Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: RPG

ESRB: M (cartoony blood)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 105/40

Developer: 38 Studios, Big Huge Games 

Wiki page

Holy balls, I finally completed this game. See those hours up there for "thorough" gameplay? That's no joke. It's possible that could be much more as I started to get pretty methodical as I ran through some areas. Towards the end, I was getting pretty tired of the side quests, but I did pretty much all of them save for a couple. I also even played the DLC... both of 'em (they were on sale around the time I got the game, I was duped!). But I blasted through the main story on the second one. I did all there is to do in the first one, though. And in the end, I managed to get 100% completion on all achievements across the board. Pretty confusing that I did so much considering the one star rating, right? Don't mind that. I'm just a completionist and a crazy person; this game is a dirty trick to a person like me! If this review isn't enough, I'll have a list at the bottom again with all my grievances itemized out. Sometimes a summary just isn't enough, man. Need to show just how deep the hate goes. But this game had a "dream team" of developers working on it. What went wrong?

This is what a real dream team looks like!

R.A. Salvatore was the big name slapped onto the writing of this thing. I think he just made the lore or something. Probably the main character's story, too (let's call the player character "Fateless One"). But I doubt he would have had a major hand in the design of all the side quests. I don't see how it would matter either way, because all of these things are completely uninteresting. I suppose the idea of the world being completely tied to destiny and the player being the one person who is immune to fate is workable, but none of the things he does grabs me. Every side quest is either someone or something is lost in a cave, so the Fateless One is asked to go find it. All of the creatures in this land operate outside of what we human players can grasp logically. First of all, they all have gibberish names. And there's no thought to these gibberish names. Like the main villain's name is "Gadflow." That doesn't strike my mind as "impressive" or "daunting" or "threatening" or "regal" or any kind of characterization. It's just a bunch of letters slapped together. Things like skeletons are called "Faer Gorta" and elves are called "Seelie Fae" or some bullshit for no reason other than to make things feel more original. And there are just humans and elves in this world. Sure, they come in different flavors like the Dokkalfar and the Almain... but I really couldn't tell you which is which. Basically, they don't FEEL real. They are not creatures shaped by their world or lives. Just a bunch of frilly words in a frilly world. If you want these things and maybe some PERSONALITY to go with it, the Dragon Age series is much more gripping. Hell, Skyrim is much more involved. And they slapped boobs onto the design of their Argonian women. What does a reptile use boobs for? To seduce mammalian males? To assimilate amongst the other women? Is that how evolution works? Arg. I'm off topic because those games are much more interesting.

KoA does have boobs, too, if that's what you're looking for.

That touches on the next thing: the art. The big name slapped onto this part is Todd McFarlane. While the landscapes, flora, and cities are all very pretty there are a number of things off here. For one, all the women are hot and all the dudes are buff. I could chalk this up as a fault of the genre, but this game is rated M and filled with war so I assume there's some level of grittiness to it. You know, like Lord of the Rings or Conan or even fucking Star Wars. Having everything be so Goddamn shiny just makes me think I'm looking at porn or something; everything's plastic and the feelings are forced. It doesn't help that the level design for each area is so simplistic it feels like baby's first assignment at game design school. It's just a bunch of assorted polygons with no attempt at coherent living spaces and little thought to flow. Of course, I doubt Mr. McFarlane would have had a hand in that. I do wonder what the fuck he thought of the faces in this game. These people look so damn inhuman and yet not cartoony enough. Trust me, I like both anime and cartoon faces alike, these people look downright alien to me. And they often have some kind of bug or something that makes them look cross-eyed. At times the texturing is ineffective, too, so the end result isn't a stylized visual but something that's reminiscent of the previous generation of consoles.

This is what people look like. All of them.

