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Complicated, but highly engaging

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Be warned, this game is not easy. Sacrifice is an immensely complicated RTS that is also incredibly rewarding. Expect to spend several hours getting a handle on the user interface (you will not succeed until you bind your own hotkeys.) Once you so come to grips with the UI, you will realize that this game is not about total strategic control, rather it is about managing the flow of the natural action. You must think and act quickly, not methodically.

Once you get past the rather steep learning curve, this game has a very large payload to offer. The single player campaign is exceptionally well done; you are allowed to ally with different gads as the game progresses. The choices you make affect both plot development and the magical development of your wizard. The re is a subtle alignment system that allows you to get comfortable with several gods before choosing a power to focus on (I reccommend staying with 1 or 2 gods for the first time through.) Replay value is also very high due to this system, each time you play, you can tell a different story.

Sacrifice is perhaps one of the most visually stunning pc games to come out this year, but comes at the cost of high-end requirements. This game is not designed for a run-of-the-mill PC. Much of the magic of this game is in the small details. Every creature has a wide array of personality traits, and there are really no two similar units anywhere in the game. This means playing well means knowing the creatures you ar e fighting.

Overall this game offers a visual feast, and delightfull complexity, but it is tailored towards a pretty hard-core gamer. Improvements could be made to both the unit selection models, and unit spacing to avoid battlefield clutter, but these are minor flaws. If you are (hotkeys) willing to (hotkeys) set up and learn a system (hotkeys) that works for you (hotkeys,) then this game may indeed be (hot) one of the best titles (keys) availible this holiday season.

p.s. You should really set your own hotkeys.

Easy to learn, lots of fun, MAGNIFICENT EYE CANDY!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game for us 40+ gamers: easy to learn, tremendous fun, spectacular graphics. The people having technical trouble probably do not have a sufficiently powerful machine-you need 500MHz and a good graphics card. But that's standard on most midrange machines now! (Hint: NVidia GeForce is the only graphics chip worth buying these days).

I've only put in 6-8 hours, and I'm at the seventh mission out of nine-but that's just one mission path. I'll start again with one of the other four gods to get their spells.

This game will suck up all my free cycles for 2-3 months. That's about all you can ask for.

This game is the frigging best PC game I have ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

.... and I have played a lot! ... I bought it 2 1/2 years ago and it is the ONLY game that I ever pull back off my shelf to play. And now I have discovered multiplayer action, which is even more compelling.

There is a ton of strategy and the story is very, very interesting. There are 5 gods, and each one bestows upon you different creatures and different spells. You can play the game a thousand times and come out with completely different scenarios, although the end level is always the same. The pace can be frenetic, but it's always interesting and fun. I would recommend this game to anyone. Simply the best ever and I have been playing since the days of Wizardry and Ultima I.

The only drawback is that they are not making a Sacrifice 2. I wish that they would.

EXCELLENT GAME!! AN RTS THATS FAST AND FASCINATING!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: April 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

FIRST OFF, MY KEYBOARD'S SCREWED SO PLEASE FORGIVE THE CAPS...

I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY SOME PEOPLE CAN BECOME FRUSTRATED AND PAN THE GAME. SACRIFICE CAN BE VERY DIFFICULT, AND ITS NOT FUN TO GET STUCK IN A GAME BECAUSE YOU CAN'T WIN. LUCKILY, WITH SACRIFICE, ONE CAN COMPLETELY TURN THE TABLES BY LEARNING THE CORE MECHANICS AND STRATEGIES, SUCH AS DESIGNING HOTKEYS, FREEZING PLAY TO ISSUE ORDERS, AND PATIENCE. ONCE THIS IS DONE SACRIFICE REVEALS ITSELF AS A STAR. A VISUALLY STUNNING RTS, THAT DISPENSES WITH THE PART OF RTS GAMES THAT HAS OFTEN PUT ME TO SLEEP: LOONNNGG, SSSLLOOWWW BUILDUPS LEADING TO APERSONAL CONFLICTS, WHICH LEAD ME TO WONDER IF I HAVE ENOUGH TIME IN MY HECTIC LIFE TO WASTE ON THESE GAMES.

