An assured, substantial fantasy brawler, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning began life as an MMO, and it's tempting to ascribe the game's failings to this mingled inception. The massive, 60-hour-plus world is composed of sloping, easily navigable but actually not very invigorating basins that squirrel off into fractionally more labyrinthine dungeons, seemingly built to accommodate parties, not lone rangers.
Penned by novelist R.A. Salvatore, the fiction speaks to multiplayer tropes in spicy ways: it's founded on endlessly cycling heroic tales (read: quests) lived and relived by the immortal Fae - tales that spin awry in response to the tyrannical antics of renegade Fae sect the Tuatha. An MMO world whose static narrative structures are shifting and decaying? It's a sharp conceit, one the script has fun with, though it's suffocated by charmless dialogue direction.
Your character is a lump of shrouded carrion, his or her race, physical traits and stat-skewing patron god fleshed via a gnome post-mortem. Magically restored to life (sans memory, of course), you're left to chart your Destiny as the Fateless One, an individual capable of reshaping fate - or, in other words, the lead character in a role-playing game.
Before you can wrangle with Destiny, you'll need to overcome the sheer awfulness of Amalur's tech. The scenery, models and effects are sub-Fable, yet the engine lumbers like a mage bowed under the weight of Dragon Bones. Load times push past 20 seconds, even for simple interiors, and while the game does an adequate job of streaming the outdoor environment, the tiniest additional burdens flatten it. Characters show up late for cutscenes, popping in halfway through a sentence, architecture wriggles and minor changes to the 2D map aren't always immediate. This deep into the console generation, it's rather a shock to encounter something that wouldn't look out of place on the original Xbox. Installing the game to hard drive is a must, as Big Huge Games has been at pains to point out.
There are swish combos, delayed attacks, juggles and slams to unlock per weapon, plus spells and abilities like the Flame Mark - Splinter Cell's execution-stacking with added firestorm - and a cunning vortex spell that yanks enemies together so they're more vulnerable to area effect moves. It's nowhere near as technical as a true arcade fighter, but few RPGs can rival this one's dance of death.
23 comments so far...
kronk10 on 7 Feb '12 said:
A good review and i was expecting an 8 out of ten so i was not far off shame about the techincal issues but the game should run good when installed! I will still be buying this because i have to many in depth games at the moment and would like a bit of a dumb'd down rpg, something i can let my rage out on and this seems to fit the bill nicely
60 hours is also a lot of game time and hopefully there will be DLC in the future (fingers crossed) i would have still liked this game to have become an xbox MMORPG like WOW but i feel that this game is going to be a poor seller
Carnage24 on 7 Feb '12 said:
Yes the tech failings are bad, but that's nothing a day 1 patch won't fix.
SidTheSloth on 7 Feb '12 said:
Yep, this has kind of scored along with my expectations too, never thought it'd trouble the 9's or 10's but it seems a decent and solid little rpg with issues a la divinity. I'll also be doing some thorough investigations on this, hopefully it sells well enough that EA throw a bit more money at it for a decent follow up title (not necessarily a sequel).
What i would give for someone to come and sew together the best aspects of all the rpgs out there, between them all they nail everything but not one does every bit right. For now skyrim gets more right than the rest, but what i'd give for it to have a bioware-esque depth to the story, fable-like world consequences/currency/changes, and from the little i've played of it KoA (maybe mixed with Dark Souls) type combat - would be bliss - or would it completely cock up the balance and ruin what is already a fantastic game?
I'll be getting this anyway, should fill a gap before ME3! (runs off to fight conscience for buying two EA games on release)
kronk10 on 7 Feb '12 said:
Yep it would be nice to have the perfect RPG but it just will not happen skyrim is the dogs danglies but its combat just is not good enough but it is still the pinnacle of all RPG games. Kingdoms looks fun and 60 hours is not to be scoffed at
but i am worried poor sales are gonna damage this game its DLC and future releases of this title etc
Bezza89 on 7 Feb '12 said:
They're doing an MMO as well by the way. Read that on CVG in interview with Ian... Frazer? Anywho, 7/10 is my demo score - it was interesting but not great, however with MGS 2, 3, 4, PW to do along with ME1, ME2, I can't see myself buying for a while.
Plamsa wing on 7 Feb '12 said:
By the demo i'd give it about a 7-8/10 score. While it was good and i'm still buying day one, I just feel that it's a deeper Fable without the charm. I can't say the combat is all that great either.
SidTheSloth on 7 Feb '12 said:
I read somewhere (probably CVG) that a character called 'Bezza89' is Snakes new love interest in MGS5, and that to unlock the paramour achievement you have to get a room together
As for KoA, i think they seem to have tried hard to make it accessible to all - especially by tempting people onto the demo with the ME stuff, but really, and despite what that pillock (what a great and underused word) keeps spouting, it's quite old school in it's base RPG stuff streamlining aside, so for the recently converted/rpg-lite lovers it may be a step too far so i can see why it's splitting opinion!
