Sacrifice [And its legacy?]

[Lord_Gareth]

"In the realm that was my home, I had devoted my life to study of the arcane. No pursuit was too perilous, no sacrifice too great, until... Well... Under the many heavens, and in the many worlds, there are darker things than Men may dream of..."

- Eldred, Sacrifice (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Sacrifice)


"Dude, I've got an army of mutants throwing cancer at people, a bunch of 'hoars powering my spells, I just dropped a cow on someone, and every part of that statement was utterly serious. It's that kinda game."

- Lord Gareth

The purpose of this thread is threefold:

1. The discussion of the awesomeness that is Sacrifice, a 3rd-person RTS for the PC (see the TvTropes link)

2. The discussion of other, similar RTSes, or theory on their creation.

3. Any news on points two or three.

Fire away, folks!

[Inhuman Bot]

Ah Sacrifice. It was quite fun, and it's also always nice to have something different.

Now, if I'am thinking of the right game, what gods do you all prefer to serve? Personally, I generally follow James, but that's probably because of my tendancy to play good charcters in games.

Then again, Charnel is also pretty awesome.

[Corlindale]

Sacrifice is a fantastic game.
I love how it's so different from basically any other RTS-game out there; much more confusing, hectic and adrenaline-inducing. Both the units and the spells vary from cool to hilarious - often both (with the aforementioned Bovine Intervention being a highlight).
Having souls as a resource is another stroke of genius. It doesn't matter how badly you slaughter the enemy wizard's army if you don't manage to capture some souls in the process - and this really changes the tactics of the game, as it is actually much more crucial to distract/incapacitate the enemy wizard than to merely kill most of his men. And wizards are generally HARD to lockdown and HARD to kill, leading to some very intense encounters - especially on some of the later maps when you start out being vastly outnumbered.

Struggling to manage troop positions, soul-collecting, soul-conversion, spell-slinging, resummoning of dead creatures, evasion of enemy creatures and movement around the map all at once, while also being on the constant lookout for the enemy wizard makes for a gameplay experience almost unparalled in intensity - and is probably part of the reason the game didn't catch on with that many people, as it can be quite confusing at first.

As for gods, I'm not sure if I had a specific preference. I made some attempts at mix-and-matching spells and creatures from different gods during the campaign - probably the best strategy as some spells/creatures are essential, while others pretty much suck - but nevertheless, in the game in which I actually completed the official campaign I served Stratos exclusively - he may be my favourite god, though Charnel and Pyro are fun as well. Got quite far with James, too - though later on the lack of mobility of his creatures started to hurt (as far as I recall he's the only one who doesn't get a flier as his ultimate unit).