I had long since wanted to play a Swords-and-sorcery type game for a while, and as long as Skyrim was buggy, unpatched and unloved on the PS3, I wasn't going to be buying it. Instead, I went for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, a game from the now defunct 38 studios. 38 Studios was founded by baseball legend Curt Schilling, an avid gamer, to create an MMORPG like World of Warcraft.
38 studios got onboard luminaries like reknowned fantasy writer, R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, who created Spawn, on board and acquired the studio Big Huge Games, to produce an introductory game to the Amalur universe. The single player game would introduce players to the universe before the launch of the MMORPG at a future date.
Sadly this would never happen as 38 studios and Big Huge Games had to file for bankruptcy in May, 2012. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the only game they ever produced.
I got it at Christmas, and from then till about March it took pride of place in my Playstation. However, in the end, I ejected it unfinished, with maybe a third to half the story left to be told.
The story is pretty interesting if a bit generic and maybe leans on the fourth wall a bit. You play the Fateless One. At the start of the game, you're dead, only to be revived in the Well of Souls by a scientist. At this juncture, you are introduced to the wide range of customisation in the game. I must have spent that first afternoon mucking about with my characters face. In the end I got a rather scary looking black man.
In the world of Amalur, everyone is a slave to their fate till they die but since your character has already been there, done that and got the t-shirt, you have no fate. This apparently means that you can change the tide of the war that's been going on and maybe save the mortal races from the bloodthirsty and immortal Tuatha Fae who are feeling rather genocidal at the moment.
The story is pretty serviceable. Salvatore was tasked to create 10,000 years of backstory for the world and some of it is pretty interesting if you like that kind of thing. NPCs rush to give you all sorts of backstory and all around there are lorestones- magic stones that narrate the story of the land and those who have come before. It would make a pretty decent series of books with prequels, interquels and sequels coming out the wazoo. The art and world are bright and nice. The combat is amazing, and there is a lot to do. Loads.
And therein lies the problem with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. There is too much to do, there is too much customisation, too much freedom. I played, as I tend to do in these kind of games, as a Rogue- the game calls it Finesse, and it is one of three classes in the game, the others being Might (fighter) and Sorcery (Mage). Despite this, I could use my level up points in any of the classes to unlock abilities in that class. For instance, say I just reached level 10, I'd have 3 points to spend in any of those classes I wanted. While I got some stat boosts from my class initially, I could soon wield greatswords and hammers like the best warrior, despite being a character more attuned to weapons like daggers and bows.
The weapons themselves are pretty neat. You're allowed to carry two into battle, although you can pause and swap others from your pouch if needed. Some of them are overpowered though. Daggers and Faeblades may not do as much damage as greatswords, but are super fast, and in this game speed is everything. Then there are the chakrams which are mid-range throwing weapons, that come back to you like a boomerang causing damage on both the departure and return journeys. Almost gamebreaking.
Another thing the game allows you too much freedom with is skills. there are a bunch of skills in the game but 3 stand out as really important to activities in the game. Sagecrafting, Blacksmithing and Alchemy. Alchemy allows you to make your own potions, blacksmithing allows you to make your own weapons, and Sagecrafting allows you create gems that you can then insert into your weapons and armour to give you various boosts as long as they are equipped.
Each of these skills can be allocated points as you level up, which eventually allows you to make better weapons, more complicated potions and better quality gems. Even before then though, quite early in the game, you can make pretty decent items if you have enough of the easily attainable components. Want to make a health potion? get 2 of those plants, and 1 of this plant (both of which were as prevalent as grass on a savannah) and bobs your uncle.
Early in the game, when gold was tight and health potions randomly dropped were low, death was feared and frequent. By the time I stopped playing, I had become almost a death seeker in my playstyle, charging into hordes of enemies, provoking trolls that I used to run screaming like a chicken from. Once I created about 30 health potions at the alchemy lab, and crafted a couple of restoring gems that basically regenerated my health each second, I was almost unkillable.
Perhaps if the designers had restricted each class to one craft it would, and made the other crafted items expensive it would have been better.
Maybe they could have also reduced the number of quests. Quests make up the gameplay of Amalur. there are story quests, which advance the plot, guild quests, which are a series of related quests that make up a small self-contained story, side quests and tasks. Each of these gives you loads of experience. And they are all accessible. If you're a completist like me, you'll want to do everything and halfway through the game, you will probably be the most powerful being in the area.
I stopped playing at the Battle of Mel Senshir. All through the lead up to this key event in the game, characters talk in despair about a Creature of Mass Destrutction the Tuatha are going to unleash on the fortress (Mel Senshir is basically all that keeps the Tuatha from overrunning the mortal lands.). I fought the monster, having moved the difficulty to hard a few hours earlier, and maybe died once. I was just too powerful. My weapons too nifty, my armour too restorative. The monster barely hit me and only messing up on the execution Quick Time Event gave me any difficulty.
Of course there are ways to avoid this. Avoid doing some quests, ignore that person with the exclamation mark above his head. Refuse point blank to do some. I'm actually curious as to what the NPCs say when you select 'I have better things to do' on the conversation wheel. If you do that, you won't have levelled up as much, and hopefully the game will remain a challenge. It also means you can replay the game without doing the same quests over and over, a fact I just realised as I wrote this *facepalm*
I really enjoyed my time playing the game, and I'll definitely play it again sometime. I'll go about doing quests and owning the crap out of any enemy man or beast that steps in my way. Maybe I'll even finish it. It's a great game, I just overindulged. I was gluttonous.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is like going to an all you can eat buffet and really trying to eat all you can. At the end, you're almost like I never want to see food again. However, if you don't pig out, you try a bit of everything your experience will be infinitely better.
