Sacrifice Review

MUTANT: (huff) “The pain…” Back when I played “Overlord”, I thought the Minions were fun, but I wished I had more control over them. That’s when a lot of people started emailing me about “Sacrifice”. I had not heard much about it, and not for years. The short version is that it’s a third-person game, where you play as a spell-casting wizard. But it’s also an RTS game, with all the in-depth formations and controls you’d expect from one. The campaign has a bizarrely high-profile cast, and Tim Curry plays a god. STRATOS: “Twenty-four souls. That should do nicely.” Alright! But first we have work to do. The good news is that, trying the GOG copy, it did work immediately, but it’s locked in 4:3, and locked at 30 FPS. Not to mention the resolution is pretty low. Well, by using the ever reliable dgVoodoo Wrapper, the framerate and resolution unlock, and it runs great. Except, I can’t record it now. Some old games are like a deep sea fish. Sure, you can go and visit the fish in its habitat, but try to bring it up to the surface, and sometimes, it explodes. So I did some tweaking I barely remember, to record it properly, but you don’t need to do all that. This is good, but now the icons are stretched out. Luckily, “Sacrifice” has an easy to install widescreen fix. Normally, this should be the end of it, but there’s one more crucial step. dgVoodoo unlocked the framerate completely, but now you need to cap it back to 60. If you dare to run the game above that, the enemy AI breaks down. They’ll just sit there and not do anything. Now you’re done, but there is one more catch. For reasons that I don’t and cannot fully understand, sometimes, when you re-launch the game, it resets your textures down to Low. Being an older game, where you manage a lot of units, it can be easy to miss this. I ended up having to re-record a lot of stuff to avoid the issue, so, if things suddenly look blurrier for no reason, that’s what’s happening. The same thing seems to have hit other people trying to upload footage of the game too, so I feel less crazy. The main menus stay at a super-low resolution, too, so it is hard to tell when you re-launch it. So now we can see whether or not it was worth jumping through all these hoops. [quiet rustle of rain] [rolling thunder and howling off in the distance] ELDRED: “It has begun.” [thunderclap] ZYZYX: “We’re too late again, master. All dead.” 😐 ELDRED: “I begin to think the cause of this destruction cannot be other than myself.” ZYZYX: “Master!” 😯 ELDRED: “My dark experiments come to a most wicked end.” The intro reminds me a lot of “Legacy of Kain”. The atmosphere is dark and moody, and it looks like you might be playing the villain. I cut this down for time, but there are shots of just fields and fields of corpses. And my Kain meter keeps getting higher… MITHRAS: “Heh-heh-heh, ah, it seems you ought to be my salvation after all.” ELDRED: “I am no one’s salvation. I am a pawn of doom itself.” MITHRAS: “Why, you speak in riddles, sir. I wonder if even my wisdom can decipher them.” It can’t. So you go off to visit the gods. Playing as a wandering wizard Eldred, your services are very in demand. From here, the story can start diverging, so I’ll save all that for later. Let’s get into the game. DRAGON: “Hu-u-ueA-AGH!!” Graphically, for a game from 2000, this is really impressive. It’s not the best visuals for the time or anything, but more of a scale they’re operating on. These can be big maps, and each faction can bring dozens of units to a fight. Then you combine that with all the magic effects and the terrain battle scarring, like blood and craters, and it’s kind of amazing this worked at all. The maps are simple, but the art style and the surreal nature of all of it really do go a long way. Some will have these swirling California brush fire skies that are gorgeous to look at in their own weird way. Usually, the atmosphere is oppressive, which is appropriate, since “Sacrifice” takes place in a world that was shattered into floating islands. The balance of magic, or whatever the hell, has already shit the bed hard. This world is apocalyptic, and you’re constantly reminded of it. You could say the terrain is still too simple and lacks detail, and I would agree. Except, this land is all made to be broken. This isn’t the kind of magic where you have a sparkle gun that will get through the airport security. Casting a spell in “Sacrifice” usually ends with a national remembrance day and a federal holiday. Hey, remember when that wizard came and “casted” a fucking volcano? Remember the wall of screaming