Good Game but as Kevin said its too generic and the quests are your basic ones which will bore you out sooner or later
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review
Game Emblems
The Good
The Bad
A pretty decent action RPG that doesn't quite compete with other games of it's genre, but still good.
Kingdoms of Amalur's combat and character advancement are fantastic enough to overshadow how bland everything else is.
The Good
- Top-notch combat with a real punch
- Fantastic, flexible character advancement
- Some great-looking creatures
- Extensive world with tons of stuff to do and lots of monsters to fight.
The Bad
- Generic story and characters
- Generic world
- Generic quests.
Even the greatest role-playing games aren't necessarily known for their great combat. They're frequently praised for their ambitious worlds, their involving stories, and the element of choice. But when you talk about your favorite RPGs, it's not often that the action is what you talk about first.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is not like those games. In the future, when you talk about Kingdoms of Amalur, the first thing you will probably mention is how fun the battles were. Incredibly, this RPG's combat is so exciting, it could have been used in a pure action game and would have held up just fine. In fact, from a swordplay, loot, and leveling perspective, Kingdoms of Amalur is as good as any RPG in recent memory. This is the role-playing game you should be playing if excellent action and progression are your primary concern.
Of course, RPGs are about more than just swinging swords. The best of them aren't just games--they're worlds, in which unusual people mill about, inviting you into their homes and telling you of unimaginable treasures protected by unimaginable monsters. It's here that Kingdoms of Amalur falters. Amalur is nice enough to look at, and there are lots of things to do there. But each thing you do is pretty much like the last thing you did. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you stumble upon a coven of cannibals and have telepathic conversations with a dog. In Mass Effect 2, you explore the painful past of a troubled young woman and witness the ultimate conflict between mother and daughter. In Kingdoms of Amalur, you kill stuff and listen to a bunch of nondescript characters spout line after line of unexceptional fantasy lore. There's so much talking, so much effort put into all this dialogue. And yet Amalur never develops an identity in spite of it all. There's a lot of tell, but not a whole lot of show.
There's at least a great premise providing a foundation for your adventure. You see, you are dead. Or at least, you were dead before a device called the Well of Souls brought you back to the land of the living. Upon reawakening, you find yourself in quite the position: you no longer have a fate. And because the laws of fate no longer apply to you, you can change destiny as you see fit. Save innocent lives. Kill your enemies. In conversation, act like a jerk--or like an angel. Like other RPGs, Kingdoms of Amalur occasionally grants you the power to choose. However, the story’s very premise nods to the fact that you are a blank slate, free to progress as you see fit. You're special in this world because everyone else is tied to the threads of fate. Before you came along, the future was unchangeable.
It's a pity that Kingdoms of Amalur doesn't know what to do with the setup. You gradually learn more about your self-named, blank-slate character, but the game is more interested in getting you into battle than it is in developing its people. You can talk to the inhabitants about all sorts of things, but doing so is rarely more interesting than reading some dusty tome. It's nice to have a world fleshed out by conversations and books, but in any game, it's better to see and experience an adventure firsthand than it is to hear someone talking about one. There are some nice narrative touches that resonate, such as a conversation with a woman angry that the church has outlawed female clergy. But most dialogue is wooden description.
Many fine RPGs don't feature great central plots or superior dialogue, so the humdrum storytelling may not be a bother for you. It's too bad that the side quests don't pick up the slack. There's so little variety here. Kill spiders, find a missing person, collect these items, and so on. A few of these have a spark of creativity. You partake in a bizarre reenactment of an old legend, speak with a wolf cursed to roam as a human, and assist a dimwit who has been deceived by pranksters pretending to be something they're not. But overall, questing in Kingdoms of Amalur is a game of "chase the waypoint," in which you run toward quest goals without caring about why you're heading there. The dullness of questing is reinforced by your own voiceless character during cutscenes, who mutely stares into space during every conversation as if he or she has heard it all before.
You may have heard Kingdoms of Amalur compared with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in the sense that they are both open-world fantasy RPGs. But such comparisons aren't really accurate. Amalur is "open-world" in a pedantic sense, yet it's not an enormous landmass, but rather a collection of big areas separated by winding corridors. (All you have to do is open the world map to see how different this game's world structure is from an Elder Scrolls game.) It's more akin to a large-scale Fable, with loading times and winding pathways used to segment explorable areas, dungeons, and towns.
