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General: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review

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Comments

  • fenistilfenistil Member Posts: 3,005

    If you looking for CRPG this is wrong adress.

     

    This is action combat game with some basic (quests like in WoW / Lotro / Rift ,etc) rpg elements.

     

    First 10 or so levels is fun ,but after this first 10 or so levels few things start to "happen" / be obvious / shortcomings start to rear it's ugly head:

    - game starts to be TOO EASY. At first it is demanding ,but game showers you with so much gold and xp that you start to be progressively easier and easier.  Small variety in mobs also take it's tool - you logically start to learn how they 'act' in combat. + mobs does NOT even speed up / gather new kind of attacks ,etc as time pass ,while player obviously get more accustomed to combat.   <-- All of this combined = faceroll difficulty at level around ~ 20 even on hard game difficulty and preety much kill desire to continue playing

     

    - Quests while there is alot of them they VERY quickly start to be repetetive + they are short mmorpg style - go kill 10 enemies, go kill named enemy , go and bring a thing, etc  - totally lack of creativeness + lack of taking advantage of fact that this is SINGLE PLAYER GAME and it is way easier to implement unique , interesting things than in mmo.

     

    - lack of real dialogues - think dialogues in DA2 were simple and lacked options? Think again - KoA dialogues are close to non-existant.  Most of what you can do interacting with NPC is to choose certain topic (every talkable NPC have 2-5 of those topics avabile) and then he will tell you few words / sentences about it.  ZERO interaction.

    Ok there are dialogues sometimes. When they are they usually have 2 options, very rarely 3 , sometimes 1. Usually two though which basically end up as - Yes (I will help)  or NO (which half of times you cannot really refuse so it end up as Yes anyway)  *facepalm*

    God where are REAL rich dialogues like in Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout 1 & 2, Arcanum or Planetside Torment  these days?!

     

    - Generic world , lore and main story plot.  Graphics style is ofc like refubrished cartoony WoW style (I am only one who is feed up with all that cartooness in half of games nowadays).  Gnomes are of course good , smart , industrious - engineer like folks that look like 1:1 copy from Warcraft universe *sigh*  - well all people I know said this game look like single player WoW.  I agree. 

     

    -  Horrible UI (for PC game clearly feel like console port ), Camera Issues both at positioning and it is just too CLOSE to character,  

    - MINOR SPOLER One of main bosses fight is idiotically LAUGHABLE - 0 level of difficulty and it's design is like on early 90 pegasus systems

    ----------------------

     

    So game is AT BEST average.

     

    Even if you can cope with game design , target , cheesy and generic plot & graphics - god mode you get at mid game ruin fun and kill any willingness to keep playing.

     

     

    Good things? :

    - good permormance (but well console port)

    - lack of gamebreaking bugs



     

  • SythionSythion Member Posts: 422

    Originally posted by opposedcrow

    While I'll admit KoA: Reckoning isn't without its flaws, I think some of the complaints being leveled against it are a bit unfair.

    And secondly, Reckoning has a lot of features that even Skyrim couldn't compete with: crafting that's as easy to learn as it is fun to use, a vibrant world that actually has landscapes besides frozen mountains and bleak fields, a character-progression system that doesn't shoehorn you into a specific role and allows for as many respecs as you want, and a newbie-friendly gear-scaling system that doesn't require hundreds of hours in order to get the best armor and weapons.

    That being said, even I didn't care for the wonky camera shifts, especially in the middle of combat, and some of the exploration mechanics like only being able to jump off of specific "jump points" and diving for items in water both felt like they were ripped straight out of Fable.

    But even with those small flaws Reckoning is still a fun game and a nice change of pace if (like me) you're a little burned out on Skyrim. Plus it should be noted that the game's first DLC expansion is slated for release on March 20th and it looks like it's gonna add a whole bunch of new content to explore and conquor.




     

     

    1) It's great gear and crafting system you commend break the game by level 20. It is no longer playable as a game after that point.

    2) All the respeccing and combat coolness in the world don't matter if nothing can hurt you. It also is not broad enough to make all your choices matter: no matter what path(s) you choose you will inevitably pick abilities that you don't care for and will not utilize.

    3) Your "complaints" are minor annoyances and do not address the fundamental issues of the game, meaning somehow your build is so horribly that the game is actually playable for you, or that you are blinded by a world that you enjoy (even though the generic world is one of the most common complaints).

    4) Who the bleep wants more worthless, boring crap to do in a game bloated with fecal quests?

     

    To be fair, Skyrim shared some of these issues, and it is why I stopped playing it. In Skyrim's case I fell into a hedge case build that may not have been anticipated by the designers (dagger + invisibility + 30x stealth damage = auto kill everything in the game). In KoA's case, it's just unforgivably bad statistical design.

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  • waveslayerwaveslayer Member UncommonPosts: 507

    I am enjoying KoA, I personally like the art style. Ya, have to agree the game is a bit  to easy, as I have only died a few times on hard mode.

    All in all my rating for KoA would be an 8.5 out of 10, and as much as I like Skyrim, KoAs brighter take on things is a nice change of pace.

    Godz of War I call Thee

  • red_cruiserred_cruiser Member UncommonPosts: 486

    Good game overall.  I found it too repetitive. I didn't find the character advancement options to be that interesting.  It felt more like an MMORPG than an epic single player game.  Occasionally, the story was interesting... a lot of the time it wasn't.  The game world is somewhat interesting, though there is still quite a lot left to see.  The races don't feel that distinct from each other though. 

  • KhaerosKhaeros Member Posts: 452

    Originally posted by fenistil

    If you looking for CRPG this is wrong adress.

     

    Why would you be looking for a CRPG anyway?  The only good one is Planescape: Torment.  Maybe Bloodlines if your standards are a bit lower than mine.

  • mf16mf16 Member UncommonPosts: 65







    Originally posted by demonhide




















    Originally posted by eyeswideopen




    [Mod edit]



    +1 for me couldn't have said it better maybe mmo players are becoming "WoW clones" clones themselves? Or just still so addicted to it they see every game has WoW except worse O.o...hmm 




    I hated WoW from launch before it becaame "cool" to but love this game so what am i? judging each game based on their own merits? not rating single player vs mmo games? Maybe both..




    Game has it flaws i like it alot tho its more of a long hard crappy day give me something to play that wont have me breaking my controller type of game. I personally like it find it fun and relaxing and i have more then 70 hourse of gameplay and maybe 60% done maybe the review rush a bit like it was an mmo? or did it to complete the review like they hinted? either way i take my time enjoy the story telling and little quests even if its fedex or kill 10 or excort blank save blank...but then again what quests aren't those? maybe if you have a problem with it you just dont like games or RPGs at least anymore. Stop listen to why your doing it actually TRY to immerse yourself and you'll have alot more fun then right click skip skip skip sprint to glowy come back i thing gamers are becoming their own worse enemie. I crafted i toy'd with alot i found the depth needed its not the most innovative game but it does what its suppose to right for fun. 




     




    Summary like the game/hate it but if your just becoming a jaded gamer maybe a break is instored? I took one for a couple years and im having fun again since returning. 

    Game could use more depth more control over changes in the world that is my biggest flaw I'd say but its still in comparing it to other games it is much better. Oh and TOO easy? yea but so was skyrim, ooo dragon swing swing swing dead...wait dead no shout, no dodging? Thank god for mods tho too bad for console gamers tho.





    EDIT: I loved skyrim too btw not knocking on it and yes they are both rpg but they both are for different gamers IMO as in the review. Btw I got carried away good fair review i believe alth oi feel the reviewer rushed a bit through the game and didn't spend enough time talking about crafting such as alchemy you can experiment to discover recipes or buy them, weapon crefting had components and let you name your own crafted weapon/armor, sage crafting let you make gems to socket or add to wep/armor crafted recipies so you could craft any armor or weapon talored to your play style and thats alot more depth then almost most of the games that come out and i enjoyed it bbut the reviewer was right that it can be OP but i liked it anyhow and i personaly gimped myself in crafting for more a challenge. What this game did right was it alowed alot of customization in how you played problem is gamers ruin games for themselves when they are giving freedoms then blame developers for putting it in the game then blame them when they make a linear game. So in short maybe gamers are the problem? Either way decent game7-8/10 is a fair rate higher or too much lower is prob a mosre biased opinion. 






