Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

[Kaznen]

Has anyone else played the demo? My computer doesn't have the juice to play it at full speed but I thought it was kinda cool.

[Lenlo]

I haven't played the demo, but there is a person on YouTube, Ciderhelm, who did a pretty good show of it. I'm looking forward to the game actually. Really hope it doesn't disappoint like Fable 3 did. I mention Fable 3 by the way because the two things it has most heavily been compared to have been Fable and Skyrim. Both of which I enjoyed immensely, though Fable 1 was still the best.

 

-Len

[Ashaman Kovan]

I'm downloading the demo right now. Gonna take about ten minutes. I get about 4 MB/s. And I thought Fable 3 was seriously horrible. Anti-climactic, the fighting was boring. Charge up spell, blow up bad guys, repeat. IMO.

Skyrim is pretty awesome. So many quests I don't know which ones I want to go for first lol.

[Arath Faringal]

I thought it played like a faster paced Dragon Age. The environment wasn't as restricted as Dragon Age, but not nearly as extensive as the Elder Scrolls games. The complete inability to jump (other than scripted events) is kind of annoying, especially after playing a lot of Skyrim.

[SinisterDeath]

This game completely fell of my radar when I heard about it months and monthsago.

But heres what reminded me of why I wanted to orginally follow it.

 

The story is by, R.A Salvatore, and the Art Design is by Todd McFarlane! (SPAWN!)

did I mention I've read almost every drizzt du'urden book!

[Silver]

Tried the demo. Style reminds me of Fable. Combat seems like a mix of Fable and the newest Dungeon Siege. Not bad overall.

[Ashaman Kovan]

Yeah, I didn't think there anything mind blowing about this demo. It has potential. Could provide quite a few hours a fun. But considering I've barely even scratched the surface on Skyrim and I haven't beat ME2 or Deus Ex or Arkham city and a few others, I don't plan on chomping at the bit for this game any time soon. Certainly not pre-ordering it for the meager little rewards they're offering.

[Lenlo]

I love R.A. Salvatore, as I also have read all the Drizzt books! Anyways, im looking forward to this.

[SinisterDeath]

the only thing stopping me from buying it, is the fact that I gotta pay $60 USD for it.

on the PC.

[Kaznen]

Yes of course we all love Drizzt.

 

The demo was a little sluggish on my computer meaning I'll need to get a console. An Xbox is cheaper but a PS3 is better.

 

 

I have time because I always bought pre-owned games and it will be a month or two before Reckoning will be able to be bought pre owned.

 

(BTW: Had a PS3 and sold it from money for a vacation.)

[Red2111]

after reading the insert about this game in this months issue of GI this game is on my list of "to buy when it gets under 20 bucks" along with Dark Souls

[reyler]

It's pretty good.

 

Dragon Age Origins was one of the first games I picked up when I got me 360. I knew nothing about it except that everyone apparently loved it, and it had a dragon celebrating its birthday or something. I ended up hating it with a passion, from the way you had to completely plan out your character progression down to a minute detail from the start of the game so that you didn't end up with a useless sack of crap for a character, to how blatantly ugly and aesthetically uninspired everything was. There's only so much brown I can stomach in a color palette. Even things like the way your character would waddle like they had a folding chair jammed up their butt when running with weapons out. By the same token, I hesitated when Skyrim came out, worried that it would have the same problems. I tried watching some gameplay videos on Youtube. Grey. Next video. Grey. Next video. More grey. Plus a little bit of brown.

 

So basically Gabe at Penny Arcade gave an early review that told me that Amalur absolutely does not have any of these problems, and he's right. The game is beautiful, the combat is fun, and the ability to completely rebuild your character if you're not satisfied with them (for a price) is a welcome blessing, as well as the ability to pick and choose what you want from each class, although considering the options available it's hard to make a legitimately bad character. It's also very easy - this is apparently a problem for some people. I was worried early on in my second game (on hard, for a cheevo) when I decided to go pure mage. And my character is still pretty squishy, but it doesn't matter, because nothing can get close enough to actually hit me at this point.