SACRIFICE PROVIDES AN RTS WITH SEEMINGLY PARADOXICAL VIRTUES: ACTION ORIENTED GAME-PLAY, YET WITH COMPLEX AND FASCINATING SPELLS, UNITS, AND SECNARIOS. IT DOES HAVE SOMETHING OF A LINEAR PLOT, YET BY CHOOSING YOUR PATRON GOD IN EACH LEVEL, YOU ARE ABLE TO COMPLTELY ALTER YOUR POSITION IN THE PLOT THROUGHOUT THE GAME. FINALLY ALL THIS IS OFFERED WITH SUCH AWESOME GRAPHICS AND SOUND AS TO PUT OTHER RTS GMES TO SHAME.

SACRIFICE IS NOT PERFECT. IT CAN BE VERY DIFFICULT (THERE IS ONE MISSION I STILL CAN NOT WIN) BUT ONCE YOU LEARN THE CORE STRATEGIES, IT OPENS UP THE MOST EXCITING, BEAUIFUL AND VERSATILE RTS I'VE EVER PLAYED. IT EVEN HAS THE POTENTIAL FOR SERIOUS REPLAY AS EACH GAME CONSISTS OF ONLY 9 OUT OF THE 45 AVAILABLE MISSIONS (5 GODS * 9 LEVELS = 45 MISSIONS). FOR ALL I HAVE HEARD OF REPLAY, I HAVE NEVER ACTUALLT REPLAYED A GAME ONCE I'VE FINISHED, EVEN MY FAVORITES. WITH SACRIFICE, I JUST REACHED LEVEL 9 OF MY FIRST GAME AND I'M ALREADY LOOKING FORWARD TO MY SECOND.

FINALLY, I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT DESPITE ALL MY PRAISE, THERE ARE MANY OTHER PC GAMES I HAVE ENJOYED MORE (DEUS EX, FINAL FANTASY, UNDYING...). MY POINT IS, I PRAISE SACRIFICE NOT OUT OF FAVOROITISM, BUT OUT OF TRUE ADMIRATION AND RESPECT.

FAST, BEATUIFUL, GROUNDBREAKING...THAT'S SACRIFICE.

THANX FOR YOUR TIME- BTC

Superb RTS,even for those who don't know what RTS stands for

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: December 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Real Time Strategy (RTS) games do not often appeal to the action genre we have today with games like Quake III and Unreal Tournament. Sacrifice, however is an excellent blend of action and strategy that can easily appeal to these audiences. This game is similar to Warcraft for action, going to battles only after you know you have outnumbered and outpowered the enemy, but without the resource management required such as gold or supplies. This game's main points focus on organizing your units and attacking at the right place and time, while protecting your territory.

Here's the basic story to Sacrifice: You are a wizard that tries to please 5 gods by doing tasks for them, only to realize that the gods constantly argue and you are eventually forced to choose one god or god alliences. The storyline is excellent as it is non-linear and new events unfold with every mission. Each of the 5 gods have 9 missions but it is only possible play all 45 missions by playing the game again and taking different paths with the gods, offering excellent replay value for this game. The worlds are gorgeous, having varied terrains with hills from lush green areas to barren wastelands. The level editor provides real-time level editing that shows you exactly what the level looks like while you're designing it.

The only problem with this game is the camera angles. Sacrifice has a third-person perspective and at times you need to cast spells on your wizard, but your army always seems to be in the way and selecting the wizard is rather difficult at times. The camere angle is adjustable, but it takes some getting used to.

In conclusion, Sacrifice is a unique game offering good amounts of both action and simulation. The game provides great playibility, excellent graphics, good sound, and most of all it is great fun, even for those like me who get bored easily by strategy games.

Pretty good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

What I especially liked about this game is the fact that it's not very linear, you have a certain freedom of chosing your missions. I also liked the design of each level, the terraing is simply amazing with vast fields and great plains. Very fun to explore, very fun to play.
The game is a real-time strategy type of game, much like Starcraft or Warcraft. You basically create troops consisting of various creatures and also "buildings" which are actually mana fountains that replenish your mana. Then you go to battle.

This game sure does shine

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 15, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Shiny Ent. are by far my favourite games developers. I like their twisted imagination, original gameplay, unique characters and dazzling graphics. "Sacrifice" succeeds in all of this. The storyline goes as follows: you play a wizard that can choose allegiance between five quarelling gods, and then has to rage war against the othe gods (during the game you can switch deity just about as much as you want to).