The art design may also remind you of Fable (or maybe World of Warcraft), though Kingdoms of Amalur isn't so self-consciously lighthearted. It is certainly lovely, however, in a vanilla sort of way. Bright red and blue flowers dot sun-dappled meadows, where antelopes graze and hop about, prancing away when you draw too near. Crooked lampposts and skewed wooden rooftops welcome you to a desert village and its brown cobbled streets. It's all so pretty, pixie dust rising from enough grassy knolls and daisy patches that it looks like an army of fairies just exploded. But the visual design lacks identity, embracing the middle of the road and never reaching beyond. Kingdoms of Amalur doesn't have the exaggerated charm of Fable II or the rich detail of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. It happily embraces its pedestrian prettiness, like the front cover of any fantasy novel you might find on a bookstore's shelf.
By
Kevin VanOrd, Senior Editor
Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.
87 comments
i liekd this game but they fucked up big u need npc u can do something with love interest ore something like that in a world dos big that was there biggest down fall if u ask me the only reason i play rpg grind is for the romance and mby sometimes the loot THAT I CAN SHOW OFF to somone but sints is off line then give me npc romance nothing ties me to the world i just control the silent guy who can kill stuff Shiara shoudl have been a love intrest i dont know why didnt hey make it happen and that cost them
why do people get so menstrual about some guy they don't know giving his mark out of ten. why does it bother them so much they have to start leaving snotty little messages to show their contempt. grow up ffs.
1 Like Idk why you gave 7.5 but after I played it ,Kingdoms of A.R. definitely deserves 8-9 score.
1 Like yea give diablo 3 8.5 and this game a 7.5...this makes sense !buy this game its good its not perfect and its not as good as skyrim but its good
I am playing this game and definitely worth at least 8.5 or more. Dont judge this game by this review score.
2 Like Just want to add that I have been following Gamespot for roughly 12 years now.
Stop compairing too much, but take titles for what they are.
There are not always I disagree but this specific title did not deserve 7.5. Its an 8.5 to a 9.0. And if you disagree, you did not play the game.
The gamepace smoothness and the combat mechanisc alone makes it stand out, and in that departement it blows titles like skyrim out of the window.
@Gissur66 dont compare it to skyrim the only thin that is close to them is open world and even there skyrim beats it and lets not forger mods for skyrim that is the super extra of all elder games .. THe combat was good i agree but there wasn't any attachment to the world..... my guy ? fuck him he just runs around silently kiling stuff not saying a word!! For me this could have been remedied like fable do it Romance cause that shit makes u care and mby kill stuff to upgrade your hose or vilige bam u got something to love and care about would have made this game epick 8 - 9 for shure
1 Like Just picked this game up for a cheaper price.
I must say that I have stopped reading game spots reviews since around a year back, seriously, cause it feels as if htey believe they are the epitome in this branch.
7.5 for a brilliant game such as Reckoning is shameful.
I have played Dark souls, skyrim, everything out there thats worth playing.
And Amalur Reckoning is very good. The story is not bad at all, the npc narratives are not the greatest but they are good.
And the combat is a mix of Dark souls together with The Witcher. Its far better then the witchers combat, and not as difficult as Dark souls combat, but it has a ton of possibilities.
The areas are just beautiful, in a cartoonish kind of way. And to even have the guts to compare this with Fable reaks of ignorance and probably, not much experience in this game.
I used to seroiusly love Kevins reviews, but I think since Skyrim recieved a 9.5, I have given up hope.
Skyrim is a beautiful world with great voice acting.
The combat is utterly broken, and above all boring, and the game is simply all about if you like to watch the views, listen to voice acting and thats it.
I feel Kingdom of Amalur actually beats in many ways Skyrim, and in some ways fall below. That it would get at 7.5???
Check IGNs review for a somewhat more true view.
Gamespot also destroyed the game developer with this review. They dont realize the power they have, and its shameful when rare gems, such as Reckoning is out there, that they dont give it credit. But they can give 9++ to games such as Medal of Honor 7, or CoD 17.
Shape up Gamespot, among people that seroiusly look at reviews, Gamespot is hardly mentioned anymore due to the extreme jo-jo and scoring of bad titles good and great titles bad, not sure whats up but this specific title did not deserve 7.5, I would agree with 8.5, even a 9, but 8.5 is ok. But 7.5 means you did nto play the game.
Shame on you.
@Gissur66 I'm playing the game right now. I think it's an 8.5, but I can definitely see how someone would give Amalur a 7.5. Aside from the combat, there really isn't much special about the game. It should also be noted that 7.5 is a good score -- it's a recommendation from the reviewer to try the game out.
Finally, GameSpot's review didn't kill the developer. If you want to blame the media, you'd have to point your finger at several outlets, given that it takes more than one review to bring down a big-budget, major title's Metacritic score. However, I think it would be more accurate to blame the developer and publisher themselves for the closings. The publisher's demands that a game sell several million copies and earn a very high Metacritic score are unreasonable. As for the developer, it should have made a better game.
