Sacrifice? Sacrifice?! What on Earth is Sacrifice? I've had this 1001 list for years now, and have had to go through it many, many times looking for games to pick up from sales and second-hand shops. At some point - November 2015, according to a quick search of my inbox - I bought Sacrifice along with a bunch of other titles. I didn't know what it was then, and in the four years since, I've still got no idea what it is. I've never knowingly seen it. What's this all about?
Sacrifice is a real-time strategy of wizards and their summons; of mana fountains and opposition altars; of bickering Gods and bloated creatures. As commander of your summoned forces, you'll be the boots on the ground for the Gods in the skies, commanding your troops to attack, defend and even sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
It's time to sacrifice some time towards Sacrifice.
Fun Times
After three tutorial levels learning how to move, control the camera, command creatures and devour the land of souls to fuel your forces, Sacrifice gets started in a blood red land that has seen some tough times, to say the least.
I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but it's voiced by some familiar faces. That doesn't quite work. You know what I mean. We are a wizard calling upon the aid of the Gods, and our first task appears to be to pick one.
Clearly, the God who is a balloon is the only choice here...
Why, thank you, Sacrifice. I think I'll be fine, though - I've actually completed the tutorials! You just point me to the plot, and we'll get going.
I don't know what I'm talking to - I don't even know where her mouth is - but my task on this map is to protect her as she talks to some ghosts, which is the explanation for going to points A, B, and C to perform action X. That we can do.
Helping us throughout our quests are an army of summons, primarily made up of three unit types, Melee, Ranged and Flying. In rock-paper-scissors fashion, each type has its strengths and weaknesses, but they've also got their own unique spells that'll give you extra options in the heat of battle. My forces in this stage seem to point towards a hit and run kind of approach. They won't be able to take too much of a beating, but they'll get in and out and cause all sorts of problems all the while.
Your forces are all summoned through the use of mana, which is effectively an infinite resource, but cost souls, some creatures using up more souls than others. These souls are finite and making sure you get hold of them to power your progress through the level means your time will be spent micromanaging lots of aspects of the game at once.
Creatures can be put into multiple formations, and told to move, attack and defend with right clicks. This leaves you to navigate spell books and cast spells with the left click, allowing you to summon, attack, heal, gather souls, reinforce mana fountains with manaliths to take ownership of them and deprive your opponent of mana reserves... like a great many RTS games, Sacrifice is busy.
Frustrations
It's busy, and I still don't know what I'm doing, or for whom I'm doing it. The Gods are arguing, and we get to pick another one to work for, this time Persephone, who sends us into some frozen lands with a message to deliver.
First, we'll have to get through Seerix, a serpentine wizard very capable of setting up ambushes to thwart my soul gathering efforts. No worries. My forces know what needs to be done. Even in small skirmishes, there is often too much to keep an eye on, so let your summons loose to just get stuck in, while you hang around at the back and stay alive.
As I pushed further through the stage, I was absolutely overwhelmed by Seerix's summons. There must have been three for every single one that I had of my own, and even after destroying her Manaliths to take mana fountains for myself, her summons just sapped everything out of me.
I knew what had to be done, and hoped I could rush to do it.
Each force has a home altar. If it gets destroyed, you lose. If you die at the same time, you definitely lose. As Seerix was attacking mine at one end of the map, I was attacking hers at the other. I had only a handful of units, and one of them was being actively sacrificed to start the attack.
Somehow, though, it worked.
So, I'd done something, and met someone, and got a speed increase (because casting a spell to sprint for a few seconds makes little sense to me), and the Gods are going a bit mad back at wherever it is they hang out.
Final Word
Where was I after an hour of Sacrifice? I didn't know what was going on with the plot, but it was well voiced by all. While I'm not a natural with controlling everything, I understood the mechanics early on, and I get the idea of managing the resources available on the map and whittling down your opponent's forces.
But it's a strangely paced game, I feel. It's not cumbersome, it's not clunky, but you move, you stop, you do your thing, you regroup, you move, you stop, you do your thing, you regroup... it's an RTS, but it's a sort of action-strategy game too, and I'm better at one than the other.
I can't keep track of everyone, despite methods for doing so. I know what ought to be done, but perhaps not necessarily in which order it should be done. Brute forcing a solution to my problems will only get me so far through Sacrifice, and the plot isn't making the most amount of sense to me to actually get me interested in going through it at all.
As games go, it looks fine, it plays well, it has depth and complexity for those that want it, it is easy enough to get to grips with for the rest of us, but it just doesn't leap out to me. I can't really find fault with the game itself, as most of my moans are because of the way I'm trying to play it, I suppose, so if it sounds like something you should check out, maybe you should.
Sacrifice should scratch that funny little itch of wanting to micromanage an army from the ground, rather than the air, but its weird fantasy world might not attract a great many players. The unit designs are undoubtedly different, but they're probably not what you'd call pleasing to the eye.
At the end of the day, Sacrifice did nothing wrong but didn't do enough right for me, personally. I can see a good game, but not one for me to play, and that's just how it goes sometimes.
Fun Facts
The strange creature designs were a case of 'form following function'. You should get an idea of what a creature does by how it looks. I think I'll have to look at a few more creatures before that happens.
Sacrifice, developed by Shiny Entertainment, first released in 2000.
Version played: PC, 2001.