    BTW no jump? yeap but alot of great games have no jumpp DA:O for instance so not sure why this game its the biggest deal, and  ME2 had way more "stuck" bugs even with jump. All in all good polished easy going game that took their own spin on certain things but prob getting bad rap from people who never played it and through some closed minded opinions based on WHAT they HEARD. I will replay it i believe it has good replay value but to me "replay value" is alot more opinion oriented. 



  • ferndipferndip Member UncommonPosts: 67

    Skyrim & KOA are both great & fun games although it's my opinion that Bethesda really really sucks at melee combat (looking at you oblivion series & fallout3) ,

    KOA at least tries too have fun melee combat

     

    also Bethesda only ever uses 1 color for every game (usually grey). you may call that gritty realism, I call it ugly and un-inspiring.

  • SolitaryknitSolitaryknit Member UncommonPosts: 6

    I'll say my rant here since there is now an actual review of the game. Though, lucky as it seems, I played it on the Xbox 360. I found the FOV was tricky but not as bad as some found it while playing the PC version. Dynamically it has some originality and those that tried to relate any of it's innate RPG to Skyrim is somewhat out of there mind, in my opinion, because like the reviewer it's only commanlity is in it's genre. However, I feel completely different in reguards to things to do:

    1) It seems certain sections of the game were empty. Literally no NPCs. Such as while in Alabastra, specifically the shadow pass and onward and if it was meant to be that way.. I must've missed that part.

    2) These plethora of quests seemed to dwindle and then become extinct as you drew closer to the end of the main story.

    3) They had so much promise in regards to other features, such as Seawitch.  I could go on, but I will say I felt more accomplished doing that then finishing the main storyline.

     

    and those are only 3 of some of the problems I had with this game. I admit, I am picky maybe even a little shallow when it comes to games (perhaps I just expect higher?). Like most games this isn't anything special.

     

    I want to know who beta tested their game. There was stuff missing. If only developers stopped hiring experienced beta testers and asked actual players from the forums... but, I won't hold my breathe.

     

    -S

     

  • plescureplescure Member UncommonPosts: 397

    All KoA made me want to do was play Skyrim. so i dd. :)

    If someone is talking in general chat in a language you dont understand, chances are they're not talking to you. So chill out and stop bitching about it!

  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722

    @Ferndip

    SKyrim combat doesnt really sux. The game is realistic. KOA is not realistic so it has a brutal visceral god of war combat in it. Compare Skyrim combat with real life combat. You would grab a baseball bat and hit somebody just as you would swing a 2 handed great sword  in Skyrim. Thats how i see it. Besides, If both Skyrim and KOA had the same combat style, what woud make me play both when its all about the combat and both would have the same things? not thank you. Both have different combat styles and both are great. One more realistic and the other more fantasy yet brutal.

    Of course SKyrim combat needs a bit of tweak at least when the weapon impacts the body it doesnt feel its actually hitting something. But that can be easily fixed if Bethesda is up for it.

    im having fun in both games because the differences are bigger than similarities





  • thexratedthexrated Member UncommonPosts: 1,368

    KoA, not bad game, but uninstalled it pretty fast. In single player RPGs, I am mainly looking for a good story, this was too diabloesque for me with fantasy story that I could care less about.

    "The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."

  • LeFantomeLeFantome Member RarePosts: 691

    MMOrpg.com.

    This game is NOT a MMO.  Seriously..

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  • HoskTheCubHoskTheCub Member Posts: 27

    I like the game. It appeals to me more than Skyrim.

     

    Hopefully it turns into a great MMORPG.

     

    And to all people commenting that this is not a MMO... No it is not... It's a prequel to a MMO... Now give it a rest and go read something about MMO:s instead of trolling a good article..

  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722

    Originally posted by black777

    MMOrpg.com.

