Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning?

[DarthBehemoth]

Demo also available on Steam.

Shit servers are too busy

 

[MicoSelva]

Got the demo. Had to disable post-processing in the options, or the screen was all black during gameplay.

 

[Metro]

Firing it up now -- I'm expecting Fable.

 

[Metro]

Okay, played through the tutorial area but stopped when things opened up because apparently it's a timed demo and I didn't feel like delving into it just now. But, yeah, basically this is a cross between Fable and a console version of WoW. Character progression seems decent/varied enough although combat seems a bit wonky (probably due to the fact I couldn't seem to get keybinding to work). This is definitely designed for consoles from the controls, to the UI, to the on-rails world design (might open up later, who knows). Demo is in really rough shape and hopefully the release version has a lot more polish. I've heard this game is just a precursor to an MMO which makes sense since Curt Schilling is a big WoW fan and they're probably looking to make some heavy market share console MMORPG.

Edit: Oh, forgot to add there are QTE portions in combat and cutscene takedowns in stealth~

 

[sea]

Played through the demo. It's basically the tutorial level + 45 minutes of free exploration (though I assume there are limits). I imagine there is already a timer hack in the works. One downside is that there's no saving - I made one character and crashed, and lost all my progress.

The game is basically Fable, but if Fable had a strong RPG backing. There are a pretty wide variety of skills and abilities, although stats are manipulated mostly by gear and skills (i.e. passive damage and armour bonuses). So far it's hard to tell how much impact skills etc. have, but the fact that I had trouble lockpicking and persuading people without investing in those lines shows promise (it remains to be seen how limited you'll be in the long run). There's crafting of varying sorts and running around collecting reagents and loot to break down seems to be a big part of the game. While it's not the most complex RPG I've ever seen, it's definitely pretty solid. There is a little bit of a Gothic feel to it, albeit the world is far more limited in size. The game goes classless but it seems like you'll be able to influence passive bonuses by selecting various Fate Cards (due to your character's status as "Fateless One")

Combat is fast and fun, very hack-and-slash without too much strategy or finesse required, again much like Fable but a good deal smoother. You can have two weapons equipped at once and swap between them in battle at will, allowing for interesting combos depending on what weapons you use. Blocking seems rather useless in light of the all-mighty roll (hi, Witcher 2) but that may change later on in the game - and at least a successful block seems to stun enemies rather than just negate damage. Stealth allows for insta-kills and critical hits, but aside from a pretty binary takedown system I don't know if there's much more to it - certainly no Elder Scrolls-style damage multipliers so far.

Writing seems alright. There are a number of speech checks to be found (mostly for extra loot), but from the sound of it there will be chances to solve quests via persuasion as well. The world itself seems like it holds some potential but the dialogue itself kind of makes it hard to tell exactly what's going on, and your character can't really ask any of the obvious questions to fill in the backstory. I'm sure you pick things up as you go along, but it just seems odd to me. Another strange thing is that some dialogue uses a list menu (think Diablo) while other dialogue uses a BioWare-style wheel. I imagine the differentiating point is that the wheel indicates that choices are to be made, but aside from persuasion attempts these seemed cosmetic at best, so I'm not sure what the point is of having both.

Graphics are cartoony, but very saturated and there's a nice art style to the game (though it won't be to everyone's taste due to the bloom etc.). At least it ran extremely smoothly for me, although it doesn't really push the bar graphically in any way. The game doesn't have a ton of polish on PC (I noticed a few bugs, like characters disappearing in cutscenes, getting stuck on terrain, and the aforementioned crash), and the controls, while serviceable (helped a lot by a quickbar) are a bit weird, and things like mouse smoothing on the camera make the game feel strange to me. The user interface is very gamepad-optimized, and honestly I found it more fun to play with my 360 pad. It's totally serviceable with the mouse and keyboard, but a lot of the sub-menus etc. take quite a bit of time to navigate when they really shouldn't. Music is standard fantasy fare, catchy but kind of unremarkable, and voice acting is competent without being interesting in any way (reminds me a lot of Dungeon Siege 3 that way).

I'll be writing a longer preview soon, but suffice to say: it's good for what it is. If you don't like hack and slash console-style action RPGs you won't like this game, but if you don't mind then this really strikes me as what Fable 3 should have been. Don't know if I'd buy it at full price (I probably will in order to review it), but after 60+ hours of Skyrim, this feels like a breath of fresh air as far as open-ish action RPGs go.

