Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

[Valdis]

Based on Tenelen and Valth I decided to download and try the demo. It's similar to games like Skyrim or Dragon Age. I'm hoping it stays more focused on the main character without ever dragging you down with companions. Overall I like what I saw.

Pros:
Gameplay is solid and some of the few things I noticed I would expect to be polished prior to launch.

Story is apparently heavily influenced and written by RA Salvatore. What little of the story you get into seems good. I did notice after the demo ends and you get 45 mins to run around that there are side quests, I would only worry about Elder Scroll style bloat where you get so into the side quests that you become the single most powerful person in the land and say fuck the main plot its below me.

Graphics are good but are more stylized then realistic

Cons:
Gameplay: the controls in place if you use the keyboard and mouse are just inexcusably bad. They work and they get the job done but a game of that quality shouldn't have such poor control.
Some of the character development stuff isn't very well explained in advance of making your first level and talent choices. IE I hit level one and had to spend talent points and then 5-15 mins later I got introduced to the cards of fate which if I had know how that works would have helped me choose talents.

Graphics: While they are good they are kind of a mixed bag, the gnomes look very cartoony and my character looked far more realistic. It wasn't really a big deal but it would be like seeing a Rift character in WoW it just doesn't look right.

Overall I liked what I saw and curious if Ten or Valth can give any insight to some of the things I had issues with as I know they said the stuff is far more polished than what the demo shows.

[Valthonis]

Demo was done by a 3rd party who had a working copy that was 3 months old give or take.

Graphics look bad on PC because they start at the lowest possible settings.

KB/Mouse are terrible inputs, get a ps360 controller and play it that way.

[Valdis]

Yea I didn't have a problem with the graphics they just look odd because gnomes are cartoonish and the main character isn't but the humans I met later were more like the main character so maybe its just the gnomes... But yea I can't believe how oddly wrong the KB/mouse felt I think its the first time I've seen a console game ported to a PC where they just didn't seem to care how the PC users would work.

[Valdis]

Some praise from an actual video game critic.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115473-Kingdoms-of-Amalurs-Combat-The-Best-Of-Any-RPG

The only thing I disagree with is I never had issues getting stuck on terrain unless I was rolling into highly cluttered terrain, in which case what the fuck does he expect.

[Valdis]

The guys at Penny Arcade have now chimed in with some praise.
http://penny-arcade.com/2012/01/25

[Valdis]

A more in-depth review of the actual game from Gabe at Penny Arcade.

Once again I was able to beg an early copy of a game. This time I scored Kingdoms of Amalur. I’ve been playing it now for a few days and I am in love. I’m probably not supposed to talk about the game yet but I figured it would be much easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission as the old saying goes.

I’m not incredibly far in the game and I don’t want to spoil anything but I do want to give my impressions. Yesterday on Twitter I said I thought it was better than Skyrim and I want to tell you why that is.
I’ve mentioned before that I have a problem with open world games. When given all these options I tend to get paralyzed rather than excited. for some reason Amalur is different and I think I know the reasons why:
The combat in Skyrim is miserable. If games like Bayonetta and God of War are on one end of a spectrum, games like Skyrim are so far on the other end that they have fallen off the spectrum and actually can not even see the spectrum from where they are. It seems like if you want to play a massive open world RPG you have to give up a fun,energetic combat system. The thrill of discovering a cave full of vampires in Skyrim is diminished by the knowledge that once I get in there, fighting them is just going to be a chore.

Amalur is the polar opposite. The combat system in Amalur is fast paced and incredibly deep. I’d say the way this game handles class choice is one of my favorite things about the title. There are three skill trees, might, finesse, and sorcery. As you level up you earn talent points and can invest them into any branch you like. So far pretty standard stuff. The twist is that throwing points into these trees will slowly unlock hybrid classes. For example, I started off in sorcery and chose a pretty standard wizard type class. I got a bonus to my mana pool and that sort of thing. Then I started putting points into finesse and I unlocked a couple of hybrid classes. Now I’m a spell casting rogue with magic blades! I get a bonus to blade weapons and a boost to magic damage. There are tons of these hybrid classes encompassing all the various combinations of talent points and trees. So as you play the game and shuffle your points around you can also be cycling through different class choices each with their own bonuses and special powers.

