There are also a huge assortment of wizards in the game such as a strange spider creature, a centaur, a short Gnome type on a bouncing one legged wingless bird (!) and of a course an assortment of slightly more normal humanoid creatures. You'll come across most of these in the single player game but you can also play any one of them in multiplayer too. And just what is multiplayer Sacrifice like? The basic skirmish game type is pretty similar to single player Sacrifice – the main objective tends to be annihilating the enemy wizard. However there are also game types like Slaughter, where the victor is the wizard with the most kills, Soul Harvest and Domination where you have to run about frantically claiming Manaliths. The netcode is nothing short of excellent with no noticeable lag during an entire skirmish game played on a 56k against two other opponents. It's almost always the case that the winner of the first one or two battles wins the game, but it often feels quite different to single player Sacrifice since you're playing a human opponent rather than the often pretty dumb AI. The Sacrifice AI will almost always attack via the same route and can do the strangest things. On numerous occasions, once I died (you can get resurrected easily enough though as long as your Alter hasn't been desecrated, in which case you've lost) I'd watch the enemy wizard and his creatures simply sit right next to my altar, before suddenly wandering off, crossing half the map, and then suddenly turning round to come back and desecrate my Altar finally. Some troops will also simply stand and take any punishment the enemy throws at them – had they instead tended to retaliate it might have made the often slightly awkward controls a little less of a problem, but alas the unfortunate oversight remains.

In the end, Sacrifice is a gorgeous, original yet flawed title that doesn't quite live up to expectations. The 10 campaigns of the 5 different gods make it highly replayable, as does the enjoyable multiplayer. It also goes without saying that it's drool inducingly gorgeous and refreshingly original, it's just a shame that it proves tactically more shallow compared to some other RTS titles and is often tricky to control, particularly during the frequently difficult later missions where you'll face pretty tough odds that seem imposed in order to make up for the weak AI. Still, despite these flaws Sacrifice proved a thoroughly enjoyable and noticeably polished title that can be as tough as diamonds and just as beautiful. Were it not for the slightly flawed resource system and the poor AI, this game could've been a classic. Instead, it's just pretty darn good.

Pete Closs
Games Editor