 

[Metro]

Pretty much agreed (aside from the fact that I'd resort to using a controller to play it!). It's something I'd spend $20 but nowhere near the $60 release price. But yeah the UI and speech menus were beyond terrible/low budget. For their sake I hope it isn't that way in the release version.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I played through it, and liked it overall. Reminded me of Divinity 2 a fair bit. My character was Shepard wielding a greatsword, and I enjoyed the combat. Felt like I was rewarded for having good timing and situational awareness, and hitting shit had a nice oomph to it. Enemies were quite varied and required different tactics; button mashing did not work that well. Setting is apparently based on Irish mythology at least cosmetically, throwing around terms like Fae, The Summer Court, evil dudes named the Tuatha, etc; writing and voice acting are pretty forgettable. World seems decently big judging by the size of the first open area and the world map.

Stuff that stood out:
- The "noncombat skills", for which you get 1 point every level and can apparently also train somehow, are a bit strange. Apart from your traditional crafting skills, they also included traditional "rogue" abilities, like lockpicking or stealth or finding shit (and yes, there are traps in dungeons), as well as persuasion (mostly for the "gimme more stuff" option, but I also used it to resolve like two quests) and something called "Dispelling" which is used for "dispelling enchantments and wards" - absolutely no idea what it's supposed to do.

- I could turn on "aggressive mode" and attack anyone I wanted. The game does track your notoriety level, although I'm not sure what the consequences are.

- I could join a faction, which was essentially a fighters' guild from what I glanced. They had their own castle where I needed to go in order to sign up.

- Why the fuck can't I block with a sword?

I won't buy it at launch, but further down the line, why not.

 

[Metro]

Yeah I was going to say it sort of reminded me of Div 2 in terms of the character skills and 'on-rails' type of '(not so) open world.' Don't get me wrong, it doesn't seem to be as bad as Dungeon Siege 3 or even Fable but we'll only know after release. Unlike Div 2, however, the combat (as you note) did feel more substantial/satisfying. And, yes, the blocking seems moronic. I had a shield but when I went to block my sword was sheathed on my back... uh... what? Just awkward.

 

[Tigranes]

Crossposting, but why not.

Just tried a fair chunk of the demo. It's very... up and down. I'd also agree with the Div 2 comparisons for now.​

There appears to be the basics for a fun and enjoyable game, though it's unlikely it'll be memorable or innovative in any way. There's a decent enough character development system, a decent array of auxiliary features and things-to-do a la real shops, thieving/pickpocketing/gotojail/etc mechanisms (even attacking friendly characters, though I haven't tried this properly yet), alchemy and reagants, blacksmithing, etc., etc. The combat itself is pretty boring at the moment but at least some of that is due to the tutorialness of the whole thing. The writing is better than I expected (i.e. not terribly boring and retarded), though that's even harder to tell, yet. I don't think it's a Day 1 buy unless I'm really bored, but perhaps later on.​

More specifically, combat is the number one since it's an ARPG, right? Your character is pretty responsive, though actually attacking things is not so fluid. I think it will improve once players get more comfortable and you learn more skills and combos - right now as a Level 1 dude you're just smacking left button. Bows are really boring though, as you stay in third person view where you can't aim anything and you simply autotarget. I've never seen the point of that, from memory Div2 did this too and it didn't work there either. A lot is going to depend on just how dynamic the combat gets once you get some levels and have more options. The enemies are far too weak and far too stupid (mainly lumbering around really slowly), but you can only play Normal and it is the tutorial, so that's not conclusive. There appear to be some interesting features - i.e. some kind of special state you enter into when you take enough damage (or do enough?), essentially the same as TW2 but from earlier levels.​

The writing seemed to have enough there for me not to start skipping stuff, yet. Voice acting is a bit up and down, and equally, the writing slips between rather well composed lines and awkward ones, almost as if the script is still in draft stage or something. The concept of being revived and having no predetermined fate is cool, but who knows where it will go from there. It's hard to tell how lively towns are and how many quests you get, though... I was trying out thieving, got sent to jail, got caught escaping and died, before I could really look into the town. It's also impossible to tell how big/open the world is yet - the tutorial dungeon was obviously a series of corridors. For people that explored the town more, how was it?​