Having cool powers and a great class wouldn’t matter if the combat itself sucked though. thankfully Amalur delivers a visceral, smooth, flashy combat experience that I’d put up alongside games like Darksiders and Devil May Cry. I think that in Skyrim, story, exploration and discovery are the things that are supposed to keep you playing. Amalur has all that stuff too but it doesn’t sacrifice the game play to deliver it. This combat would feel right at home in an action game but they have combined it with solid writing and a massive open world.
The other big thing that keeps me in Amalur is the art. Skyrim is nice looking in its own way but I found the gray and brown to be incredibly boring after a while. The world felt procedurally generated to me rather than built by a designer. Obviously Amalur’s style isn’t for everyone. It has been compared to WoW and Fable which, honestly I think is fair. If that sort of style doesn’t turn your crank then Amalur isn’t for you. personally I lost interest in exploring Skyrim and Dragon Age 2 because I never saw anything that looked very interesting. A big part of the reason I play games is for “new art”. That is the thing more often than not that keeps me progressing. What will the next level or zone look like? Amalur in my opinion is absolutely beautiful. This world has been thoughtfully and artfully constructed. It is vibrant and unique in a way that makes me hungry to explore over the next hill.

In the end I just want to make sure this game doesn’t slip past your radar. I think it would be easy to look at it and think it’s a pretty standard RPG. In reality Amalur is a unique experience full of great ideas. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

-Gabe out

[Valdis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C69YC_Sd6Zc

[Andaas]

Planning on buying this, but I'm not sure whether to get this for PS3 or PC.

[Valdis]

Yea, I'm a bit torn on that too... I can't imagine a significant enough difference between the two and since the controller is the way to play...

[Valthonis]

One of the dev's has said this is his first game he is going to play on his pc with a controller.

I went with pc in case I missed being able to mod it like skyrim.

[Andaas]

Follow-up question: Will this game have any online/co-op play? (Assuming not, but if yes, that would impact my decision as I would buy it on the same platform as friends).

[Valthonis]

Afaik it is single player, like skyrim.

[Forty]

IMHO the game is good enough now that it will be made into an mmo, which is what EA wants. So I'm going with the PC, thinking that the PC will be more similar to the mmo once it comes out. But that's just guessing at this point, it may be more like the PS3.

EA wants the development team to prove they can make a successful game and to create a following prior to release of the mmo...Warcraft style.

[Andaas]

The MMO has been in development since the beginning, and will not be attached to EA at all. It will be self-published by 38 Studios, who own the IP rights to the Amalur world/lore and are just working with EA as a (funded) publishing partner on the single player game to introduce the lore as well as to (hopefully) generate additional buzz for the upcoming MMO.

[Forty]

The MMO has been in development since the beginning, and will not be attached to EA at all. It will be self-published by 38 Studios, who own the IP rights to the Amalur world/lore and are just working with EA as a (funded) publishing partner on the single player game to introduce the lore as well as to (hopefully) generate additional buzz for the upcoming MMO.

I stand corrected....someone lied to me!

[Phaera]

Been playing it some today, off and on when I get a little free time. On the PC, mind you. It's pretty fun overall, but I dislike the lack of customization, and the camera angles bother me to the point if I stare at it long enough, I start to get a headache. It reminds me a little of a mix of Fable and DA:O. Not a bad combo, mind you.

[Andaas]

I got the PS3 version, enjoying it so far, just not enough time to play yet between working and such.

[Lonskils]

And yet you are owning every high score in the arcade!!!

[Phaera]

Well he did say 'working'. :rugby: