Let's Play: Sacrifice
Sacrifice is a cool little RTS that's overall little-known in spite of doing a lot of things well and being strikingly unique and interesting, and I did a video playthrough of it to show off the campaign, first and foremost to discuss the story.
I also do my more usual analysis of option comparison stuff throughout, and in fact do it more than discussing the story in practice, and as I don't comment over the videos you can also use this run to simply see the story through yourself if you're interested. I do cover just about everything.
First out the gate: the intro. You can skip it if you like, I barely talk about anything of interest here.
From there, the campaigns proper. They are...
Charnel
Charnel is a delightfully-written evil god of death who knows he's a bad guy and revels in it. There's some issues in the details I discuss as I go along, but overall he's probably my favorite character in the game, and I suspect I'm not alone -he is the being shown on the boxart, for one.
Mission 1. In which I go over a great many of the basics of Sacrifice's mechanics, including touching some on controls, and do the first Charnel mission. I also touch a tiny bit on the narrative, though only lightly since most substantive things I could say at this point are rooted in things not yet seen.
This is probably the single biggest Sacrifice-related post on the site, by the way. Don't be put off thinking they'll all be this long.
Mission 2. In which a bug screws up my attempt to properly show off the mission. Sacrifice is actually pretty low on problematics bugs overall, but the ones it does have can be pretty frustrating. This is a pretty light post, overall.
Mission 3. In which a 2v2 mission is a huge pain.
Mission 4. In which we finally get some context on our protagonist, the plot kicking into gear. I also discuss some missteps in the 'moral' elements in Sacrifice.
Mission 5. In which Eldred repeats his prior sins, but the plot doesn't really do anything with it. Also, I talk a bit about tessellation.
Mission 6. In which a mission expects you to play in a way that is actually a terrible plan with how the mission is designed.
Mission 7. In which Charnel's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder continues to pain him, and by extension me.
Mission 8. In which Death itself is a really cool spell that feels exactly like it should. Also, a bunch of gods die, though these are actually unrelated points.
Mission 9. In which I discuss one control issue with the game, we get Suspicious Evidence Of Unscrupulous Doings, and the endgame begins.
Mission 10. In which we defeat the undefeatable ultimate bad guy because Eldred didn't give up and run too early this time, and I go over Charnel as a 'faction'.
Next up is...
James
James is an Earthworm Jim reference dressed up as a down-to-earth farmer god who nobody respects or listens to. He also seems to be the dev team's personal favorite, though I get into the details of that in the posts themselves.
Mission 1. Respecting the common person and disdaining evil is surely a better path than summoning demons again, right?
Mission 2. In which insanity and ontological inertia are concepts Sacrifice does not seem to understand, and subplots in the game are discussed.
Mission 3. In which I have Sirocco, and therefore I win. Also, Jadugarr is a thing.
Mission 4. In which I still have Sirocco, but it's not actually completely guaranteed I win. Also, some of the implications of Sacrifice being noncommittal on events.
Mission 5. In which another mission is frustratingly-designed, and Suspicious Things continue to accumulate regarding a particular individual.
Mission 6. In which James continues to have frustrating missions, and somebody gets kidnapped.
Mission 7. In which multiple narrative oddities pile up together and James continues to have badly-designed missions.
Mission 8. Turns out bad people aren't automatically lying about everything, whoops. Also a bit of discussion on one of the strengths of the game's writing.
Mission 9. In which defense and arbitrariness are the name of the game.
Mission 10. In which we get the worst ending.
Next up is...
Pyro
Pyro is somebody's hatred of corporate America made manifest, which goes some pretty weird places. He's also a fire god, but this has weirdly little relevance to the story.
Mission 1. In which the game has a weird, obvious bias against Pyro as a narrative entity.
Mission 2. In which the game doubles down on its weird bias, and does so kind of incompetently to boot.
