Sacred 3

Our analysis

A genre U-turn that ditches the open-world looting of earlier entries for a linear, room-by-room Gauntlet-style hack-and-slash with no real loot or exploration. The cartoony presentation looks good and the couch co-op skills are genuinely fun, but the voice acting is atrocious and a few levels and the lackluster main villain drag it down. A wait-for-a-sale that still has a place in some libraries.

Our analysis

An arcade hack-and-slash that abandons the series' open-world RPG roots for a string of identical closed arenas, where leveling and grinding exist only to feed a multiplayer-focused number race. The combat can be mildly fun on a basic level, but the dialogue's forced, smug attempts at comedy fall flat and grate constantly. There is no exploration, no meaningful reward, and no room for experimentation.