Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

[Questionor]

So this sounds interesting. Just stumbled onto it. Though I'm sure there's lots more info out there on it.

http://www.ea.com/reckoning

Q. What is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning™?

A. Reckoning is an epic, open world role-playing game that gives fans their first experience with Kingdoms of Amalur™, a new universe imagined by R.A. Salvatore, brought to life by Todd McFarlane, and designed by Ken Rolston and his team at Big Huge Games.

R.A. Salvatore is the creator of the immortal Drizzt Do’Urden and author of The New York Times best-selling Forgotten Realms series. Todd McFarlane is a Grammy and Emmy-award winning artist, writer and toy designer best known for creating the fantasy series Spawn. Ken Rolston served as the lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion before joining Big Huge Games development studio, the Baltimore, MD-based wholly-owned subsidiary of 38 Studios, based in Providence, RI.

[doublethink]

Review by Gabe:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2012/01/27/amalur

Some additional info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalur

[mtiru]

I have a copy of the full game. The combat is awesome, very much like Fable. Unlike Fable, it lacks a little bit of charm in the writing, as well as lacking Fabele's annoying and ambitious social mechanics.

Storywise it's a pastiche of fantasy cliches. The quests are very much "go here and fetch this" and there are tons of them, but the combat makes it fun.

[Questionor]

If I wasn't engrossed in swtor, I'd buy this.

[cawshis]

I played the demo. It's pretty good.

I like lots of things about it:
1. Insane amount of customization...you essentially pick what kind of class you're going to play by the gear you wear. As you level up, you can invest points in talent trees that unlock multi class cards than you can then pick to open up more options. Like I said. Crazy.
2. Decent and easy "action" gameplay. Simple button pushes to deliver combos to crush your enemies. No weapon felt ineffective in the demo and you're encouraged to switch up depending on what you fight!
3. Nice graphics/art...more similar to WoW than Skyrim, but it's great art.
4. When you hit an enemy, numbers don't fly all around the screen showing you lolcrits. Life drains and things die. We don't need the numbers for every game, you know?

Things that are sadface annoying:
1. Poorly designed inventory/skill/quest screens that create a zillion button presses to get around and find things. Ruins the customize on the fly experience when you have to spend as much time selecting options as you spend actually fighting. Towards the end of the demo, I just said "fuck it" and killed everything with the same weapons. 40 minutes into the game and I was done experimenting...that's not a good sign.
2. The same ol' ?/! quest delivery system that's in every single game ever made now.
3. Same green/blue/white loot options for gear. Hooray. This has become the standard...it's useful, yes. But all it does is make me ignore the whites and yearn for the purple epix. Looting is joyless unless a green shows up.
4. OMFG. Why is your dialogue screen so busted and horrible looking???

Thing I didn't like at all and will cause me not to bother:
1. No voice acting for your character. This is stupid and makes me not want to play. Picking a dialogue option and only hearing the response destroys the entire game experience for me. I hated it in DA, so I won't like it here.

Of course, this is just my take. It's a FUN game and the combat is awesome...even starting out you feel like a badass. The sad things stack up enough for me that the enjoyment petered out about 20 minutes before the demo expired. And the lack of voice for my character was enough for me to say "Maybe I'll buy it once it's 19 bucks and has all the DLC included" which means I'll forget about it and never buy it.

[oldSalty]

Played Amalur for the Mass Effect 3 unlockables. It was alright, a good game to borrow from a friend.

[TanRu]

I am digging it. I've heard other games described as "like a single player MMO", and this really feels like it (especially since they are using the WoW art style).

Character customization is good and the skill trees are interesting. I'm sticking with pure DPS rogue so far.

Thumbs up on the combat system. It's very arcade-y, not realistic (ie you can be fighting with daggers, then instantly whip out your shield to block, etc) but it sure is fun.

[Questionor]

just tried the demo and was a bit disappointed. The story didn't draw me in and though the combat is fun and the class system looks cool, it was already a bit frustrating. I gotta keyboard F to loot and then click take all? Also in combat it seems I was having trouble with pushing multiple keys at the same time. Took me forever to realize I couldn't hit anything besides X to get into the fate mode thing. I need something now that I finished batman and swtor 1.2 hasn't dropped.

[TanRu]

I finished this yesterday. Man. It is huuuuuuuuge. I got to the point where I stopped doing sidequests because it was going to take forever to finish the game. You can keep playing after the main storyline though, so if I ever want to wrap anything else up I still can.

The only thing that disappointed me was that my character became too powerful after a while. No fights were challenging and I couldn't find equipment better than what I had.

Next time I will play a mage, that will probably be more of a challenge.

[Questionor]

I finished this yesterday. Man. It is huuuuuuuuge. I got to the point where I stopped doing sidequests because it was going to take forever to finish the game. You can keep playing after the main storyline though, so if I ever want to wrap anything else up I still can.

The only thing that disappointed me was that my character became too powerful after a while. No fights were challenging and I couldn't find equipment better than what I had.

Next time I will play a mage, that will probably be more of a challenge.

How was the main storyline? Did it get better later and draw you in? The demo only gets you as far as going to the 2nd fateweaver's house and finding him dead.