Mission 3. In which the game triples down on its intense bias against Pyro, distorting the narrative in blatantly nonsensical ways to illustrate its bias.
Mission 4. In which the game wanting you to hate Pyro actually kind of works.
Mission 5. In which a mission is horrendously-designed, and Pyro's route starts seriously diverging from other routes. Surprisingly, the game briefly forgets it wants you to hate Pyro.
Mission 6. Wait, why did we kill this guy?
Mission 7. In which we learn wizards die if their god dies. This is important.
Mission 8. In which a mission that has no narrative reason to exist kicks the player while they're down with infuriating, ill-considered gameplay.
Mission 9. In which the writers wanting you to hate Pyro comes to a head, warping the plot in multiple obviously nonsensical ways for zero benefit.
Mission 10. In which I go over Pyro as a whole.
Next up is...
Stratos
Stratos is great voice acting and also a character is in there I guess. He's also got the weirdest design of the gods, though it's easy to overlook it and think him one of the more normal ones.
Mission 1. In which a decent amount of interesting stuff happens, but less of it is relevant than you might expect.
Mission 2. In which Sacrifice being low-key sexist in an obnoxious way gets discussed some.
Mission 3. In which the game has the player peek in on some other people's private moment, because that's not uncomfortable or creepy at all.
Mission 4. In which the game wastes a lot of player time gratuitously, and Stratos is very smug.
Mission 5. In which we play The Worst Mission In The Game, and discuss Stratos' design a little.
Mission 6. In which Stratos is thrilled, and we do The Second Worst Mission In The Game.
Mission 7. In which Stratos continues to enjoy himself, and I keep dropping hints of Things To Come.
Mission 8. In which Earthworm Jim being favored by the devs shows through particularly heavily, and Eldred inexplicably fails to object to things he really ought to have objected to by now.
Mission 9: This train has no brakes, which is intensely confusing.
Mission 10. In which I talk about the twisty path Stratos has made you walk, and the layers of issues with it. Plus factional retrospective stuff, as usual.
Lastly, we have...
Persephone
Persephone is a holier-than-thou vaguely maternal nature warrior who operates on the principle that you make the world a better place by sticking your sword in the right people, or if you're feeling merciful merely threatening to do so if they don't convert to your creed. She's also ostensibly the 'baseline' god of the game, in mechanical terms, though in practice it doesn't really work out that way.
Mission 1. In which a very large number of intensely confusing decisions are made by Sacrifice.
Mission 2. In which I discuss how Persephone's route in particular has very odd gaps in its story design, among other things.
Mission 3. In which a mission's scripting is horribly broken, and also I increasingly discuss bizarre holes and strange decisions in the narrative that are starting to be obvious now that we've seen every route's version of early events.
Mission 4. In which the mission is busted on a design level, but is actually fairly competent on a narrative level.
Mission 5. In which I actually have very strong praise for the story!... less so the actual mission, given it has serious bugs, but still.
Mission 6. In which wonky, problematic decisions abound on the game's part, though the full breadth of the problems are still looming over the horizon.
Mission 7. In which a mission is ill-designed on a great many levels, and little redeeming value is to be found within.
Mission 8. In which a mission whose gameplay is largely a retread of familiar ground makes grand strides in narrative nonsensicalness.
Mission 9. In which the narrative cracks widen still further into yawning chasms, unable to support the story.
Mission 10. In which we reach the big wall o' words that is, when it gets down to it, the primary reason I made this long series of posts.
But wait, we're not completely done.
Misc
Rainbow Run. A few videos showing off special results you can get if you deviate from mono-god routes in particular ways, as well as a few things I just plain missed in the main runs.
Tutorial missions. Sacrifice's tutorial missions have a little bit of plot to them. Less than I'd originally remembered, but some, enough I bothered to show it off.
Per-level God comparison. In which I go over all your possible choices at each individual level, more directly and thoroughly addressing the cross-god comparisons of levels I alluded to across the campaign mission posts.