souls? [shrill screaming] You’re not “casting” magic – you’re COMMITTING magic. And that’s how I like it. The magic looks and acts perfectly devastating, and there are tons of spells to learn. Looking at the art style, I find it hard to describe. Everything is surreal fantasy, but twisted in dark ways, with a bit of humor. I don’t know enough about art for this. So I think it looks like a cross between H. R. Gieger and a “Courage the Cowardly Dog” episode. All of the magic and units are aligned to a god in this pantheon (which, again, I’ll come back to). But, to pick one out, there’s Persephone – the goddess of life and good and justice. So she has nature units, like an Ent. Or a mutant abomination begging for death. MUTANT: (sobbing) “My life is yours.” How about the Troll? Don’t be afraid of the Troll – this is a force for good. [magic jingling] Yeah, this is the face of life and justice. Every god’s units are like this, and no matter what generic fantasy name it has, you’ll have no clue what to expect. For example, a Yeti. You know what a yeti is. Probably… NARRATOR: “A fairy, moth-like creature appears for a little over 3 seconds.” Well, in “Sacrifice”, this tickle-me-necromorph is a Yeti. No matter which god you worship, its servants are a legion of nightmares, which I do appreciate. The villains don’t out-style the forces of good – everyone is equally unwell. Everything is so rich in color and style. Many years have passed, and it still remains incredibly unique. There’s so much variety, and I kept wanting to see more of what was out there. As you might expect, there is a soundscape to compliment this. The actual battle and interface effects are stock, but not always what you’d expect. ZYZYX: “Your creatures are under attack.” [machine-gun fire] But the environmental effects, like storms and wind, are surprisingly crisp. They’re not amazing or anything, but they make the lull before the fighting that much more tense. However, the music can be just as varied as its visuals. The soundtrack ranges from powerful orchestra scores, to what I can only call “Godzilla music”. [Sacrifice OST - Pyro Realm] ELDRED: “You are group 4. Guard me.” [Sacrifice OST - Pyro Realm] CREATURE: “Aye!” [Sacrifice OST - Pyro Realm] [Sacrifice OST - James Realm] [Sacrifice OST - Battle 4] [Sacrifice OST - Pyro Realm] Once again, it’s unique stuff. I do wish there was more of it, since you’ll be hearing the same thing a lot, but what is here is really good. [Sacrifice OST - Battle 1] Of course, the voice acting especially deserves a mention. The cast for the campaign is huge, and all the voice work is excellent. And it’s paired up with compelling dialogue. Like, “Sacrifice” has loading screens I found more interesting than cutscenes in some other games. ELDRED: “No pursuit was too perilous, no sacrifice too great. Until, well…” ELDRED: “Under the many heavens, and in the many worlds, there are darker things than men may dream of.” I wasn’t prepared for that with promotional images like this. CHARNEL: “I am Charnel, god of strife, god of slaughter, god of death.” CHARNEL: “Where there is pain, I am there. Where there is suffering, I flourish. Where there is joy…” CHARNEL: “Yes, well, one could hardly have joy without another’s suffering, no?” It feels worth it to play through the missions just to hear more of what the gods have to say, and to see them bicker with each other. It adds a lot of replayability to the campaign as well, since you’ll see the gods interact with each other in new ways. As for the units, I’m not kidding when I say I think the lines might have been assigned at random. They are… so bizarre. SHRIKE: “Aye?” 🧐 “Move.” SHRIKE: “Aye!” 🧐 “Move.” SHRIKE: “Ah-hah! Ehem…” 🧐 SHRIKE: ♪ “Lalalalala~a!” ♪ DRAGON: “Who awakens me?” 😠 STYX: “I LIVE.” 😈 UNIT: “I’m the fastest.” 👄 WARMONGER: “Executing orders!” 💪 Some voices are fitting, and others are flat out a joke. The more I played, and the more insane designs I saw, the more I realized that that was a very good call. Each unit has layers of unexpected chaos. So, presentation-wise, I’ve never played anything quite like it. It should come as no surprise the gameplay itself is also incredibly interesting. As far as a strategy game goes, you don’t have too many resources to manage. To start with the playable wizard, you have your health and your mana, along with a pile of souls. Your life bar is straightforward – you can heal yourself up with spells, and there’s not much to talk about. Mana is where things become more complicated. It’s used to cast spells and summon creatures, and it regens on its own… kind