A late-morning play session had Tiffany and I uncovering our second monolith and completing more of the main quest. The monoliths, when activated, allow the player to teleport around the map. This is a great convenience although the spacing of these monoliths is a little odd. In the small portion of the overall map I have examined, I can see two monoliths seemingly within a hundred feet or so whereas most others are spaced a mile or more apart. Of course, as I mentioned previously in my discussion of pathfinding, the two that seem to be very near may only be so as the bird flies and may instead be separated by miles of walking around rocks, trees, and the like.

I honestly do not know what is happening in the main quest. I have fallen into the WoW circle of get quest, proceed to objective, rinse and repeat. I don't feel I'm missing much. The story seems a bit trite. Luckily, the game is enjoyable enough to overcome anything it lacks in gripping story.

This is the first play session for which I have wished for some sort of button to exit dungeons. It is very easy to enter and leave dungeons without ever intending to do so although a button for entrance and exit could cause its own set of problems given that every button on the controller is already mapped to some other action.

I have become slightly overwhelmed with my combat arts. I'm sure this will pass with time, but, at the moment, I have a couple of combat arts at any given time that I cannot for the life of me remember their functions. Also, at this early stage in the game, it seems I will not be able to have easy access to all of my combat arts as I progress through the game. Out of the three available spell/ability banks, I have one full and three in another leaving only four empty slots total for future expansion. I assume I will have to concentrate on a particular set of spells. I'm not sure how this will work out because it seems that using one spell from a set starts the cooldown for all others in that set meaning that I cannot use any others from that set for a short time. I'm sure this will come with time.

Going back to a theme from the first part of this series of posts, I have obtained and completed a number of quests called "Tutorial" quests, but they all seem rather light on the tutorial aspect of the quest. It is more accurately an unlocking quest in that I complete a typical quest and then gain access to a new NPC with a very brief explanation of how to use him or her.

I have mastered the art of dying... or rather the art of damage control after the death of either myself or Tiffany. If we both die, we respawn at the nearest monolith, but, if either of us dies and the other survives long enough, the dead player will respawn right on screen with a full health bar and, as far as I can tell, no death penalties. The aforementioned spacing of monoliths can lead to quite a bit of frustration in the event of frequent deaths. Neither of us enjoy trekking back to our current quest having respawned miles away. Now, we know we can just run around in circles when the other dies to insure the survival of the party as a whole.

We have encountered a couple of annoying bugs. The first was a bug I commented on in the previous post, but I was unsure at that point whether it was a bug or simply a poor design choice. A failed quest was still listed with new tasks after our having failed it but with no way to set it as the active quest leaving us puzzled as to where to go next. Upon loading up our save game today, the quest was once again grouped with the rest of our quests, and we were able to set it as active. This allowed us the pleasure of returning to the dead soldiers lieutenant to have him inform us that we were useless. The other bug was encountered frequently on resurrection from death of one of us: the resurrected party is sometimes unable to move! We were able to remedy this by having the other player move in close and initiate a trade then immediately cancel it. Once this had taken place, both players moved as normal.

I have begun reaching the point at which my Inquisitor can no longer be used as the melee class I was forced into at the start due to a lack of offensive spells or ranged weaponry. I still do a large percentage of my damage via melee combat, but my character is quickly learning combat arts that will allow me to back out of the fray and leave that duty to my wife's Dryad since she is much more hearty.

If you are reading this and wondering to yourself, "Who is this jerk to tell me what he thinks he knows about a game he has now played for maybe two hours?" I have good news for you, friends. According to Sacred 2, having reached level 5 with my character, I am now "Reputable." Yes, that's right. I have unlocked the "Reputable" achievement. As I see it, this is roughly equivalent to having graduated from developmental preschool so you no longer need worry about the accuracy or validity of the statements made herein.

That's all for now. So, until next time, happy adventuring!