    This game is NOT a MMO.  Seriously..

    mmo + rpg = mmorpg

    so mmorpg.com can cover any mmo, any rpg, and mmorpg put together.

    i dont see the problem here.

    edit: dont forget this rpg is the root / foundation of its mmorpg counterpart in development.





  • gilgamesh42gilgamesh42 Member Posts: 300

    let me guess they dident pay you guys for a good review? lol just kidding oh wait no im not

     

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  • l0rdg4m3rl0rdg4m3r Member Posts: 5

    uninteresting story, tired old wow-like look,fable-like combat,low camera angle( bothered me atleast),inventory sucked,difficulty too easy... thats what i came out with 20h of gameplay with my review, and kinda some other reviewers... 7.5/10 for a non innovative game...thats too big of a score... I know i just started reviewing games but seriusly imo all new "big releases" have been dissapointing, indie games have much greater value.... also how can u compare skyrim to this?also while skyrim has been dissapointing anyone remembers when morrowind came out with indie budget and gazzilions of bugs but it was like imo the best tes series? kinda makes my point with indie games being better than big shots...oh btw 60$ totaly not worth the game if you are gonna play it once and diss it into the oven...hell i didnt even finish the game which makes me wonder why i would buy it in first place, but hey i have a dream that every new game brings something new to genre, but then again that dream made a fool out of me more than once...

  • Nonsensei436Nonsensei436 Member Posts: 14

    The game is awful to me. After the intro sequence it quickly degrades into WoW style quest grinding. If i wanted to do WoW style quest grinding i would play WoW. Single player RPG's need a lot of story, and KOA doesn't deliver on that. Endless short and pointless side quests make the story seem really spaced out.

    Another complaint is the lack of choice making. In a given skill tree you are basically meant to get almost everything. There is no "give this up to get that" going on. Its depressingly linear progression and reminds me a lot of the current state of WoW talent trees.

    The gameplay features make me think of this game like single player WoW.

  • HurricanePipHurricanePip Member Posts: 167

    Originally posted by jdnewell

    I liked KOA well enuff. I thought the game was way way too easy tho. I started out on hardest setting and very few times felt a challenge.

    Overall worth a play through for sure. But I wont be playing it again either.




     

    Good way to put it.  I'm actually playing it on the 360 and the only difficulty is from the poor camera.  I spend more time in boss fights trying to position the camera correctly than actually fighting the boss and this is on "hard". 

    I don't understand what the problem is considering that games with similar types of combat like Assassin's Creed and Arkham City have generally good cameras.

    All in all, the game is average, but fun.  I thought the first 10 hours were exciting.  After that, I started just following quest markers and ignoring side quests.  I cleared the first major zone of all the side quests andt then got bored as I moved west.  I'm about 20 hours in and will play the game for the achievements, but the game gets pretty old after a while ...

    7.5 is a good score.  The game is fun to start, but started to wear on me after a while.  I'd dock the game 1-2 points just for the poor camera that people have been complaining about on the official forums for months too.

    If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.

  • RyowulfRyowulf Member UncommonPosts: 664

    While I liked the combat better in KOA, it doesn't hold a candle to the complexity and depth or Skyrim. Skyrim feels like a 'real' world to me. Koa was cute and fun for the first half, but felt rushed towards the end. The final boss battle was just awful as well.

    Gem crafting is okay, if bland. But blacksmithing is broken. Its a mess. You can, buy or loot much better gear than you can make. You can get gear with gem slots as well so as long as you build up gem crafting you can make just the type of armor you want.

    Blacksmithing is all about flawless components, which are randomly salvaged or dropped at end game.

    Why are most of the skills nearly useless with Detect Hidden being better to have than all of them combined?

    The hardness of the game is a joke, it suffers the same problem as Skyrim. The Might warrior has the best aoe spell in the game. The sorcery class isn't that good. Its spell choices are limited and they are crap except for a few.

    At lower price its worth playing around with for the combat, but at 60 its to much when you can buy games like Skyrim, Mass-effect 3 or go buy witcher 2 at a discount. 