38 studios got onboard luminaries like reknowned fantasy writer, R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, who created Spawn, on board and acquired the studio Big Huge Games, to produce an introductory game to the Amalur universe. The single player game would introduce players to the universe before the launch of the MMORPG at a future date.
Sadly this would never happen as 38 studios and Big Huge Games had to file for bankruptcy in May, 2012. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the only game they ever produced.
I got it at Christmas, and from then till about March it took pride of place in my Playstation. However, in the end, I ejected it unfinished, with maybe a third to half the story left to be told.
The story is pretty interesting if a bit generic and maybe leans on the fourth wall a bit. You play the Fateless One. At the start of the game, you're dead, only to be revived in the Well of Souls by a scientist. At this juncture, you are introduced to the wide range of customisation in the game. I must have spent that first afternoon mucking about with my characters face. In the end I got a rather scary looking black man.
In the world of Amalur, everyone is a slave to their fate till they die but since your character has already been there, done that and got the t-shirt, you have no fate. This apparently means that you can change the tide of the war that's been going on and maybe save the mortal races from the bloodthirsty and immortal Tuatha Fae who are feeling rather genocidal at the moment.
The story is pretty serviceable. Salvatore was tasked to create 10,000 years of backstory for the world and some of it is pretty interesting if you like that kind of thing. NPCs rush to give you all sorts of backstory and all around there are lorestones- magic stones that narrate the story of the land and those who have come before. It would make a pretty decent series of books with prequels, interquels and sequels coming out the wazoo. The art and world are bright and nice. The combat is amazing, and there is a lot to do. Loads.
And therein lies the problem with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. There is too much to do, there is too much customisation, too much freedom. I played, as I tend to do in these kind of games, as a Rogue- the game calls it Finesse, and it is one of three classes in the game, the others being Might (fighter) and Sorcery (Mage). Despite this, I could use my level up points in any of the classes to unlock abilities in that class. For instance, say I just reached level 10, I'd have 3 points to spend in any of those classes I wanted. While I got some stat boosts from my class initially, I could soon wield greatswords and hammers like the best warrior, despite being a character more attuned to weapons like daggers and bows.
The weapons themselves are pretty neat. You're allowed to carry two into battle, although you can pause and swap others from your pouch if needed. Some of them are overpowered though. Daggers and Faeblades may not do as much damage as greatswords, but are super fast, and in this game speed is everything. Then there are the chakrams which are mid-range throwing weapons, that come back to you like a boomerang causing damage on both the departure and return journeys. Almost gamebreaking.
Another thing the game allows you too much freedom with is skills. there are a bunch of skills in the game but 3 stand out as really important to activities in the game. Sagecrafting, Blacksmithing and Alchemy. Alchemy allows you to make your own potions, blacksmithing allows you to make your own weapons, and Sagecrafting allows you create gems that you can then insert into your weapons and armour to give you various boosts as long as they are equipped.
Each of these skills can be allocated points as you level up, which eventually allows you to make better weapons, more complicated potions and better quality gems. Even before then though, quite early in the game, you can make pretty decent items if you have enough of the easily attainable components. Want to make a health potion? get 2 of those plants, and 1 of this plant (both of which were as prevalent as grass on a savannah) and bobs your uncle.
Early in the game, when gold was tight and health potions randomly dropped were low, death was feared and frequent. By the time I stopped playing, I had become almost a death seeker in my playstyle, charging into hordes of enemies, provoking trolls that I used to run screaming like a chicken from. Once I created about 30 health potions at the alchemy lab, and crafted a couple of restoring gems that basically regenerated my health each second, I was almost unkillable.
Perhaps if the designers had restricted each class to one craft it would, and made the other crafted items expensive it would have been better.
Maybe they could have also reduced the number of quests. Quests make up the gameplay of Amalur. there are story quests, which advance the plot, guild quests, which are a series of related quests that make up a small self-contained story, side quests and tasks. Each of these gives you loads of experience. And they are all accessible. If you're a completist like me, you'll want to do everything and halfway through the game, you will probably be the most powerful being in the area.
I stopped playing at the Battle of Mel Senshir. All through the lead up to this key event in the game, characters talk in despair about a Creature of Mass Destrutction the Tuatha are going to unleash on the fortress (Mel Senshir is basically all that keeps the Tuatha from overrunning the mortal lands.). I fought the monster, having moved the difficulty to hard a few hours earlier, and maybe died once. I was just too powerful. My weapons too nifty, my armour too restorative. The monster barely hit me and only messing up on the execution Quick Time Event gave me any difficulty.
Of course there are ways to avoid this. Avoid doing some quests, ignore that person with the exclamation mark above his head. Refuse point blank to do some. I'm actually curious as to what the NPCs say when you select 'I have better things to do' on the conversation wheel. If you do that, you won't have levelled up as much, and hopefully the game will remain a challenge. It also means you can replay the game without doing the same quests over and over, a fact I just realised as I wrote this *facepalm*
I really enjoyed my time playing the game, and I'll definitely play it again sometime. I'll go about doing quests and owning the crap out of any enemy man or beast that steps in my way. Maybe I'll even finish it. It's a great game, I just overindulged. I was gluttonous.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is like going to an all you can eat buffet and really trying to eat all you can. At the end, you're almost like I never want to see food again. However, if you don't pig out, you try a bit of everything your experience will be infinitely better.