There's also supposed to be some video showing off skirmishes, but as yet that hasn't happened, and at this rate may never happen. Sorry.
I also do my more usual analysis of option comparison stuff throughout, and in fact do it more than discussing the story in practice, and as I don't comment over the videos you can also use this run to simply see the story through yourself if you're interested. I do cover just about everything.
First out the gate: the intro. You can skip it if you like, I barely talk about anything of interest here.
From there, the campaigns proper. They are...
Charnel
Charnel is a delightfully-written evil god of death who knows he's a bad guy and revels in it. There's some issues in the details I discuss as I go along, but overall he's probably my favorite character in the game, and I suspect I'm not alone -he is the being shown on the boxart, for one.
Mission 1. In which I go over a great many of the basics of Sacrifice's mechanics, including touching some on controls, and do the first Charnel mission. I also touch a tiny bit on the narrative, though only lightly since most substantive things I could say at this point are rooted in things not yet seen.
This is probably the single biggest Sacrifice-related post on the site, by the way. Don't be put off thinking they'll all be this long.
Mission 2. In which a bug screws up my attempt to properly show off the mission. Sacrifice is actually pretty low on problematics bugs overall, but the ones it does have can be pretty frustrating. This is a pretty light post, overall.
Mission 3. In which a 2v2 mission is a huge pain.
Mission 4. In which we finally get some context on our protagonist, the plot kicking into gear. I also discuss some missteps in the 'moral' elements in Sacrifice.
Mission 5. In which Eldred repeats his prior sins, but the plot doesn't really do anything with it. Also, I talk a bit about tessellation.
Mission 6. In which a mission expects you to play in a way that is actually a terrible plan with how the mission is designed.
Mission 7. In which Charnel's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder continues to pain him, and by extension me.
Mission 8. In which Death itself is a really cool spell that feels exactly like it should. Also, a bunch of gods die, though these are actually unrelated points.
Mission 9. In which I discuss one control issue with the game, we get Suspicious Evidence Of Unscrupulous Doings, and the endgame begins.
Mission 10. In which we defeat the undefeatable ultimate bad guy because Eldred didn't give up and run too early this time, and I go over Charnel as a 'faction'.
Next up is...
James
James is an Earthworm Jim reference dressed up as a down-to-earth farmer god who nobody respects or listens to. He also seems to be the dev team's personal favorite, though I get into the details of that in the posts themselves.
Mission 1. Respecting the common person and disdaining evil is surely a better path than summoning demons again, right?
Mission 2. In which insanity and ontological inertia are concepts Sacrifice does not seem to understand, and subplots in the game are discussed.
Mission 3. In which I have Sirocco, and therefore I win. Also, Jadugarr is a thing.
Mission 4. In which I still have Sirocco, but it's not actually completely guaranteed I win. Also, some of the implications of Sacrifice being noncommittal on events.
Mission 5. In which another mission is frustratingly-designed, and Suspicious Things continue to accumulate regarding a particular individual.
Mission 6. In which James continues to have frustrating missions, and somebody gets kidnapped.
Mission 7. In which multiple narrative oddities pile up together and James continues to have badly-designed missions.
Mission 8. Turns out bad people aren't automatically lying about everything, whoops. Also a bit of discussion on one of the strengths of the game's writing.
Mission 9. In which defense and arbitrariness are the name of the game.
Mission 10. In which we get the worst ending.
Next up is...
Pyro
Pyro is somebody's hatred of corporate America made manifest, which goes some pretty weird places. He's also a fire god, but this has weirdly little relevance to the story.
Mission 1. In which the game has a weird, obvious bias against Pyro as a narrative entity.
Mission 2. In which the game doubles down on its weird bias, and does so kind of incompetently to boot.
Mission 3. In which the game triples down on its intense bias against Pyro, distorting the narrative in blatantly nonsensical ways to illustrate its bias.
Mission 4. In which the game wanting you to hate Pyro actually kind of works.