Gameplay has that same half-assed feel to it as well. Don't get me wrong, I know these people worked very hard on this game. I just don't know what the fuck went awry. The big name attached to this area would be Ken Rolston, who has previously worked on Elder Scrolls 3 and 4 (AKA Morrowind and Oblivion, respectively). And he decided to surprise everyone by making a game that is incredibly similar to Elder Scrolls. The key differences here are that it's in third person and the combat plays more like Dynasty Warriors or God of War with all its combos and such. This is just a myriad of near misses. I'd say a large part of the problems stem from the lazy camera. Literally, it's a stubborn mule that struggles to follow the player. It clearly is programmed to do things like pull out when combat starts and aim at the action, but it takes solid seconds for it to kick in! Another problem is the sticky controls. I can't imagine this slipping by the QA team. At random times buttons don't work for a split second, or they awkwardly play catch up as you frantically mash them to get them to function. So many animations suck the dexterity out of the player. When I was a rogue, I used the bow because the animations were much more manageable. Forget the extra range, I actually wanted to stab things and not shoot them! When I respec'ed and became a mage, I used the meteor spell at all times regardless of enemy type due to the fact that it would ALWAYS cast even if I was clearly interrupted. And the ice cloud spell had the longest animation ever but was comparatively both weak and impractical to everything else! Ack, I'm getting too specific. As a final point, the talent system in this game is drab; each point is too obvious with nothing game-changing to look forward to. Take Skyrim for one example: investing fully in blocking lets you run with your shield in front of you, knocking aside anyone in your way like some kind of Captain America. Almost every talent tree has at least a couple things in it like that. That's what we want! Not sinking 5 points into making daggers doing slightly more damage, then sinking 5 points in making bows do more damage, then 5 points in making attacks slightly more damage as poison, then 5 points for an ability that doesn't scale with level so it's useless past level 5. Ugh! And the skills (professions?) are lame, too! I have to stop... I made a list for all this at the bottom.

And Skyrim came out just a few months before KoA. That game lets you be a kitty cat!

Part of me feels bad because I know this game is pretty well-loved and has a little following, which is unfortunate since the company that made this is totally fucked. But part of me doesn't give a shit. I don't wish ill on the people who made this game, I hope the next projects that each work on are great. Maybe they'll come up with some ideas that don't suck. I'd describe this game as a cross between Fable and Elder Scrolls, but without the goofing around that the former has to offer, nor the incredible depth upon depth that the latter does. What does it offer instead? Nothing. The word for this is "derivative."

Conclusion:

I don't know who would appreciate this game. Maybe someone with the same blind loyalty to Western RPG's that you'd normally find in a fan of JRPG's? You do get a lot of game hours for your buck, if that's all you really want.

Time for bitching!

1. The A button keeps fucking up. It sometimes take a lot of effort just to "click" on something like a flower or to choose a chat option.

2. L and R triggers do not compensate for being pressure sensitive, you have to press them all the way down to register. This means there's an added split second delay to blocking and ability use. Since this game requires timing (as most all games do) this is a stupid mistake.
3. Clicking the stick to run sometimes takes a bit of coaxing.
4. Pacing! The main story moves slow and then slower. It hits a high note, then slows down again. What is this?!
5. Cannot change buttons. Can do some changes like setting clicking the left stick to sprint, but I wanted more!
6. Cannot press up to wrap around on saves menu.
7. Fastest weapon in the game is still slow. This is a personal gripe because I want to be Goddamn nimble!
8. All combat revolves around stunlocking enemies and avoiding being stunlocked.
9. No quick save button.
10. Resting is a Goddamn mystery. Have to find an inn and figure out which NPC is the innkeeper. There is nothing specific to point the player towards this feature.
11. No "Wait" feature.
12. Day cycle is unclear. Have to look straight up at the sky to figure it out since it's always so bright out. This makes items with modifiers dependent on the time of day very clunky. More importantly, it has no influence on NPC's so what's the point?
13. Sleeping NPC's are 100% aware of their surroundings.
14. Commands randomly stick.
15. Have to get NPC's to forget about you by breaking line of sight and stealthing. Not sure how this makes sense. Also, breaking line of sight causes aggro'ed enemies to forget you.
16. Rolling in the wrong direction! Player character will sometimes roll in the direction the avatar is facing rather than the direction you are pressing!
17. Unable to see NPC names/level at appropriate times.
18. Ranged attacks can miss due to target doing an up and down animation. I understand they can dodge stuff, but it makes no sense to miss when they are doing things like casting.
19. Persuasion cannot go above max, but NPC's can. The % chance to succeed at persuasion is archaic.
20. No jumping? This is a much bigger deal than I think the developers realize since this greatly diminishes the feeling of exploration. Especially as there are many tiny things that hinder movement that a regular person could easily jump over.
21. Soundtrack features a song that sounds a bit like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxHkLdQy5f0&feature=related
22. Paying for training bullshit: you have to be within a RANGE of minimum and maximum skill to use a trainer for that skill. ALSO you can cheat the system by respec'ing to be in the correct range then buying the skill and then respec'ing back since it lets you keep the point. Each trainer only trains you once! That is the only limitation needed! The skill range thing is awkward and confusing! And trainers aren't always clearly labeled as to what they train. If you don't have the proper skill, it tells you so but not what skill! Stupid!
23. Terrible targeting. Not only is it completely unnecessary for melee combat, but usually causes you to MISS what you are trying to hit.
24. No indication what a weapon is other than icon. Some of the icons are hard to understand, so this is awkward.
25. Movement speed while stealthed is so slow! I think the stealth skill improves it, but why are there not more things to improve it further like talents or item modifiers?