of. There is a magic supply chain. The maps have fountains of grade-A Columbian magic. To tap into one, you need to build a Manalith on top of it. This gives you a steady stream of the J. K. Rowling juice, and denies it to your enemy. But the magic must then be transferred to you through creatures called Manahoars. ZYZYX: “The first type of creature we will need is a Manahoar.” The more of these little pots of greed you have near you, the faster your mana regens. They’re weak and completely defenseless, so if they die out in a fight, you don’t have any more magic coming in. So, having lots of magic homes and a magic harem keeps your big blue bar beefy. However, the little guys aren’t free, and each costs a single soul. Souls are your money, and there is no way to infinitely tap into them. When your own troops die, they leave blue souls behind that you can pick up – it’s as simple as just running over them. Red enemy souls are a different problem, as they must first be cleansed of sin. To do this, you summon a special Sac Doctor onto the enemy soul. They come out of a portal, run up with their big syringe, and then begin the soul extraction process. When it’s extracted, they’ll be carried off to your altar, which is basically your headquarters. From here, these souls are properly purified, and then can be welcomed as part of the chosen. [*shponk*] From here, these souls are properly purified, and then can be welcomed as part of the chosen. This is a battle of attrition – there are only so many souls in a fight. You have enemy forces and some neutral villagers. The more powerful units cost more souls to summon, but represent a new liability – your hard-earned spirits could get yoinked from you. So, when you get in a fight, you also try to collect the enemy’s dead and preserve your own. You could escort your Sac Doctors all the way back to your altar, but that can be a long way. There is an option that, instead of building a Manalith, you could build a Shrine. Now you have a forward operating base for the holy rituals. You could also make an enemy soul good if you just kill them hard enough. Nothing makes you repent like being atomized. This system keeps the game very action-oriented. You’re never worrying about workers, or really your economy in general. Fighting, killing and gathering resources are all basically the same thing. If you die or kill an enemy wizard, you will respawn after a while, but you’ll lose all the souls you were carrying. As the game goes on, and more corpses are controlled, someone will get the upper hand. It does a good job of keeping things simple, since the Shrine and Manalith are the only buildings you can make. You can’t build turrets on them, but you can leash a creature to one. You can fortify a point, or go on a risky offensive against one, but again, souls are the investment. The focus is kept on the action, and the strategy layers are never overwhelming. With an interactive mini-map you can issue commands on and a teleport spell to your structures, you’ll be fine. To wipe the enemy out completely, you’ll need to go to their altar, sacrifice a unit, and then kill their wizard. If the ritual is not interrupted, and the caster dies, it’s game over. Their altar then begins to Gmod collision glitch into the sky, and you win. With that done, that brings us to the combat focus. How do you control a game like this? It is awkward at first, but once you learn your way around it, it is really intuitive. There’s even a hotkey to assign a hotkey to whatever your mouse is over. It makes it easy to change things around on the fly. The keyboard is mainly used for grouping units and using abilities, like any other RTS game. But you still have your cursor to interact with icons and units on the screen directly. For unit formations, you can hold right-click and expand out into different menus and icons. This is known as the “mouse gesture control system”. It was highly praised as revolutionary and innovative, when “Black & White 1” did it a year later. ♪ O~o~ohh, we got this notion ♪ ♪ That we quite like to sail the ocean ♪ Twenty years. I’ve had this song stuck in my head for TWENTY. YEARS. So, it makes controlling everything no problem. At least when you’re organizing your army, because, when the fighting starts, things get chaotic. You wanna manage your units, and make sure they’re in position to fight weaker counterparts, but you’re also managing yourself and your own spells, and you’re casting support stuff on your people and on yourself, because you don’t wanna die, and all the while you’re keeping an eye out