Mission 5. In which a mission is horrendously-designed, and Pyro's route starts seriously diverging from other routes. Surprisingly, the game briefly forgets it wants you to hate Pyro.
Mission 6. Wait, why did we kill this guy?
Mission 7. In which we learn wizards die if their god dies. This is important.
Mission 8. In which a mission that has no narrative reason to exist kicks the player while they're down with infuriating, ill-considered gameplay.
Mission 9. In which the writers wanting you to hate Pyro comes to a head, warping the plot in multiple obviously nonsensical ways for zero benefit.
Mission 10. In which I go over Pyro as a whole.
Next up is...
Stratos
Stratos is great voice acting and also a character is in there I guess. He's also got the weirdest design of the gods, though it's easy to overlook it and think him one of the more normal ones.
Mission 1. In which a decent amount of interesting stuff happens, but less of it is relevant than you might expect.
Mission 2. In which Sacrifice being low-key sexist in an obnoxious way gets discussed some.
Mission 3. In which the game has the player peek in on some other people's private moment, because that's not uncomfortable or creepy at all.
Mission 4. In which the game wastes a lot of player time gratuitously, and Stratos is very smug.
Mission 5. In which we play The Worst Mission In The Game, and discuss Stratos' design a little.
Mission 6. In which Stratos is thrilled, and we do The Second Worst Mission In The Game.
Mission 7. In which Stratos continues to enjoy himself, and I keep dropping hints of Things To Come.
Mission 8. In which Earthworm Jim being favored by the devs shows through particularly heavily, and Eldred inexplicably fails to object to things he really ought to have objected to by now.
Mission 9: This train has no brakes, which is intensely confusing.
Mission 10. In which I talk about the twisty path Stratos has made you walk, and the layers of issues with it. Plus factional retrospective stuff, as usual.
Lastly, we have...
Persephone
Persephone is a holier-than-thou vaguely maternal nature warrior who operates on the principle that you make the world a better place by sticking your sword in the right people, or if you're feeling merciful merely threatening to do so if they don't convert to your creed. She's also ostensibly the 'baseline' god of the game, in mechanical terms, though in practice it doesn't really work out that way.
Mission 1. In which a very large number of intensely confusing decisions are made by Sacrifice.
Mission 2. In which I discuss how Persephone's route in particular has very odd gaps in its story design, among other things.
Mission 3. In which a mission's scripting is horribly broken, and also I increasingly discuss bizarre holes and strange decisions in the narrative that are starting to be obvious now that we've seen every route's version of early events.
Mission 4. In which the mission is busted on a design level, but is actually fairly competent on a narrative level.
Mission 5. In which I actually have very strong praise for the story!... less so the actual mission, given it has serious bugs, but still.
Mission 6. In which wonky, problematic decisions abound on the game's part, though the full breadth of the problems are still looming over the horizon.
Mission 7. In which a mission is ill-designed on a great many levels, and little redeeming value is to be found within.
Mission 8. In which a mission whose gameplay is largely a retread of familiar ground makes grand strides in narrative nonsensicalness.
Mission 9. In which the narrative cracks widen still further into yawning chasms, unable to support the story.
Mission 10. In which we reach the big wall o' words that is, when it gets down to it, the primary reason I made this long series of posts.
But wait, we're not completely done.
Misc
Rainbow Run. A few videos showing off special results you can get if you deviate from mono-god routes in particular ways, as well as a few things I just plain missed in the main runs.
Tutorial missions. Sacrifice's tutorial missions have a little bit of plot to them. Less than I'd originally remembered, but some, enough I bothered to show it off.
Per-level God comparison. In which I go over all your possible choices at each individual level, more directly and thoroughly addressing the cross-god comparisons of levels I alluded to across the campaign mission posts.
There's also supposed to be some video showing off skirmishes, but as yet that hasn't happened, and at this rate may never happen. Sorry.
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