POV: 3rd
Graphics: 10
Controls: 8
Difficulty: 5
After replaying the demo over and over, my pre-order of
Kingdoms of Amalur arrived about a week late from it's initial release date. All of the bugs that plagued the already good demo were fixed. If you've played the demo, here are the items that were fixed:
- Crashing: if your audio starts losing some channels, it means the game is about to crash your PS3 and you should quit and restart
- Camera: The auto focusing in the demo was not that sensitive
- Targeting: In the demo, sometimes you aim your weapon in one direction and it auto-targets something in a totally wrong direction.
- Rendering: As you run across the lands, the scenery renders correctly and quickly.
I knew the crashing was going to be fixed, but this is such a great game that I would have lived with the other bugs.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoAR) combines all of the things I enjoy about previous favorites. It's got vast world that you can explore and return to previous places. That was the kind of thing I enjoyed about early games like
Legend of Zelda and
Metroid. Then there's the customization and
Dungeons and Dragons aspect from games like
Ultima: Exodus and
Dragonlance: Champions of Krynn. There has never been a game that combined the right parts of an RPG with a 3rd person action game. The moves and combos are comparable to the best action games such as
Batman: Arkham City and
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. With the 3rd person action, there are also multiple quests and problems to solve. It has a rarely used aspect of collecting components to build your own weapons and mix potions as well.
Mini Ninjas was the first game I came across that had the potions aspect, but I've never seen a game that allowed you to build your own weapons and armor. The character building the the best I've seen also. Each character you create is totally unique because you're choosing a mixture of skills, not necessarily a pure warrior, wizard, theif or cleric like other RPGs.
The graphics are amazing for the size of the game. While they don't beat out
Batman: Arkham Asylum, the vast landscapes make up for it. If you get the PC version, like most games, there's a noticeable difference in quality. The PS3 version is at 720p and looks a little jagged if you look closely. One of the best parts of character creation is that you get to make your own from top to bottom, something missing from all of the RPGs of today. As you play the game, your character changes depending on armor and weapons you pick up.
The controls are good, but not as responsive as the Batman games. The combos are pretty cool as they combine multiple weapons with magic. The evading takes a bit of getting used to if you're a Batman player because it's less smooth. But generally, if you're good at
Arkham Asylum or
Arkham City, it's the same idea with KoAR, but with weapons.
The stories and quests are pretty good too as the creators took a lot of time and though in creating a world with rich history. It's almost as detailed as the
Star Wars and
Lord of the Rings franchises. I've completed over 50 quests already and have only gone through about 1/4 of the map. One thing's for sure, I won't be providing a walkthrough of this game! This game makes
Arkham City look tiny!