for souls and the enemy wizard, and there’s a lot going on in every battle. Your troops are smart enough to where they’ll move and hunt down targets on their own, but they’ll always be more effective with you controlling them. There is a lot to manage at once, since, sometimes, magic or monsters will take a higher priority. But there are players out there that are insanely good at microing this game, and I’d like to see those matches. Sure, you have active spells, but some of your units do too. In a skirmish or multiplayer match, what abilities and monsters you have can be picked out through a spell book. Having 9 levels of power, with 5 choices each, there’s a lot of room to experiment. While the units are broken down into three main types – melee, ranged and flying – each god gives them their own little quirks, like Charnel’s undead healing by attacking or any other little ability a unit might have. Yet again, it’s never too overwhelming. “Sacrifice’s” gameplay kind of sounds like it should be a mess, but it’s really competent and fun. They gave it just the right amount of mechanical depth. It’s a properly fleshed out strategy and action game. Not too simple, but also not so overwhelming that only “StarCraft” experts could play it. Sadly, the multiplayer is pretty dead, though there are skirmish maps, so we can move onto the campaign. CHARNEL: “Persephone, what good is a holy warrior without a holy war?” PERSEPHONE: “Hmph, how like you, Charnel.” STRATOS: “Myself, I would sooner suspect Charnel. You do have a certain taste for destruction, don’t you?” This is a story that you don’t need to pop open a manual for, but it does give some additional context. The short version is: while the planet was intact, and not floating islands, there was a single God. A demon tore open a portal to hell, and then God lost that war. Hell has won, and the new pantheon of gods sort of just appeared. It does explain why all the creatures look like melted gorgonites – hell is a base template for life here. It’s a 10-mission campaign, but each god has 9 unique missions, so you can replay for 45 unique missions, and then the final battle. You choose which of the gods you wanna serve. There’s Persephone again. Then you have James, the god of earth, who is a giant worm. It’s some kind of in-joke, or nod to the developers of “Earthworm Jim” series. JAMES: “I am James, god of earth. You know, rocks and soil and stuff.” JAMES: “Some nice gems, too! Oh, it’s not all brown and grey, you know.” JAMES: “Just… mostly.” Then you have Stratos, god of the air and the heavens. Tim Curry went from blowing up spooky balloons to being one. PENNYWISE: “Whu-ha-ho-ha-ho-ha!” STRATOS: “Oh, let’s do be honest, shall we? In any halfway civilized world, I would be the only god.” It seems the pantheon of gods gets more evil the more to the right you go. Persephone and James care about life and the earth, but Stratos is between good and evil. He goes where the wind takes him, and seems to not care about the brewing tensions. Funnily enough, this isn’t Tim Curry’s only appearance in a weird hybrid RTS game. DOVICULUS: “Oh, you think she is the grand demon witch? The Hwite-Winged Death? Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!” Pyro is the god of fire. The forces of good have also declared him the god of chaos and pollution and gas and waste, but he claims to be an avatar of industry and knowledge. PYRO: “I intend to build factories in the Daven Forest, which is a haven for antiquated druidic thinking.” PYRO: “All who do not flee will be enriched by my triumph. YOU not least of all.” Oh, no, you don’t need to convince me – I’m down to enrich some druids. Finally, you have Charnel, who is comically evil. CHARNEL: “It is time I reopened the demon gate of Golgotha.” Okay, but he does give reasons why he’s not the big villain, and doesn’t want to destroy the world. CHARNEL: “Let me assure you, I do not want to destroy the world. That’s where all the best slaughter takes place, you know…” Can’t really argue with that. As for the wizard Eldred – he’s responsible for destroying his own home. He was a powerful man there, and summoned a demon to destroy his enemies. Of course, it went wildly out of control and destroyed everything. Magic might be partly derived from gods – I’m not entirely sure how it works. I don’t know much about spells or witchcraft in the real world either. My latest insight on that front comes from a local book store. They moved their witchcraft and spirituality section closer to the counter, because it was by far the most shoplifted section of the