The Sacred Rings
Score: 70% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: The Adventure Company Developer: Streko-Graphics Inc. Media: CD/4 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: The Sacred Rings is a visually appealing game. This isn't hard to believe since the entire game is pre-rendered. The locations and rooms found throughout this game are filled with tons of minute detail and contain such a variety of styles that it is more pleasing to just look at than play. The Sacred Rings is also chock full of cinematics to transition you between rooms/locations as well as conversations that give you a really good feel for the people you are dealing with. The game's voice work isn't that bad either. The main character's in-game sound clips never really got too annoying and he had enough ways to say "You can't do that" to keep me from just turning the volume down. The background music of this adventure title was also nice. For the most part, the tunes were quiet and soothing and never distracted me from the problems ahead. The biggest problem I would have with the game's presentation would have to be the lip synching. Since the game has frequent cut scenes, it wasn't hard to notice how badly the character's lips matched what they were saying.
Gameplay: The Sacred Rings is the sequel to 2004 adventure title Aura, though there isn't really anything on the box that says that. You pretty much have to know the original game and recognize the names and situations from the box description. If you haven't played the first one, don't worry. There is an intro movie that runs through the plot and gets you caught up. Here is a brief run through of Aura's plot in case you didn't get to play the first game, or you just need a refresher. An evil ruler is seeking out several sacred rings and two artifacts known as Tetrahedrons. This king is hunting them down because they are supposed to grant the owner unlimited power and immortality. These artifacts are safely stowed away and maintained by an order called The Keepers. When The Keepers' land is ransacked, a young follower named Umang is given the treasures and told to keep them safe. After being hunted by the opposing force, he is transported to a strange new world. This is where the game starts off. The Sacred Rings hits the ground running with you having to figure out how to work a strange metal "house" that seems to have an engine room and runs on crystal batteries. It isn't long before the the evil king shows up and forces you to learn how to operate the moving house quicker than expected. This game will take you across several locations and let you explore the new world in which you find yourself. You will even go full circle and return to the Keeper's Tower, but now it is under the rule of your enemy and you have to get past all of your foes to try to set everything right again. The Sacred Rings is a good followup to the previous game. When I first got the game to review, I didn't realize that it was a sequel and when the initial movie ran its course, I couldn't help but feel it all sounded familiar. It took a little digging through my older adventure games, but I was eventually able to jog my memory and fill in the blanks.
Difficulty: The Sacred Rings starts off a little slow. It took me a while to get a handle on the game, but once I did, I found the puzzles and problems posed to me to be all around the same level. The game never really posed any truly difficult problems to me and the times that I found myself a little stuck just required a break before I got through them. There were a few instances where the clues that were supposed to lead me to the answers weren't complete and this made me a bit annoyed on more than one occasion. For instance, early on when you have to line up a series of objects, there are a few lines of text that, if you snooped around enough, let you know which objects needed to be lined up. Well, there are three lines of text, and four objects to line up. In another situation, you are given a combination to a safe, but again you are only given two of the three combinations. Thankfully, these holes in the clues were outweighed by the puzzles that were solvable by more than just trial and error. But every time I ran into one of these issues, it really stood out to me.
Game Mechanics: The Sacred Rings fits your standard point-and-click adventure MO to the tee. You are allowed complete control of the camera and control it with the mouse. As you hover over hot spots, the cursor will change to one of several icons that will let you interact with the environment. Right clicking brings up your inventory and selecting them lets you try to apply that object to hot spots in the world. The Sacred Rings doesn't use a combine mechanic, which is both good and bad. It is good, because it doesn't overly complicate the game, but it's bad because letting you combine inventory items can add interesting new puzzles and requires you to think on a different level. The long and short of it is, if you are an adventure gamer, then of course The Sacred Rings is right up your alley. It should provide a few hours of enjoyment to most fans of the genre, and while it isn't too difficult, it is still fun.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Minimum System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 1.2 GHz Pentium 3 or AMD Athlon Processor, 256 MB RAM, Direct X 8.0 compatible sound card, 16x CD-ROM, 3.5 GB Hard Drive space, 64 MB Accelerated DirectX 8.1 compatible video card   Test System: Alienware Aurora m9700 Laptop, Windows XP Professional, AMD Turion 64 Mobile 2.41 GHz, 2 GB Ram, Duel NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB Video Cards, DirectX 9.0c
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