Reviewed: April 6, 2007
Reviewed by: Megan Dyer
Publisher
The Adventure Company
Developer
Streko-Graphics
Released: March 7, 2007
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
7
6
5
6
5.0
System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Adventure games have pretty much had the same type of formula since Myst came out on the PC. Usually revolving around some sort of loose mystery, the point and click adventure game has a small but dedicated following. The Sacred Rings, from the folks at The Adventure Company, is no different. It's typical in just about every way; however, that seems to suit many gamers that are fans of the first-person adventure genre just fine.
The Sacred Rings features:
- Vast, rich environments to explore including a unique house with a hidden secret, Manula Valley, the residing place of an old witch and an ancient warlock and the old Keeper's Tower now controlled by your brutal adversary.
- Easy to navigate mouse-driven, point-and-click interface.
- Numerous original and creative puzzles to solve and challenge you.
- A proprietary engine that blends together beautiful pre-rendered graphics and environmental interaction with immersive special effects.
- More than 40 minutes of incredible cut-scenes.
- More than 400 beautiful locations to fully-explore.
- Numerous characters to interact with.
- An astonishing musical score with 8 varied themes to compliment gameplay.
Sacred Rings is so typical, it's hardly worth mentioning how the game works here. The story goes something like this: There are these artifacts called the sacred rings. After searching for these artifacts for some time, our hero, Umang, wakes up to find himself in another world. He has the sacred rings, which are powerful relics that grant power and immortality to their possessor. Naturally, there are some evil dudes out there who want to get their hands on these rings so they can do what evil dudes do, which is exploit their godlike power for all eternity.
Umang, being our hero, wants to keep the evil dudes from acquiring the rings, so he protects them at all costs. He must return the rings to the Keepers, who are the only ones who can watch over the rings properly and make sure they don't end up in the wrong hands. This inevitably will lead Umang on a series of adventures where he must solve some very frustrating puzzles and stay one step ahead of those evil dudes who want the rings.
As for the gameplay itself, Sacred Rings offers a large quantity of brain teasing puzzles wherein the player moves about and interacts with the game's environment by pointing and clicking the cursor. Most of the puzzles take some serious thinking, and are a bit higher in difficulty than is the norm for T.A.C.-brand adventures.
If you like feeling like you're on the verge of pulling your hair out in frustration, Sacred Rings will deliver. The puzzles aren't impossible, but they aren't child's play either. Sacred Rings is definitely a game for experienced fans of the adventure genre.
The opening movie for Sacred Rings looks pretty decent. It does a good job of setting up the world of Sacred Rings, making it look visually cool and interesting. Unfortunately, in game-graphics are pretty much par for the course, in that they are all basically static--you can rotate the camera view from a given location--but transitions are handled the same way as they were in Myst all those many years ago: just click and you’re there. On the bright side, they are nicely rendered, if somewhat generic for the type of game Sacred Rings is.
Character designs are okay, save for a few that look really...bizarre. There’s an evil sorcerer looks like Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat in a monk's robe, which isn‘t all that bad of a thing really, but kind of cheesy, none the less. Umang, the main character, looks unnaturally skinny and bony in the face, and the guy that he ends up sort-of befriending at the beginning of the game is portly man with round goggles and a helmet. I understand that he's supposed to look like a post-apocalyptic survivor, but...well, he just doesn't pull it off well. He looks creepy, and not in a good way.
Sacred Rings is pretty typical in the category of sound as well, I'm afraid. The biggest annoyance here is the voice acting. It's not exactly cringe-worthy, but it certainly isn't anywhere near good either. The voice actors sound stilted and awkward, often sounding as though they're reading from a cue card. The narrator in the opening movie has the basic deep, male narrator voice telling the overview of the story in an intense, foreboding voice, but that's pretty much the extent of the value in the voice acting.
Some of the characters are rather difficult to understand at times without the subtitles turned on, especially the beefy lump of a bad guy who sits in his chamber growling and grumbling incoherently about how power shall soon be his, how awesome he is, and basically that he's a bad guy and we should fear him.
The music in Sacred Rings is decent, as it's basically of the ambient, fade into the background type, which is always nice considering the time you're probably going to spend piecing together puzzles listening to it. At times, it doesn't exactly fit the scenery, sounding far too intense or spooky when nothing is going on. Still, it works for what it does, which is basically to give you something to listen to that's not distracting or grating while you're puzzling your way through the game.
The initial value of Sacred Rings is relatively high. There are plenty of brain teasing puzzles to piece together and just enough of a story to keep you interested. Replay value is however, pretty low. Sacred Rings is basically a one time go through game, like many point and click adventure games, although it's not exactly a game you can just breeze through. Its biggest forte is its somewhat above-average puzzle difficulty.
If you can't get enough of these types of adventure games, well, you're in luck. Sacred Rings delivers the age-old formula that began with Myst, once again. If you're looking for innovation in the world of action adventure games, you're out of luck with Sacred Rings. It's typical in just about every way. Some gamers will like that of course, but others will be bored to tears.