store. I guess, they can’t conjure dead presidents yet. What’s cool about the campaign is that there are choices to make here and there. These can slightly alter your goals, your dialogue and some buffs you get. Naturally, you sometimes have additional side objectives as well. This is neat agency stuff on its own, but you also have a choice on what missions you wanna do. Doing a job for them will give you some of their spells and units. You could go full mono-god, or pursue a mix of favors. If you anger one too much, they might not offer you a mission anymore (unless you help out an ally, or a story event happens). There’s good banter in-between the missions, and it’s always fun to see the gods spat with each other. PYRO: “Why should they continue to suffer for the comfort of savage and brutish beings like the Trolls?” STRATOS: “I see only one savage, brutish being here.” CHARNEL: “Come now, you mustn’t forget me.” JAMES: “Eh- Eh- Everyone, wait! Haven’t we all had enough of wars?” EVERYONE: “NO!” The final mission is always the same, but what I like is that the game picks your motivation, based on your mission choices. Were you helping a benevolent patron, trying to find redemption, or were you helping a demon lord burn stuff down, because you’ve accepted your place? The very end has a final choice as well, where you can react to the narrative you got. With such variety, the campaigns’ difficulties are all over the place. But it’s a fun ride, and you can try different paths, to learn more about the world. I didn’t find the deeper parts of the lore to be too captivating, but it was an interesting puzzle to put together. The dialogue writing is excellent, and really does elevate its setting. The campaign has a good variety of different maps and objectives. But again, your mileage may vary, depending on what you pick. “Sacrifice” also has the funniest, maybe most direct escort mission line in the video game. ELDRED: “Go to my altar, or I will kill you all.” That’s worth a mention. This is an incredibly unique game. It has elements of all kinds of games that would come later. There are multiplayer modes that have, like, the primordial soup of MOBAs in it. “Sacrifice” is like a game from a different timeline. It had an expansion planned, but just sold too poorly. I keep imagining, what if this game blew up? What would have come after? The issue is that, while all the mechanics and ideas were well thought out, it seems like the game itself isn’t quite there. They were pushing the technology, and it does show. You’ll see the animations freak out from time to time, how you move through the map feels like breaking it sometimes. It’s clear that systems like AI weren’t all there, and there are interface improvements that could be made. But these are mainly consequences of it just being an old game that was very ambitious. You do have to do some work for the best experience, but I do recommend this game. This is one of those titles that I would love to see get the HD Remaster treatment. If it had proper polish and better AI, the fights could be less chaotic. Even just having multiplayer back would be nice. I would love to see how people now play “Sacrifice”. That’s all for now. Until next time! ZYZYX: “All of your Manahoars have been slaughtered.” Sorry this one was later – recording it was a bit of an ordeal. Little Jack: “Would you consider updating an old review, if things changed?” It would be more likely, if there was an HD Edition or an expansion, or something like that. “Elite: Odyssey” is a good candidate. “EVE Online” I really don’t wanna go back to. inquisitor ganamead: “Do you think Kislev is flanderized in “Warhammer 3”?” Yea, it does kind of look that way. Like, the whole appeal of the bears was that the bears would be unique, but they’re giving everybody a bear. I’ll have more to say on that series in another video. Chalibard: “Have you checked out “Cruelty Squad”?” Yes. “Cruelty Squad” is the logical conclusion of video games. EatenbyFranks: ““Command & Conquer 4” or “Thief 4”?” I don’t know if that means what I’d rather play or do a video on, but the answer for both is… “Thief 4”. I mean, if I did a “Thief 4” video, it would be a longer one, because there is a lot to say on it, even though it is a fairly shorter game. The bad decisions that were made are at least kind of interesting in how you could look at it, and how games were going back then. With “Command & Conquer 4”, it’s just… Oh my God, it’s a disaster! I never want to play it again. ABOMINATION: “Yes? Yes?” ABOMINATION: “Would you stop that? I’m really not in a mood!”