The visuals aren't as terrible as I thought from the videos, but again.. I have no idea how to put the finger on this, it feels really weird. Technically speaking, the game looks dated by several years; washed out textures, etc. I don't really care about that so much, but here that combines oddly with (1) there's clearly some sort of HDR/Bloom going on in here, but it looks different from Oblivion's superbloom; (2) they tend to go for really bright, really distinct colours; (3) characters get a very crisp, even leathery/plasticky, kind of treatment while the rest, especially the ground, is a washout of bloomy bright colours. So everything just doesn't look stable, and it doesn't help that your character skates around the ground as well. So I guess a kind of washed out Disney fantasy land. But I was a lot more impressed once I left the opening dungeon and came outside - it's still washed out and bright, but with more space it manages to achieve a more coherent and better looking landscape. Also, every different element looks like it just came from a different engine or something. It's not even that the art direction is incoherent, everything looks like it got different types of filters or whatever done, which adds to this eery freak-WoW land thing.​

The UI/usability is pretty terrible. It has 'blocky' turning, similar to problems some people had with Alpha Protocol's mouse smoothing, where you don't really turn/rotate camear smoothly, it goes in big blocks, and so you're always swiveling around. Combine that with the fact that although you can move the camera, really, there's only one camera angle that's playable - it's much worse than Dungeon Siege 3, where you could at least choose from 2 views. Here you can't zoom out to any degree, and essentially you have to play in the KOTOR-view to see anything. Sometimes the game zooms out the camera a bit for you, but only when it wants to. So restrictive close-up camera + lurchy turning + washy visuals = not good. Moving on, the interface is OK. Looks-wise it looks pretty bad, mainly black background and white text and it just feels like someone forgot to make half of the UI; you need to click a lot of buttons to get to some things (Menu -> Inventory -> Primary Weapons -> Equip); but for the most part it won't get in the way, and works fine.​

All in all rather mixed, I'll probably wait for impressions once it comes out. I guess big plus is that it seems to have a solid core that it might build on, and the big minus is that it's pretty clunky and the blurry bright mess is sometimes hard to look at.​

 

[sea]

​

The writing seemed to have enough there for me not to start skipping stuff, yet. Voice acting is a bit up and down, and equally, the writing slips between rather well composed lines and awkward ones, almost as if the script is still in draft stage or something. The concept of being revived and having no predetermined fate is cool, but who knows where it will go from there. It's hard to tell how lively towns are and how many quests you get, though... I was trying out thieving, got sent to jail, got caught escaping and died, before I could really look into the town. It's also impossible to tell how big/open the world is yet - the tutorial dungeon was obviously a series of corridors. For people that explored the town more, how was it?​

​

Questing is alright. The game has a nice sense of humour, at least. In one quest, a disciple leaves his monestary to go off on some fool quest to appease some "Fae" who promised to grant him powers - turns out they're just bandits who have been deceiving him and want him to risk himself to find a magical artifact, then kill him and take it. The entire time the disciple is talking about what his "wizard name" will be when he's made all-powerful, but of course he is completely inept in every way. In another, an alchemist asks you to find her assistant, who she thinks has been kidnapped - instead, he's a member of a bandit group, and stolen a particularly valuable formula from her. They're nice little twists on standard quests and have a sort of subtle wit to them that other games of this type lack. There seem to be a lot of quests too, and completing some seems to open up several other ones (helping a Father at the monastery opens up at least two or three more for example). Very few fetch quests as well, almost all of them have some character interaction or dungeon crawling involved.​

​

As for the town, it's not huge - maybe ten buildings at most, once you open up the monastery area. Most of those buildings have loot, quests, merchants and other things in them, though. I didn't really get a sense of any sort of living world, though NPCs did seem to do farming and stuff during the day and were in the inn/tavern during the evening (didn't really follow it too much otherwise). It seems pretty static, but it's not a big deal in this game. The actual environment outside of the dungeons is quite open and about on par with The Witcher 2 or Fable 3 in terms of size and scope, and it has that right balance of things appearing to be a good distance from each other, while it still only takes a few minutes to get from A to B. Fast travel almost seems pointless. The world maps suggests there are a good 20-odd locations to explore, which is a good number if they all offer up the same 3ish hours of gameplay the demo seems to.​

