As a wizard with a world entirely lost to him, the main character seeks refuge in a strange new land that he must now call home. Upon approaching the five separate gods of this world, which differ by principles and attitudes, he offers his service to them. I have often wondered what it would be like to be immortal, and I have come to the conclusion that I would be incredibly bored. The dealings between the gods in Sacrifice totally back my theory up. All of them are so bored and detached from everything that they conflict against each other, but to them it isn’t as serious as life and death. In any case the gods in Sacrifice tend to have reflective ideals, which adds a pretty good dimension to the characters and the story itself. It is very hard to decide who is good, and who is evil. A lot of games lay this out too plainly for the player, but in Sacrifice sides must be chosen on a ‘case by case’ basis. Most of the Gods’ motives are not revealed until later on in the game.

The main story is presented in and between missions with real-time cinemas, and eventually an underlying story that outlines where the main character comes from, and what exactly happened to his world.

Much like Earthworm Jim and Messiah, Sacrifice exudes the same sort of whimsical style Shiny has always seemed comfortable with. With the drastic advances in the most common of PC gaming platforms the developers were allowed even more elbowroom for this project, and they really took advantage of this. Sacrifice’s use of textures and lighting are the kind of stuff even our most surreal dreams are made of. The amazing thing about all of this is how the lighting and textures are not focused on the mere task of impressing the player, but better expressing the game’s environment.

The many different spell effects will also leave a very big impression on the player. The spells literally tear at the heavens and shake the earth. They cause enemies to implode, die of disease, burn to a crisp and even become frozen solid. Larger spells summon volcanoes, tornadoes, walls composed of screaming souls, and even a spell to call upon death itself. These spells are not only creative but also represented so very well. Any battlefield in Sacrifice is one of beautiful chaos, I find it really hard to describe.

The beauty does come at a price. The system requirements for the game can be sort of steep, and in order to really experience the sheer beauty of Sacrifice; a nice setup would be helpful. All of the units, the entire world of Sacrifice, is rendered real-time, with detailed textures and various other bits of eye-candy. When a skirmish, multiplayer, and sometimes single player game really gets going each side can have a lot of units running around hacking n slashing. This can introduce some major framerate drops depending on your system. Shiny displays a wonderful world, but it is one that can be very demanding on the hardware.

An interesting tier system has been utilized in Sacrifice, and to be honest; when I first played Sacrifice it caught me off guard. With five different gods there are essentially five different missions at each tier. The player is allowed to choose a mission from one of the five gods before advancing to the next tier. Since the plot unfolds between these different levels the choosing of a mission is up to the player.

But the real kick in the pants is the idea that in each mission you are given two new spells that are unique to that god. All of the gods have their own spell types which pretty much work off of basic elements and the forces of light and darkness. For example, if you choose to align with Stratos for your first mission, you will gain two spells at that level. If you choose Pyro for the second mission you get two of his unique spells for that particular level. Since the all of the spells are carried with the player through the whole game, it is entirely possible to mix and match spells to your liking by participating in the quests that offer them.

Experience points are also gained through missions as well as stat rewards from the different gods. Experience points gained by kills and improve casting time as well as general player stats. If one of the gods feels the previous mission was handled extremely well they will offer a boost to the main character’s health, magic, magic resistances, among other things.

Since Sacrifice utilizes an RTS/Action based system I don’t think resource gathering could have been entirely avoided. This may get groans from the RTS veterans, with the entire resource concept feeling so played out in some of the latest real-time strategy titles. What you will find in Sacrifice is something extremely refreshing. The resources in Sacrifice are the souls of the fallen. Maps for the most part are populated with a few mortal followers of the different gods, and they can be killed and their souls can be harvested but in a lot of cases the souls you harvest have to come from your enemy’s dead.

This presents a sort of resource struggle I have never seen before. What keeps the act of gathering souls from being too frantic and becoming a race of the reflexes is the idea that only friendly souls can be collected without the ritual. What is the ritual? In order to collect enemy or ‘unwilling’ souls you must convert them. Summoning a creature that takes the soul to the player’s altar and converting them to your side does this. The process takes a bit more time depending on the distance to the nearest friendly altar, and the enemy can interrupt the process if the opportunity is right.

The souls are then used to cast the summon spells. These spells are what allow the player to create groups of large powerful forces to fight on the front lines while the more vulnerable wizard (the player) is allowed to provide aid with a powerful library of spells from a safe distance. A wizard’s mana is recharged by Manaliths. These structures are built over Mana Fountains and transmit mana to the player across the battlefield. If a wizard is too far away from a friendly Manalith or a Mana Fountain they can find themselves out of spell casting abilities real quickly.

The Altar is the source of the wizard’s power. The death of a wizard, or the player, is not instant. A death in battle turns the wizard into a spirit type form that cannot aid the battle, or take damage from it. In a short time the wizard will get its body back and once again aid in the fight. The only way to really kill a wizard is to desecrate its altar. By sacrificing a friendly unit to the enemy’s altar the enemy is drained of health until death while living, or permanently killed if already in the ‘spirit form’.

Controlling summoned units seems to be a problem when forces get larger. Since the focus of the camera is always on the player, keeping track of units on the field can be very difficult. Most of the time the only effective way to keep track of friendly forces is to put them in a number group and put them in guard mode. The player can of course order creatures to guard a particular spot but providing support to that group when needed becomes very difficult. The meshing of the RTS and Action genres is a very ambitious one, but unfortunately the limited perspective just doesn’t help too much.

One can learn how to deal with situations like these. I was able to adapt, and learned many tricks by using the formations to keep units from blocking my path or obstructing my view. The teleport spell (very handy) allows the player to teleport to the desired friendly structure. With the use of this spell it can become much easier to bounce around the map and create short cuts.

Aside from the limited camera perspective I have few complaints about the interface itself. The one complaint being that groups comprised of many units don’t have all of their special abilities for each unit type in that group displayed. It tends to only show the special ability of the strongest unit type within that group.

Thanks to the layout of the single player campaign, the numerous amounts of spells, oodles of creatures, and the interesting story, Sacrifice should easily hold players captive in its imaginative universe for quite a while. In order to get the performance most will desire out of Sacrifice a decent PC is needed (350-400mhz I would guess) along with a respectable video card. Control and interface issues aside Sacrifice is an extremely refreshing title in a market that seems to brace itself up with tired, but extremely polished, ideas. An official demo is being released for Sacrifice shortly after the release of the retail version. You will be doing yourself an extreme disservice if you don’t at least give Sacrifice a try.