26. High level rogues have a passive that causes attacks to pass through them. This can trigger while blocking and therefore will cause you to fail at trying to counter-attack.

27. Hybridization requires an even split in trees, and the required amount of points in each is so high it can penalize the creativity it is meant to encourage.
28. Stealth as a common ability? Only a dagger wielding rogue really finds this useful. I know coding enemy AI to respond to this is kind of a big deal, but it would have been nice to have different abilities for that RB button depending on class.
29. High levels have nothing to spend points on. Level 37 is the bare minimum to get to the top tier destinies, so I take that to mean they wanted players to get that far. I ended up wasting talent points for like 5 or more levels just to get there.
30. Thresh = super gods? They just constantly spam shit and fly around. They are so much more annoying than anything in the game. If like 6 of these dudes ganged up they would be far more threatening than any of the bosses... and the last boss is a "god."
31. No concept of difficulty. I played on hard and nothing was difficult. But that's not the issue. Enemy design has no thought to it, so bad asses feel like pushovers and little idiots feel like kung fu masters. This is most apparent when doing the arena fights since there's warnings to how hard each fight is.
32. "Epic" gem misleading! I thought it was just a higher tier of gem, but they are specifically meant to go into an epic gem socket... which I never found.
33. Up on the D-pad turns on aggressive mode. It does nothing unless you attack first!
34. Blacksmithing sucks. Gear you make from it is super shitty. No sets, no purples, and no sockets!
35. Alchemy sucks. Experimentation just leads to pre-determined potions that do not improve based on skill. No logic to gathering materials. I guess Skyrim/Oblivion is just the best there is for this.
36. At some point in the game I had this objective marker show up that said "Quest Complete". Terribly misleading since it had nothing to do with what quest I was actually tracking.
37. D-pad functionality not fully explored. Up is aggressive mode, left and right are health and mana potions (which is useless since LB can access these and it pauses the game), and down does nothing. I wanted a "wait" button, among other things.
38. Nothing to spend money on! Ended game with millions of dollars. No gear to buy, no vanity items, and giant houses were fucking free. What gives!
39. Strange mana costs. At end of game, had a build where spells seemed to cost nothing but my shitty little scepter still stung my reserves. Yet mana still regen'ed super slow.
40. No difference in ending "Fate shift" (AKA super move, finisher, musou mode, whatever) early or at last second as it still takes the entire bar.
41. Too many mage active skills. Ended up spec'ing in a summon over a heal since it would eat up more points (in order to reach the top tier destiny). Had to remove a fire spell so that I could use a better fire spell. No way to cleanly have access to everything I spent points on.

42. Fate shifts trivialize all encounters, even those that hinder it since you can use a fate potion.