  • DrealgrinDrealgrin Member UncommonPosts: 156

    lmfao @ "easy-on-the-eye" graphics. Seriously? What you REALLY mean is "Graphics that were cutting edge 10 years ago"

  • LeodiousLeodious Member UncommonPosts: 773


    Originally posted by eyeswideopen
    Oh, and by the way. Don't complain that the game was "unfairly" compared to Skyrim, when it was Schilling's own marketing that presented the game as direct Elder Scrolls competition.They thought their game was Skyrim beating material. It's not. Skyrim has more entertainment value in its bugs alone than KOAR has in it's whole watered down version of  WoW.

    I did not know that. I have been thinking people were unfair with that. It really doesn't hold a candle to Skyrim when put up as direct competition. It has fun enough combat, but it is very repetitive and the world really falls flat.

    I was also especially disappointed in the writing and the world. It felt dull and fell flat.
    It was an okay game. It wasn't awful, but it didn't hold my attention past the first little bit. And the controls were awful, and the remapping was just insanely bad.

    I think the real problem is that it was marketed as a game-changing, genre-expanding masterpiece, and in reality was an okay, below-average game.

    "There are two great powers, and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."

    — John Parry, to his son Will; "The Subtle Knife," by Phillip Pullman

  • greyed-outgreyed-out Member Posts: 99

    The game has a litanny of very deep flaws, to the point of outright broken.  It also does some things very well, IMO.  I won't bore you all with my pro/con list.

    My biggest concern, honestly, is this:

    Will BHG/38Studios/Curt et al acknowledge the flaws in this game?  Or will they dismiss them and not really take the criticism?  The future of the franchise will probably rest in this.  It doesn't even have to be an ego or malicious thing. Its very possible that BHG is simply too close / invested to the game to really understand and accept how poor some of its design decisions were.

    I read where Curt truly, honestly believed that this game was a 9.5 and going to be a top contender for game-of-the-year.  I understand and appreciate his enthusiasm for the game and his studio, but this is an example of being too close to things to objectively analyze the situation.

    Another area which makes me raise an eyebrow is some of the very dismissive remarks made towards Skyrim.  Of course Skyrim isn't perfect, and neither does KoA have to copy it, but the remarks make me believe that they don't even understand *why* Skyrim is sucessful, and that the things that actually make it successful, they dismiss.

    All that said, I do wish Curt/BHG/38Studios well and lots of success.  I like them, and their studio, and I even really like this game (collector's edition and all).  I'm so harsh on it, because I really like the Amalur universe and its potential.  It just a bit baffling some of the things going on with it, and its worrying.

  • sandslasher4sandslasher4 Member Posts: 12

    First, sorry for the moderately long post in advance. Secondly, I almost never  have a strong urge to comment on these forums, but the status of this "forum" is so utterly pathetic that I feel inclined to.

    It's extremely pathetic to see that Skyrim actually meets the expectations of RPG players nowadays. I have been playing the Elder Scrolls series ever since the release of Morrowind, and   in retrospect I have come to realise that all Skyrim truely accompllished was spiting on what was remaining of the true concept of The Elder Scrolls then steping on it.  I own both KOA and Skyrim and both have huge shortcomings, but to see the cult like fanboism Skyrim has garnered is not only extremly disheartning, but is also usually hypocritical to the the arguments these commenters are making. KOA does a whole lot right, like making actually fun and responsive combat,  creating a World (despite looking WOWish)  that is beautiful, and creating a simple skills system. KOA also shares similar plagues to Skyrim like both being ludicrously easy ( if you thought Skyrim was hard even on the hardest difficulty, I really don't know what to say to you) , both lacking overall depth, and a crafting system that makes everything else obselete. I don't hate Skyrim, I just choose not to acknowledge it as a true TES game, other than the title. If Skyrim is regarded as the epitome of this generation's fantasy RPGs, then I am truely worried of what's to come in the future from developers. Both titles were overly ambitious, but ambition is only one step out of many.

    Again, I apologize for the long post, but it had to be said by someone.

     



     

  • liadzliadz Member Posts: 35

    What are guys waiting for to lauch RPGguru? :D

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  • XenratheXenrathe Member Posts: 24

    I'd just like to point out that you guys (MMORPG staff) need to replace your screenshots with something better.  Seriously.  Look at the first four.

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