Is the community patch worth it?

[edmek55555]

I love sacred 2, one of my favorite 360 era rpgs, but I’ve lost 3 characters randomly for no reason. Just gone from my game when I load it up. I redownloaded it recently and played it for about a half an hour and it ran fine and didn’t wipe my character immediately.

Then someone told me about the community patch so I downloaded it as a precaution. But the patch adds its own level of jankiness. Like when moving with wasd I keep moving for about a second when I release the key. For people who have used the patch, does you generally find it more useful than not? Is it worth using?

[Roderick]

Memoryleaks fixed, bugged questlines fixed - these are the two top points for me.

[Zeiss_Zwerg]

Pros: adds new content, fixes some bugs. Before it I was unable to even complete some of the quests, some were hard to complete due to several reasons like broken quests marks and etc. Also some good tweaks like you can carry 99 potions in one cell, not just 20. Actually, very important for me because lots of Sacred 2 bugs were not fixed by any official ppatch, unlike in Sacred 1 which vanilla version at least allows to complete every single quest without much of the problems.

Contras:
1) You can't just get only bug fixes: as often it happens with fan mods, it has a number of additions that might feel unpolished, wierd regarding to the game's setting, arguable gamedesign decisions like making parts of the game eaier or/and harder, so you are forced sometimes to change your tactics. That's especially true if you love Sacred 2 not because of fighting with bosses, but for something else like its lore and setting.

For example, vanilla Sacred 2 allow you to have an unique mount on level 3-4, just walk to the Blood Forest and do one quest, while in CP version you have to deal with spiders who spam their immobilizing attacks, so for making such a run in the beginning you have to
spend around 100 healing potions.
Libi's Fall - same, you are meeting the dragon boss on your way to it, while in original game you could run to it easier and meet that Lone Seahorse character.

Lots of new portals were added, just as ships and air ballon portal webs are now merged with regular portal net. Good part: easier to get somewhere. Bad part: it devaluates the whole usage of monolyths as "movable portals", when you are exploring areas, triggering nearly all of them in turn.

I know Sacred 2's balance was not perfect, but I have already made my playstyle considering all its exploits and having my part of fun with it, my hundreds of hours in Sacred 2 have allowed me to create all those workarounds. In CP, something ceased to work. Thankfully, at least the "Jumper's bug" (when you can explore much more are than it was intended) was not fixed in CP, otherwise I'd be unable even to look on some interesting areas from a needed angle, and to travel from Na-Fian to Aerendir... by sea, or by foot, "by jump" even, I don't know how it can be called.

2) In particular I did not like the books added by it. Their quality for me was a bit inferior than in original game, and I'm not even sure they suit the already existing lore.

3) I found it to be very controversial that CP pushes the "absurd" line of Sacred 2, like funny grave descriptions, lots of easter-eggs, often greaking the fourth wall... but it does barely anything to improve the serious part, like, how this world actually lives? I'd like to read some historic books, to see some quests making you to return, e.g., from region V to II because lizardmen have some trade with humans, that kind. Vanilla Sacred has its regions very separated from each other. CP, AFAIK, barely does anything to fix even that.

4) I might be wrong, but CP seems to change camera and add the sound of clanging armor while walking? If so, I liked the vanilla more in that respect. Wierdly enough, but I had no troubles with that original camera, seems CP somehow alrers it making its controls unfamiliar to me.

I don't know which part of the list is more important to you. I've played the whole game in vanilla Sacred 2 (not to add my previous countless attempts...), then installed CP and tried it for something like 30 hours of playtime already. I feel CP would be better for me if I could just remove some tweaks from it. But, as often it happens, those doubtful changes are mandatory, so I have to choose if the good part deserves it to tolerate things I didn't like.

And, yes, CP does not fix the most annoying feature: not only Sacred 2 has just one save, so you have to back-up it constantly if you want to save your character from dieing, unlike Dungeon Sieege 2, if you die, the game saves authomatically, spoiling your stats and decreasing your survival bonus. in DS 2, you could just press "Save" button whenever you want and exit without saving.

[Roderick]

@ Staufen:
No mod or fanpatch ever satisfies all players completely. The cm-patch was made from the ideas of several players who have been in discuss over all these features. I for one have no complains about the camera and NOT getting a special mount that easy was an idea liked by most. I don't know anyone beside you complaining about the portals which make it easier to travel since you can only have one monolyth active. Especially if you visit places just for fun or in search of nice screenshots (some areas look damn beatifull at night, when the candles or streetlights are lit), those new portals come in handy.

Then you are contradicting yourself. The added books are inferior to the ones in vanilla game, yet you would have wanted more historic books? I doubt they would have suited you if the ones implemented don't suit you.

The survival bonus is one of the most important things in Sacred 2, getting higher in levels without dying. Not only I assume it is very complicated to change something basic like the saving system of a game, it would de-value one of Sacred 2 most outstanding features: a very rewarding semi-hardcore-mode. I never have seen this in any other game.
(besides, you can always backup your save file manually, if you love your char that much)

All in all Sacred 2 might still be buggy and not to everyones liking, but the cm-patch fixes the more crucial bugs and makes more quests playable, therefore enhancing the game. Additionally some quality of life features like stacking potions up to 99 and even stacking runes (which aren't stackable in vanilla, so they flood your inventory).

[edmek55555]

Unfortunately it seems I play a shadow warrior build mainly that absolutely has to have this patch to keep the frames from dropping significantly and potentially crashing. It sort of sucks because the “patch” is almost just as buggy as the main game if not moreso, just in different ways (that constant armor clattering when you’re moving or ,sometimes even standing still, gets pretty maddening). But sacred 2 is an awesome game. One of the only games I would go through all of the inconvenience for and still have fun

[Zeiss_Zwerg]

@Roderick. I'd prefer not to argue with you. Also, I doen't have anything against people who like Sacred 2 and CP for different qualities than I do. And I always have a possiblity to love, to cope with, to ignore or to go without any addition of CP, or even to uninstall it entirely in case when for some reason I decide the vanilla version is more comfortable for me.

The topicstarted wanted to hear some words about a probable worthness of CP for a player, so I said something though... The chancesthat my tastes follows his own ones may range from 0% to 100%, that's it.

I'd only add about DS2: it also has just one save per character , for the same reasons Ascaron decided to allow just one save for Sacred, but DS2 does not autosave while dieing.