http://www.co-optimus.com/article/8871/ ... -2012.html
Our demo consisted of two characters - The Safiri Berserker who utilizes the power of the Sun and the Ancarian Lancer who utilizes the power of the Earth. Further character classes will be revealed in the future, though they didn't specify how many. Each character will be culture focused, processing a unique power. I'd fully expect a water or ice based character class along with some sort of dark magic character class.
The first thing that was immediately noticeable for Sacred 3 was the change in graphical style. While the previous games edged on the over bright, colorful, and almost realistic look; Sacred 3 has a more stylized graphical feel with a tighter camera and bigger character models. The camera itself is actually dynamic now, several times we saw it pan to the side of our characters to showcase the huge expansive environments which looked absolutely gorgeous.
The game was demoed on a PS3, and while we couldn't get our own hands on the controls, it was obvious that combat was a lot more arcade like. Players racked up combos from attacks earning bonus experience. Co-Op pairings could earn further bonus XP by comboing enemies together. There's even co-op finishing moves, called executions, adding another layer to the game's cooperative depth.
We were told that loot would still remain a big part of the game, though we didn't get a good look at exactly how the system would work yet. What we did see was completely different from past Sacred titles. Gone is the open world, in its place are individual "missions" with many different objectives. Once you complete a mission you are scored on your progress.
We were told by the game's rep that they found a large part of the game was spent traveling from quest to quest and they wanted to remove that downtime. While Sacred 3 will still have towns for re-equipping an gaining quests, you'll never actually venture out from them it seems. Instead you'll just drop into a mission. This is a pretty radical departure for the series, one we can't help but feel will upset the fanbase quite a bit.