 

The story is pretty rote and predictable for the most part, with only a few characters, all of whom are barely sketched-in cliches. Also they've got like five voice actors working the entire game, most of whom are extremely recognizable to anyone who watches cartoons. Seriously like every third NPC is played by Jeff Bennett or Mauriche Lamarche. Also it's hard to take the evil king Gadflow seriously when Jim Cummings is basically using his Tigger voice to play him. It was kind of cool recognizing Adrienne Barbeau using her Catwoman voice to play Ciara Sydonus, though.

 

Some of the support skills (alchemy, blacksmithing, sagecrafting) are pretty much useless outside of the six or seven achievements that require them. I mean yes people can get some great items out of them, but you don't really need them for anything - you can get by just fine with stuff you find.

 

There are the occasional graphics glitches, and lip synch doesn't match up very well. Minor issues, really.

[Silver]

Blacksmithing and sagecrafting can get REALLY useful at later stages of the game. You'll be able to make full sets and weapons that greatly out powers anything you'd get from a drop or reward.

 

Also, after finishing the game I had outstanding and confusing questions still left. Had to read the lore on the Amalur website and even still not all my questions are answered.

[Ashaman Kovan]

I'm level 25 and my Meteor spell decimates basically any enemy I come into contact with. It's way too easy. Even with the difficulty up. Use your fate and a boss fight lasts about 7 seconds. Meh.

[reyler]

I wasn't saying that blacksmithing and sagecrafting aren't useful, I was saying they're largely unnecessary - by the time you can make really good stuff with them, you're already strong enough to get through anything the game has to throw at you by just sticking with dropped/found equipment.

 

Meteor is definitely a gamebreaker ability. I think the one fight that I used it in where it did not immediately kill everything was against the Maid of Windemere. Tempest is a little more balanced as far as crowd control, because it has a charge time. I usually fail to remember Reckoning mode is even there.

 

Your general random encounters aren't particularly challenging, but some of the boss fights can be a pain, especially on hard. I fought Gnarsh on hard with my mage, and had to be precise with my dodging, because one hit was enough to KO me. Final boss is still ridiculously pathetic on any mode.

 

I think I need to step away from this game for a week or so. I've put in a combined 130 hours or so over several characters. My mage is just hunting around for quests and dialogue options that lead into persuasion checks, because that's the only achievement I still have left. That's the one thing that I liked better in Dragon Age - persuasion checks and the like stacked through multiple playthroughs. Here, I have to get 50 in one. A cakewalk for things like lockpicking and dispelling, there's hundreds of opportunities for those, but persuasion opportunities are pretty rare. Also hunting for unique and set equipment - in 130 hours over two characters, I've only collected one complete armor set outside of the ones given to you by the faction quests.

 

I do wish random loot was a little less random. Nothing so annoying as breaking five lockpicks on a hard-level chest only to crack it open and find nothing but a Black Cohosh, the most commonly found reagent in the game.

 

I think it's funny that the faces available for creating male characters are all super-butch thug faces, but all the lady faces are pinups. I exploited this for playthrough three where I decided to create a pure warrior type that looked like a stereotypical blonde cheerleader, complete with hot pink lipstick.

[SinisterDeath]

Lol @ Reylers cheerleader. :P

 

I just can't seem to get into the game. to many other external factors. (raiding 2 nights a week on rift, Making a mod for Skyrim, work... Tryign to finish games I've not finished...)

[reyler]

A cheerleader who wears heavy plate armor and wields a BFS.

 

Yeah, it's not the sort of thing to try playing with divided attention. The combat is easily the best thing about it. In Dragon Age, combat was something you did with the desire to get it over with. I think I'm going to take a break for a while, play through Arkham City again or something - I've only played through that like five times and I can't get tired of it. Besides needing to put in more time on my pure mage, I'm only a few hours into my pure warrior, and I've just barely started a pure rogue who will make every morally bankrupt plot choice available and on whom I intend to actually try out the bow skills - that's a lot to keep a bitch busy.

[Arath Faringal]

I played a pure rogue type my first time through. Kind of ignored bow skills at first and stuck with faeblades. Big mistake. Bows are a bit over powered. Taking down a troll with one or two shots ... kinda fun. Requires good timing with multishot though. Point blank range with 5+ arrows does killer damage but if you wait a half second too long you take a big club to the face.