swords, while another could specialize in magic or two handed weapons. Points in these skill specializations are granted every level up and can certainly change challenging encounters into cakewalks.

Where Sacred 2 does things completely different are in how you gain your actual combat arts and combat modifiers. Stat points and skill specializations are from leveling up, but your actual abilities? These drop from defeating enemies. To level these up, you need to first get the item that allows you to learn it, and then use it to level it up. 

It feels long in the beginning, but eventually you’ll be picking these up like candy on Halloween. But what if you’re not getting the ones that you want? Or if you keep getting them for another character class? Then you can trade up to four for one of your choice. The more you trade, the lower the cost. Just make sure that these abilities aren't over-leveled in comparison to your chosen skills or you could incur some penalties like them taking longer to recharge. 

There are a total of fifteen combat arts per character. In the beginning, you'll only be able to equip one active and one passive skill. By leveling your character up you'll gain more active skill slots for a total of four, however, passive abilities need the Concentration skill to be chosen. So while you can pick and choose however you see fit, there's a lot of research that needs to go into your decisions. 

Now, while there are only fifteen combat abilities and these are split between active and passive, Sacred has a combo system that lets you get very creative. With the proper skills chosen, up to four combat abilities can be chained together under one active combat slot. With a total of four slots, and four combos? There's a lot that can be done which makes up for the lower available number compared to other titles while exploring this huge world. 

And the world is huge. 

So thankfully, there are skills to help you move across it such as either Speed Lore or Riding. Buying a horse lets you move around much quicker than running around. They cost a lot, they can die in combat, but you can train yourself to better fight on them. Or simply get off your horse and they'll move away from the ongoing melee. 

Where things in the open world feel a bit rough in the beginning is the fast traveling. There is a form of travel that allows you to teleport to a portal that has been discovered but these are rare (ish) and not always available where you want to go. Hence horses. There are also no town portals so you'll want to make sure if you have anything that needs to be done in a town, that you teleport to one that has everything you need. 

The performance of Sacred 2 Remaster on the PS5 was relatively smooth. I encountered multiple issues in the beginning but it turns out it was more my PS5 needing the cache cleared as I can't remember the last time that had been done. So as a PSA, or public service announcement, clear your caches! Also occasionally reboot your PS5 as that can also go a long way to help smooth certain performance issues.

Where I had a lot of issues was in the inventory and store management functions with a controller. Those were often rough. There are no options to quickly move items to and from. Selecting an item will often have it go somewhere and then to bring it over is a massive chore, often frustrating one, especially with the combo specialist to merge combat abilities and the blacksmith. 

I do hope this can be smoothed over as everything else with a controller has been almost brilliantly thought through. Potions for example, the Circle Button is your health potion, but three others can be equipped to your left d-pad button. One press is the first potion, two the second, three the third. Same for the passive abilities. Everything is right there under a “single button” unlike a lot of others in the genre. 

Overall, Sacred 2 Remaster is a great addition to the modern console hardware. While not as popular as others at the time, the scope of the adventure and the customizations available still hold up to this day in increased resolutions to play on giant screens that we could have only dreamed of back in the day. 

While there are some questionable choices for the inventory and store purchasing menu systems, these are not enough to mar my return to Ancaria as a hero for either the gods of good or evil.

Score: 8 / 10