kingdoms of amalur: reckoning

[icyunv]

put an hour in, pretty good so far. no complaints

[UltimateBMW]

I thought the camera was very finicky in the demo.

Rest of the game seemed o.k.

[HotSauce]

This game will be awesome. If Dark Souls, Skyrim, and Torchlight had a baby, it would be Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

[Syndicategt]

Originally Posted by HotSauce

This game will be awesome. If Dark Souls, Skyrim, and Torchlight had a baby, it would be Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Might have to check this one out....I loved all 3 of those games.

[Syndicategt]

OMG thank you so much for mentioning this game. This is the greatest game ever!!! I'm suprised it's not making any huge waves as it's still mostly unknown. I played it all weekend, roughly level 20 now. So take my small review for what it's worth.

*Xbox review

Pros:
- Beautiful colorful graphics, like it or hate it, the atmosphere is beautiful. It's a fantasy RPG, and the graphics are cartoon like "aka WoW" but they are very detailed.
- Action. Think of God of War combat inside of an RPG. It's fast and heavy hitting.
- Customizability. There are 3 main skill trees; Might (warrior), Finess (rogue), Magic (mage). Each level you get 3 skill points to go in whatever class you wish. Then you get to choose a skillset point (smithing, alchemy, gem crafting, etc.), and finaly you get 1 Destiny point. The Destinies can be combined (Might/Finess) and add attributes like +crit %, mele damage %, etc. So basically, you play the game how you want it to be played, which is the only similarity to Skyrim
- Tons of quests! You have side quests around town and secondary guild quests similar to Skyrim.
- Fate mode. You can slow down time and perform finishing moves.
- Loot!!! Think of Diablo or WoW. You have rare, unique, set and craftable items. There are weapons galore, never seen such variety. Longsword, greatsword, hammer, daggers, faeblades, ...... it keeps going. You can't dual yeild, that's only for daggers/faeblades.
-Mostly all NPC's have voice over.
- You can re-spec and change your appearance at anytime during the game (if you own the house in Webwood).

Cons:
- Standard go here get this or kill this quests...about the only thing holding this one back.
- Camera angles can be fustrating at times.
- Nothing new in terms of RPG's....but this is not a bad thing.
- Dual yeiling any type of melee weapon would be nice.

Like said before. Nothing new here, this game takes aspects from Diablo, WoW, GoW, Skyrim and turns it into a masterpiece. Sometimes nothing new turns out to be a good thing. If you like any of the games listed above, and who doesn't, you will want to own KoA:R. With so much customization of characters, I think there will be tons of replay value, however, lets see if the quests get old like Skyrim did.

9.5/10 - in my first 20 levels.

[UltimateBMW]

Originally Posted by Syndicategt

OMG thank you so much for mentioning this game. This is the greatest game ever!!! I'm suprised it's not making any huge waves as it's still mostly unknown. I played it all weekend, roughly level 20 now. So take my small review for what it's worth.

Pros:
- Beautiful colorful graphics, like it or hate it, the atmosphere is beautiful. It's a fantasy RPG, and the graphics are cartoon like "aka WoW" but they are very detailed.
- Action. Think of God of War combat inside of an RPG. It's fast and heavy hitting.
- Customizability. There are 3 main skill trees; Might (warrior), Finess (rogue), Magic (mage). Each level you get 3 skill points to go in whatever class you wish. Then you get to choose a skillset point (smithing, alchemy, gem crafting, etc.), and finaly you get 1 Destiny point. The Destinies can be combined (Might/Finess) and add attributes like +crit %, mele damage %, etc. So basically, you play the game how you want it to be played, which is the only similarity to Skyrim
- Tons of quests! You have side quests around town and secondary guild quests similar to Skyrim.
- Fate mode. You can slow down time and perform finishing moves.
- Loot!!! Think of Diablo or WoW. You have rare, unique, set and craftable items. There are weapons galore, never seen such variety. Longsword, greatsword, hammer, daggers, faeblades, ...... it keeps going. You can't dual yeild, that's only for daggers/faeblades.
-Mostly all NPC's have voice over.
- You can re-spec and change your appearance at anytime during the game (if you own the house in Webwood).

Cons:
- Standard go here get this or kill this quests...about the only thing holding this one back.
- Nothing new in terms of RPG's....but this is not a bad thing.
- Dual yeiling any type of melee weapon would be nice.

Like said before. Nothing new here, this game takes aspects from Diablo, WoW, GoW, Skyrim and turns it into a masterpiece. Sometimes nothing new turns out to be a good thing. If you like any of the games listed above, and who doesn't, you will want to own KoA:R. With so much customization of characters, I think there will be tons of replay value, however, lets see if the quests get old like Skyrim did.

