History VideoGame / Sacrifice

At the beginning of each mission you are told to pick one of the five gods as your patron for that mission, and they will bless you with rewards. The game has a total of five different endings and 45 different levels for each god, inviting a lot of multiple playthroughs. Even still, each god will bless you with a new spell at the end of each one of their missions, with said spells being either BoringButPractical (healing, energy blasts, elemental spells) to insane feats of CrazyAwesome magical power (such as summomning entire whirlwinds and creating ''active volcanoes''.)

* {{Mana}}: The second resource besides souls.

* {{Mutants}}: ''Sacrifice'' has Mutants, which are available if you choose Persephone. In Misson 4 of the campaign they randomly turn up after you meet the misguided Jadugar, a cutscene later plus a little talk from Persephone and they join you against Jadugar.

* SquatsInAName: Many of the characters have names from mythology, but none of them seem to have any meaningful connection with the relevant myth.

** If you suddenly turned towards Stratos for Pyro's last mission, this is subverted. Pyro sends Buta to assist the assault on Charnel's domain, meaning that Sorcha gets to defend Pyro's ultimate altar for once. [[spoiler:[[YankTheDogsChain Only for Marduk to snuff her out immediately, and this in turn killed Buta.]]]]

** Earthflings are James' mainstay ranged unit, but have counterparts in the Fallen, who are Earthflings corrupted by Charnel, and the Flame Minions, which descend from Earthflings traded to Pyro for unknown reasons.

''Sacrifice'' is an RTS game for PC, developed by Creator/ShinyEntertainment and first released in 2000.

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At the beginning of each mission you are told to pick one of the five gods as your patron for that mission, and they will bless you with rewards. The game has a total of five different endings and 45 different levels for each god, inviting a lot of multiple playthroughs.

* DevilInPlainSight: In his introduction Statos says plainly that in a civilized world he would be the only god. Then when it becomes clear in the next mission that one of the gods is plotting against the others nobody even considers he might be involved. It turns out he was behind it all along.
** Not to mention he's portrayed by Creator/TimCurry, one of the most typecast villain actors ever.

* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: If you finish as one of the good guys, you can pick either to do Persephone's or James' last mission. [[spoiler:James survives either way, and Persephone apparently dies either way, making her the only god that doesn't survive in any ending. AndThereWasMuchRejoicing.]]

* VideogameCaringPotential: Several missions reward you for caring more than the mission parameters require you to. Most famously, the mission in which you're sent to slay a troublesome dragon rewards you really well for taking the time to find out why the dragon is behaving the way it is and coming up with a better solution.

** Once the war actually becomes reality, Persephone tries to avoid making the gods killing each other. Her attempts to make Charnel, Pyro and Stratos see reason go... Altogether less than well.

** Acheron, Charnel's champion, takes reduced magic from magic.

* OnlySaneMan: James has elements of this. While the other gods are busy trying to kill each other, especially after a [[SelfFulfillingProphecy prophecy]] warns that one of their number is plotting to [[KilledOffForReal kill the rest off for real]], only poor James wonders if they should give all the fighting a rest.

* ForWantOfANail: By playing through multiple playthroughs you soon get to see which missions which gods are capable of doing on their own, and which ones their own wizards will cock up because you didn't play a part, and how this begins affecting and twisting the overall story. Generally speaking, every god succeeds at their first three missions and the story progresses in the same way up to that point no matter which god(s) you serve, after that all bets are off.
** InSpiteOfANail: [[spoiler:Shakti and The Ragman]] will always be dead by the mid-game no matter what you do, as [[spoiler:Stratos' sneak attack on Elysium and James reconquering Karn]] will always succeed no matter the story up to that point. Finally, [[spoiler:Persephone will never survive the end of the game; either you kill her as Stratos or Charnel or she dies at Marduk's hand in the other campaigns. James will survive to deliver the victory speech in a Persephone campaign.]]

** InSpiteOfANail: [[spoiler:Shakti and The Ragman]] will always be dead by the mid-game no matter what you do, as [[spoiler:Stratos' sneak attack on Elysium and James reconquering Karn]] will always succeed no matter the story up to that point. Finally, [[spoiler:Persephone will never survive the end of the game, as she can't defend Elysium from Marduk while you're dealing with Stratos. James will deliver your victory speech instead.]]

%%* FragileSpeedster: Stratos' servants.

* MightyGlacier: James's yeomen; many of them resemble rocks and boulders, with legs, and are appropriately tough but are rather slow.The Jabberrocky and Rhinok are the slowest units in the game and they are James's strongest units

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: One of the possible endings of the [[spoiler:Stratos campaign: Eldred got fed up with Stratos' overall trickery even if he's successful and decided to leave on a journey. Stratos WAS disappointed, but since Eldred has helped him secure his supremacy, he told Eldred that he's always welcome to come back to the realm where he's the only God, should Eldred change his mind.]]