Bezza89 on 7 Feb '12 said:
Har Har! It's on!
kronk10 on 7 Feb '12 said:
the combat really is quite good i spent most of my demo time looking at the combat side of things and if you look at the move's list it shows you the move and what it does and you can string these moves togther and add things like flame and poisen damage to them! Stealth kills are also very fun and for everyone i did it was a different animation so there is lots of variety etc
SidTheSloth on 7 Feb '12 said:
You'd love it if it were true! It's when the conspiracy theories start and we realise that's the reason Raiden is so pissed off in Revengeance (or whatever made up word it's called nowadays)!
I don't get the hating on the combat in KoA, i've seen a few people slag the combat off without really saying why they don't like it or what makes it cack in their eyes. I'm happy to agree to disagree as i quite like it as does seemingly the majority but curious all the same...
Bezza89 on 7 Feb '12 said:
I didn't get the combat, you press X, you can also hold X. Oh. LT brings up a magic shield, and the archery was pointless. Pressing X was cool though, but I don't see why people mock skyrims combat, I like it - sure it's a different button but there's cool stuff, when blocking you can bash them, and when power attacking, holding RT you get a pretty cool move. Honestly, I see it as the same except you get cool animations in skyrim and some people can kill you in one hit. But KOA is third person so they make it look prettier even though you get the same result...
Plamsa wing on 7 Feb '12 said:
I'm not slaggin it off I just feel that for what it is I prefer the Fable 2 and 3 style combat. Once I get the retail copy perhaps it may change how I feel. It sort of reminds me of Dark Souls while I think it's brilliant and enjoy playing it even though I can't get past the Gargoyles on the roof since some tosser thought it a good idea to spawn another one as soon as the first hit's half health. I feel that if it wasn't for it's difficulty it would be generic at best.
kronk10 on 7 Feb '12 said:
I thought that moment in dark souls on the roof with the gargoyles was one of my 2011 gaming moments i laughed so hard when the second gargole came down laughed in utter horror! With KoA you have to look past the fable style combat and then see that you can if you want, be very tactile or you could just button mash till your red in the face
Shamanix on 8 Feb '12 said:
Def a day one purchase, loved the demo just seemed better that fable 3 to me, got loads of games to trade in so should be able to this cheap as chips!!!
reeceiscrisp on 8 Feb '12 said:
Im on the fence here:
I want to get this game because it looks awesome and reminds me of fable
BUT
I dont want to get it because something about it makes me think that i wont like it plus i have games like dark souls to complete (FU Gwyn)
so help me!
OXM ETboy on 8 Feb '12 said:
Get it if you like real-time combat, are willing to explore for the sake of exploring, enjoy customisation providing it isn't too clunky, don't mind technical hitches and don't want anything utterly alien in your fantasy worlds.
kronk10 on 8 Feb '12 said:
I have dark souls to complete but skyrim has torn me away from dark souls but i have not played skyrim in a few days as i was getting a bit miserable playing it! So i have started playing bastion to lighten my mood and that has worked. Get kingdoms as an inbetween skyrim/dark souls i like kingdoms because of the bright colours great animations etc it just looks and feels fun.
On a differnt note how big is KoA when installed to a hard drive? I have only 15gig left i still have my original 360 with 60 gig hard drive and before anyone asks i will eventually get a bigger hard drive
kronk10 on 8 Feb '12 said:
ticks all my boxes!
Metalratex on 9 Feb '12 said:
The short demo was enjoyable. I may buy this game in the future when the price goes down.
Clanger67 on 9 Feb '12 said:
It's out tomorrow i might get it but only because i have a fair bit of money saved on my nectar card.Although i might save that for if times get hard and i need food,lol.
ezeejay on 18 Feb '12 said:
I got this game 3 days ago, have played about 15 hours of it so far. So far very enjoyable game with good combat system.
Its also a bloody huge game, only covered a small area in top left of map with tons more to do = faction quests, tons of side quests, tasks etc. my only grumble is bad lip sync and inventory space limit. Aint really came across no major bugs, probally coz i installed it. If u like rpgs, buy it, u could do a lot worse than this.
desdicado on 27 Feb '12 said:
This is a pretty good review and accurately sums up my own experience. I love R.A. Salvatores books so had been waiting for the game with a lot of hope.
I played the demo, which I found to be pretty dull, then I played the real game which was slightly better but not much, the combat's well done, skill progression also but has been done the same way in countless games.
The quests are generic, repetitive and boring, the graphics look out of date, I don't like the boxed in feeling, I don't like being stuck to the floor (not even able to jump small ledges) Argh! So frustrating, anyway, I've done about 10 hours, I give up. I'm not going back to it. I'd give it 4/10 or 5/10.
Some of the 10/10 reviews I've seen are plain unbelievable! Like it's the first game the reviewers ever played.
Druidstorm on 5 May '12 said:
For me Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning is a beautiful game with a deep story-line. Been playing the game for 388H:48M:09S, so-far and completed nearly every quest and downloaded all content; "MORE PLEASE!" I have Skyrim, Oblivion, Dragon age 1 & 2, Arcania and many more in the RPG range which are excellent in their own right but Kingdoms of Amalur for me brings a fresh telling of an old tale. The two major things I hate about the game is the lack of true freedom of movement and the level cap at 40 otherwise good job "38 Studios, Big Huge Games and EA!" Druidstorm