9.5/10 - in my first 20 levels.

Your review is missing an important contextual clue. What system are you playing it on?

I play it on PC, and at the moment I would give this game a 3/10. It is clearly a console port, and it doesn't do a lot to hide it. This means it basically plays poorly on the PC. The camera is too close to the character, which means my character is 1/3 of my screen on a 24" monitor, and the camera control is clunky at best. The game's best selling point, it's combat system, is interesting however the other issues overshadow it.

I also found the choices in each skill tree to be more than underwhelming. You don't get many unique attack abilities, mostly passive or combo modifiers. At that point, it would have almost been better to just assign a experience system onto each weapon type and let you progressively get more proficient at each weapon as you used them. This would organically take out the feeling of foresight that you feel you must have when you allocate points into a specific weapon type, seemingly looking yourself in for the foreseeable future. It would also avoid the instant gratification symptoms when you get a super new weapon and then have nothing in your setup that can support it, thusly ruining the whole experience of getting a super-cool new item.

If they cleaned up the PC version or If I played the console version, I may agree with your scoring. However, I still think the camera is too close in even for a console game.

[Syndicategt]

Sorry, yea I'm on the XBbox. Sorry to hear about the camera issues, the consol has some minor bugs, which I'll edit. Suck to have all games now becoming consol ports to the PC, should be the other way around.

I do agree about the weapon idea, however, you would be stuck with that weapon thoughout the game. I've found a lot of versatility in the might tree with skills that combine well with my weapons. Another thing I would add is to make requirements on armor such as str/agi/int. I play a warrior type class, however, I don't want to wear heavy armor. I would rather rely on finess type armor with + crit% as I see myself more of a damage base class versus tank role. I've just started crafting, and found out it's easy to make heavy armor with +crit%, but it would be nice to have the option to wear finess set armor without investing 14 skills into finess.

Right now I'm 46 Might / 11 Magic (Chakram secondary weapon owns combined with a Greatsword)

[UltimateBMW]

Originally Posted by Syndicategt

Sorry, yea I'm on the XBbox. Sorry to hear about the camera issues, the consol has some minor bugs, which I'll edit. Suck to have all games now becoming consol ports to the PC, should be the other way around.

I do agree about the weapon idea, however, you would be stuck with that weapon thoughout the game. I've found a lot of versatility in the might tree with skills that combine well with my weapons. Another thing I would add is to make requirements on armor such as str/agi/int. I play a warrior type class, however, I don't want to wear heavy armor. I would rather rely on finess type armor with + crit% as I see myself more of a damage base class versus tank role. I've just started crafting, and found out it's easy to make heavy armor with +crit%, but it would be nice to have the option to wear finess set armor without investing 14 skills into finess.

Right now I'm 46 Might / 11 Magic (Chakram secondary weapon owns combined with a Greatsword)

It's a moot point, but a clarification on the weapon xp idea. It would be xp tables for each and every weapon, and it wouldn't limit you. It would just be, if you equiped daggers, had lvl 5 dagger xp, then did a 3pt combo it would execute. But if you then looted a legendary greatsword, had lvl 1 greatswords, then attempted the same 3pt combo it would only do the basic attack 3 times and the combo wouldn't execute. Basically, how it is in real life. You learn and practice with 1 weapon, and have to do it over again later if you pick up something else.

I agree with your thought on the armor types and requirements.

[Syndicategt]

^ Ah I see what you are saying. Similar to Forza 4.....get your car level up to 5 and upgrades are disconted/free etc. We should email or post on their forums with new ideas

[Syndicategt]

1 month update:

I'm stilling very much enjoying KoA:R. There will be a huge DLC coming out on March 20th, I cannot wait for that. Just a few things about the game that I hope will get fixed with the update:
- It's a very VERY easy game even on the most difficult setting, maybe because I'm a Battlemage with fully upgraded smithing/sagecrafting. Nothing, I mean nothing can stop me when wearing full crafted prismatic armor / weapons with %crit, % increased crit damage, health regen. I might play though again as a Archer type to see if it makes it harder.
- Improve the skill tree abilites. It's fun to build your character and respec, however, the skill tree does little to enchance your character. (I'm not talking about a mage character) Most of the might and finess tree are just small things to add to your abilities. Maybe it's because the game is so easy, the skill tree feels someone lackluster.
- Smithing needs to be redone. Maxing out this ability does nothing in the end other than the "mastercraft" armor you create......just to rename later. I'd like to see it give a big increase in salvaging "master" materiels.

All in all, one month later this is still a very enjoyable game. I'm looking forward to beginning a new character and playing though the content again before March 20th. Glad to see an update so soon.....unlike Skyrim

[icyunv]

^ any more info on the DLC