The visuals aren't as terrible as I thought from the videos, but again.. I have no idea how to put the finger on this, it feels really weird. Technically speaking, the game looks dated by several years; washed out textures, etc. I don't really care about that so much, but here that combines oddly with (1) there's clearly some sort of HDR/Bloom going on in here, but it looks different from Oblivion's superbloom; (2) they tend to go for really bright, really distinct colours; (3) characters get a very crisp, even leathery/plasticky, kind of treatment while the rest, especially the ground, is a washout of bloomy bright colours. So everything just doesn't look stable, and it doesn't help that your character skates around the ground as well. So I guess a kind of washed out Disney fantasy land. But I was a lot more impressed once I left the opening dungeon and came outside - it's still washed out and bright, but with more space it manages to achieve a more coherent and better looking landscape. Also, every different element looks like it just came from a different engine or something. It's not even that the art direction is incoherent, everything looks like it got different types of filters or whatever done, which adds to this eery freak-WoW land thing.

I think a big problem is that anisotropic filtering seems to be bugged. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it's off, it makes the textures look like a muddy, washy mess. Try forcing AF from the driver control panel instead and see if it helps.​

 

[Metro]

Indeed, for a $60 game the UI/menus looks like shit. Like approaching Mount & Blade territory. Navigability is a horrendous maze of submenus. I will add, after playing around a bit in the overworld that it seems to be impressively large. That first main area is one of about a dozen or so I think is in the game. I'd compare them roughly to the size of one of the zones in vanilla WoW -- just less populated.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Consider my interest level raised significantly if it has skills that significantly affect game events, and if the game is like Divinity 2 but with better combat!

It's true that in the end there are some very competent designers working on it. That it ends up being a good game isn't so implausible.

 

[sea]

Indeed, for a $60 game the UI/menus looks like shit. Like approaching Mount & Blade territory. Navigability is a horrendous maze of submenus. I will add, after playing around a bit in the overworld that it seems to be impressively large. That first main area is one of about a dozen or so I think is in the game. I'd compare them roughly to the size of one of the zones in vanilla WoW -- just less populated.

Actually it seems like there are a total of close to 30 zones/towns, based on the world map, all roughly the same size as the two-odd zones in the demo. That to me is pretty impressive considering that each one seems to have at least 5-10 quests, all of them fairly interesting.

 

[MicoSelva]

Actually it seems like there are a total of close to 30 zones/towns, based on the world map, all roughly the same size as the two-odd zones in the demo. That to me is pretty impressive considering that each one seems to have at least 5-10 quests, all of them fairly interesting.

Previews claimed there are around 240 quests available, so You could be right.

something called "Dispelling" which is used for "dispelling enchantments and wards" - absolutely no idea what it's supposed to do.

'Dispelling' skill, from what I gathered, is used to disable magical traps (locks?) on chests. Maybe it has other uses too.

 

[Tigranes]

Played one more time and seems slightly better, but also with some WTFs.

-The 'real world' plays a lot more like Div2, just without the challenging combat. Run around, kill some random things, pick up some random loot, get involved in a decent frequency of quirky quests.
-I don't think the gameworld is as large as it first seems - I tried to go as far as I can and after about 5 minutes of solid running (and fighting everything in the way), I found myself a fair distance across the world map. I doubt it'll feel too small, though, so it's not a real issue.
-The combat remains pretty boring though. You can't play Hard on the demo but on Normal you can just mash the Awesome button and they get stunlocked. It's like playing Gothic 3 as a wolf or something. At level 3 with no real gear except whatever people gave me I took out the entire town with no trouble. Although maybe there's level scaling.... *shudder*

 

[Stinger]

I liked the combat, also reminded me a lot of Divinity 2- but I found it really frustrating to target as a mage whereas Divinity 2 allowed me to aim with spells a lot better. Other things about the combat (cancelling, animations) seemed better though. Didn't like the QTEs but they seemed ignorable.

Writing's fairly cliched though unlike Bioware it doesn't have the pretensions of being anything more than just a fun fantasy romp so it never gets to anywhere near Bioware level derp. Opening kinda reminded me of Planescape Torment though obviously nowhere near that calibre.