Channel: MandaloreGaming

Views: 1,062,035

Keywords: sacrifice, sacrifice review, sacrifice game, sacrifice game review, sacrifice pc, sacrifice pc review, sacrifice pc game, sacrifice pc game review, sacrifice gameplay, sacrifice rts, sacrifice rts game, shiny entertainment, sacrifice strategy game, sacrifice video game, sacrifice 2000, sacrifice 2000 game, sacrifice (2000), sacrifice pc gameplay, sacrifice 2000 gameplay, sacrifice 1, sacrifice retro review, mandalore, mandaloregaming, mandalore gaming, sacrifice gods

Id: EY0NtZxqtio

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Hatfullofsky]

Sacrifice (and Shiny in general) was way, way ahead of its time. It is one of the few games that defied so many genre conventions it is basically impossible to define.

How many games do you get to choose your campaign fluidly between different factions, developing organically based on your choices? A fully and excellently voice acted pantheon with complex motivations and subplots? A third person RPG/RTS with sidequests and subgoals? And even some super fun multiplayer?

It wasn't perfect, but even in a modern context, noone has even tried to replicate it.

[u/trav3ler]

The late 90s/early 00s had this period where video games just embraced the weird for a few years (this, American McGee's Alice...)

I wonder what video games would be like today if they had caught on more than they did.

[u/Malaix]

This game was my childhood. I replayed it so many times. I LOVE the world and the look and feel of it. You would expect a RPG/RTS hybrid to be too jank to work but it somehow worked and there really isn't anything like it before or since. Its sad it was so graphically intense and niche it was a commercial flop at the time. Its always maintained a cult following though. I think one of Total Biscuits reviews are still on its GoG page.

But yeah, interesting gameplay, fun story, amazing style even for its age, amazing voice acting, very unique experience. Shame it tends to be a headache to run these days. I'd love a remaster...

[u/jotegr]

I begin to think the cause of this destruction cannot be other than myself...my dark experiments come to a most wicked end

[u/abrazilianinreddit]

I can't believe he didn't show the cow magic. It's a high-tier magic that summons a biped cow in a thong that launches itself high into the air and comes down on top of an unit, instantly gibbing it, all that while MOO-ing very loudly. Probably some bizarre reference to one of their previous games, Earthworm Jim.

It's such a shame Shiny was too weird for this world, I'd love to see what monstrosity they'd be coming up with today if they were still around.

On a side note, I search "sacrifice cow" in youtube looking for a video of it (if there is, I couldn't find it), and turns out people still do animal sacrifices around the world. That was some info I really didn't want to know, I definitely need to pay more attention to what I search for... I'll probably have nightmares for the next few weeks from those thumbnails.

[u/ericmm76]

I played the heck out of this game. Sadly it was fundamentally broken with certain units being just better than other units and custom spellbooks and armies being absurdly better than the dedicated ones.

But whenever I see people playing games like Smite, all I think about is Sacrifice.

[u/HireALLTheThings]

What a pleasant surprise!

Sacrifice was, hands-down, my favorite RTS(?) when I was a kid. It was a really weird game for its time, but it tickled my kid brain just right, and the cast of gods and their wizard servants in the single player campaign were all an absolute joy to interact with.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/preem_choom]

This game made me remember another game from that era that was like a future army RTS type thing, but the big selling point was the awesome artillery gameplay. The graphics/style I vaguely remember looking like Homeworld.

Blah names escaping me. But Sacrifice was rad as hell, looking back at it now it's kind of amazing how spoiled we were back there for good voice acting. It's coming back but man did good VO die out for a while there.