So basically it's a real-time strategy game with a twist. The twist being that you're no longer an overseeing general commanding your troops from a bird perspective, but you have now become a wizard who's present on the battlefield. You still get to command your units around, but you also get to cast nice little spells and such (but you can also get attacked just like your units can).

The graphics are stunning. The worlds are huge. The characters are highly imaginative. So what's the let down? The gameplay might be a little confusing. You often feel you loose control of your units and it's not always easy to give specific commands to specific units, when they're all tossing and turning around each other. The game is also quite heavy on the requirements. But luckily, you can tune the graphics down just about as much as you want, so most new PCs should be able to play the game smoothly on a given level.

Disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: March 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I spent some time with this game and had some very definite reactions to it.

First the good:

The graphics are fantastic. It's not often that you find a game nowadays that follows the first- or third-person perspective that's not set in a dark, dank dungeon or citadel someplace that you don't have to see further than the next stone-lined chamber. Sacrifice is not one of those. You get to run around outside and see the rolling green hills, bright sun and blue sky. The game engine is extremely well done with smooth scrolling, fast framrates and snappy performance. The graphics design is also just as good, with interesting characters and maps. Special effects are pretty impressive and the engine is capable of doing massive real-time geomtry deformations quite well. Which means in English: when you hurl a powerful spell and leave a crater, the crater is really a hole in the ground instead of a texture map of a crater! You get to interact with more than just the other creatures and characters in the world - you actually get to interact with the world itself.

But now the bad:

Notice I didn't mention anything about gameplay in the "good" section. With everything this game *could* have been, it wasn't very much at all. It's a lot of glitter with little substance.

I'm not sure what type of game genre I'd classify Sacrifice; somewhere in between real-time strategy and action/adventure. However neither aspect of game play is strong enough to pull the game through as anything more than mediocre. The storyline is long and drawn-out and tends to interrupt actual gameplay entirely too frequently, but is too linear to be taken as anything terribly interesting in terms of role-playing. On the other hand, the action is interesting, but tends to be in terms of long periods of running around between checkpoints seperated by brief, intense periods of purely finger-twitch fighting and spellcasting in which I found myself dying an awful lot of times only to have to start the mission over again.

For as difficult as I found it to win, the combat scheme is extremely simplistic. You have basically three creature types, each of which is capable of one type of attack: hand-to-hand, ranged ground-to-air, and ranged air-to-ground. That means to defeat "hand-to-hand" creature types, deploy your "air-to-ground" creature types, and so on. It's kind of like rock-paper-scissors with better graphics, and not too much fun. (Well, ok, rock-paper-scissors where each side of the game can also throw spells, which is why it's any fun at all. And the other side always seemed to have more powerful spells than I did...)

As the main character of the game, you are given the choice of being a representative of one of five gods, each with powers over a different element of the realm, however the spells you learn and creatures/henchmen you gain by choosing one or another god really aren't very differentiated - essentially being the same powers with different special effects attached, and same creatures with different texture maps.

There are interesting aspects of the game, but after spending about four hours playing it in the first sitting, I haven't picked it up again since.

If you want an interesting first- or third-person action/adventure in the same genre, Giants: Citizen Kabuto is much more enjoyable, and if you just want to be a God, then Black & White is worlds and universes more engrossing and fun.

Great, but not perfect

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. It breaks the mold of normal RTS games - you are on the battlefield rather than just watching. Also, it's not a two-hour buildup and a five minute fight - since you can only get souls from other people after the initial grabs are taken, you have to skirmish a lot.

The graphics are wonderful - lots of explosions and other nice effects, like with lightning sparks.

On the other hand, it has a couple problems. A game tends to turn into a landslide easily with the first skirmish - since your opponent takes your souls, you have less to fight his army that just got bigger. All in all, though, this game is quite good, and 4/5 is a pretty good estimate of it.

Buy this game if you're a fan of Starcraft or C&C but don't like the "build lots of structures and train troops for a while, then one big fight and it's all over" cliche.

Buy It

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is the best game I have played for a long long time. Whether you like single player adventures or frenetic online battle this game is satisfying on both fronts. It does bust out of the genres - I have a friend who refused to play RTS style games (he's a UT fanatic) and now he can't put this one down. In fact, where did my CD go? Hey come back here with that!!

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