I didn't think the quests were that great. They seemed like really linear and generic fetch quests but I guess I shouldn't be expecting Fallout style quest design in an Action RPG. Speech checks are in the game but I honestly don't think they have much of an impact beyond some extra potions and flavour dialogue. I doubt they'll significantly impact on quest design- probably something similar to how Dragon Age Origins uses persuade checks i.e. sparingly and not really changing the quest.

Overall, the combat's the main thing it's got going for it. Everything else doesn't seem that impressive.

 

[MetalCraze]

The moment I saw "From Elder Scrolls Oblivion lead designer" in the trailer I knew it's going to be unredeemable shit.

 

[Metro]

The moment I saw "From Elder Scrolls Oblivion lead designer" in the trailer I knew it's going to be unredeemable shit.

Funny enough it's better than Oblivion -- not that that says anything.

 

[MetalCraze]

Jumping makes the game too complicated, Oblivion lead designer will tell you so.

 

[MaroonSkein]

Boy, does it feel good to be right. The combat system is very good. There are two attack buttons, and any weapon can be bound to each of them. I didn't get to use every weapon type in the demo, but the ability descriptions in the move list make them all sound pretty diverse: swords can launch enemies into the air, hammers knock things down, staves cluster enemies together (making them perfect targets for AoE spells), chakram attacks create distance between you and the target, and so on. Depending on your weapon selection, your approach to enemies will change. Equipping a sword and a fast weapon like a pair of daggers allows you to do potent juggle combos, while equipping two ranged weapons enables you play Dhalsim-esque keepaway game.

On the defensive side, there's rolling and blocking. I think rolls don't have invincibility frames (at least not for the entire duration), but they do offer a percentile damage reduction bonus that can be further increased by equipping a finesse-oriented destiny (more on these later). Blocking seems to eliminate the damage entirely, but it has quite a few recovery frames, so it's difficult to punish blocked enemy attacks. That is, unless you tap the blocking button right when the attack connects, in which case there's no recovery time for your character, and the enemy is put in a second of hit stun. Think Royal Guard.

There's also this purple bar that fills up as you fight. It can be used to activate the Reckoning mode, which is basically Devil Trigger and the Quicksilver style combined. It increases the damage you deal and slows everyone else down, allowing you to do otherwise impossible combos. When you exit this state, all defeated enemies unravel into threads that are absorbed by your character. If you mash a button during this animation, you gain bonus XP. X-TREME and stuffies.

As you level up, you get ability points. These are spent on buying new attacks and spells, as well upgrading the ones you already know. All abilities are split into three categories: Might, Finesse and Sorcery. Investing enough points into these ability trees unlocks destines. These are basically classes, and only one can be equipped at a time. Mostly, they give various percentile bonuses to your character's attributes, but some magic-oriented destinies make a big change: they turn rolling into teleportation. According to interviews, some destinies are unlocked by completing certain quests and advancing the plot.

On the negative side, enemies have way too little HP. There's a hard difficulty setting that is locked in the demo. Hopefully, it fixes this issue because it would greatly improved what already is a very good ARPG.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Boy, does it feel good to be right. The combat system is very good.

Cool, thanks for sharing your impressions! Buying this as soon as it's released.

 

[MaroonSkein]

Boy, does it feel good to be right. The combat system is very good.

Cool, thanks for sharing your impressions! Buying this as soon as it's released.

You really shouldn't put this much trust into anyone's opinion. Try the demo yourself. There's a torrent if you don't want to deal with Steam or Origin.

 

[MetalCraze]

The combat system is very good. There are two attack buttons

Sounds like a very sophisticated RPG.

 

[MaroonSkein]

The combat system is very good. There are two attack buttons

Sounds like a very sophisticated RPG.

Don't you like DMC? Please, remind me how many attack buttons it has.

 

[Joghurt]

Played it. Couldn't fucking stand it. Looks like WoW. PC controls suck ass. Bloom fucking everywhere. It's not even open world, areas (hubs) look like linear corridors. Cobat doesn't even feel visceral and punchy - instead it feels cartoony. The writing seems like shit but that's just me. I did 4 quests and all them were about killing shit. I could write more negative shit about it but I won't. It sucks. Plating this game for entertainment is like watching porn for it's storyline.