Not sure why you mentioned Medal of Honor. The last one didn't do well critically. However, the fact that a game is in the Medal of Honor or Call of Duty franchises shouldn't automatically bar the title from getting a 9.0 or higher score. Each game should be reviewed individually, and I think that's what GameSpot's team does. The CoD games are legitimately good at what they do.
Words of Kevin VanOrd: "Kingdoms of Amalur doesn't have the exaggerated charm of Fable II..." Seriously?!?
:D
I didn't see any Skyrim influences so far (everything's more colorful, less monotone and some NPCs do have something similar to charm instead of looking like animated dolls).
I laughed at the similarities with The Witcher 2's combat mechanics though I had to admit having several weapons and combos was way funnier and challenging in its own way. I even found Vagrant Story's subtle influences very amusing.
After spending 10 hours of getting lost, looting and exploring (things I would have liked to experience in Dragon Age: Origins and it turned out boring on Fallout 3),
the world's story caught my attention, and hell it's compelling, almost in a The Witcher: Enhanced sort of way, though Amalur is not dark-fantasy packed nor have any strong, memorable NPC -so far-,
and maybe in this case is a blessing.
It seems the writers' staff did everything they could and you got to realize that after seeing cool-looking dungeons... Yeah: Dungeon crawling is varied and funny; haven't seen anything like that (not even decent writing) on DA II right?
I rememeber PSX's Breath of Fire IV as the slowest RPG to get a hook on me, getting interesting in about 20 hours of random gaming. When I got my first chakrams at the first 10 hours I realized I had spent playing more than 8 hours a day.
Oh, and the art is so great. Too bad only comic book enthusiasts may get the message (read somewhere about Todd McFarlane's implication after my first 20 gameplay hours).
Long story short: a funny game for the few people who spent many hours playing RPGs before Skyrim.
basing a game story on good books is still 100 times better than making a boring and "easy to understand" story for all the casuals who get scared if something gets too complicated. I played this a little(3 hours) and it seemed really boring.
it was all, been t here, done that a million times, waiting for something new to pop up or at least some immersion, but it never hapened
Weak Story/Unoriginal? How about all the rpg games based off of RA Salvatore books? I would dare to say it would be hard to find an RPG that has not been influenced by Salvatore!
Some NPC's in Kingdoms of Amalur remind of Drizzit, Creatures remind of Demons from Spawn - when you call something unoriginal and bland or vanilla because it has been done or attempted to be copied by other rpg's who preceeded KoA, you reveal yourself as bias!
@buckwild73 "...ending my EA games boycott..."?! OMG, untill a moment ago, I really thought I was alone in the Universe! Good to know I'm wrong!
1 Like Judging by the reviews & the demo, this game is not worth ending my EA games boycott for.
Given up trying to get this game to work. If I move the mouse really slowly, no problem, as soon as I need to look around, the lag is awful. Tried the various 'fixes' none of which work. Spent best part of the day wasting my time.
I am sorry to say Kevin VanOrd, you are a great editor, but the score you gave for this game is too low. I would say that this is a unique RPG with some good action in it. Pluses that you didn't mention are: 1) No glitches, 2) very smooth game, 3) nice art design for its system requirements, 4) it is a mix of many RPG and Action games put alltogether only from the advantage point of view. From the point of view of RPG: outstanding upgrades and achievements, and very nice leveling up, nice loots. From the point of view of Action: great combos, moves, weapon masterings, mixes of destenies give great push forward, the "fate" finishings are outstanding! Ok, overall I agree with the point that you said that it is generic, I would say that the only point here is the Graphics, it is kinda 2005 game graphics I agree, if the graphics were better or like Witcher 2, the game would be perfect! But just for this point I wouldn't give so less score, but I would give 8.5
It's a great game. GameSpot gave it a bad rating. It's a great game with a great art style, story, quests, characters, UI, smoothness. People hate it only because of Skyrim. Skyrim is so buggy that sometimes I think they just released it without Quality Assurance and the story was so meh. Sure, it has dragons but they use the dragons as story VERY awfully.
1 Like Accurate and great review. The game itself couldn't keep my attention very long, but the seeds are there for a potentially *awesome* sequel.
A great review gamespot! I couldn't agree more! I read this review after I wasted weeks on this game hoping for something to amaze me. Its boring. Its monotonous and I couldn't have written a better review myself. Stories are not engrossing, and the quests are all the same. And please, I played this one right after Skyrim. There is no comparison. Worlds gone mad if it compares this drivel to the likes of Skyrim.
What I do is look at the score of the users and the metascore.. if one of the two is higher then 7.5 I give the game a look. Sure enough this one is easily better then a 7.5. But guys look. We are all different and look at games differently. He is giving us a perspective that is all.
This game actually bridges Fable and Skyrim on some things.. And for me I love it since I stopped playing Skyrim because its kinda hardcore RPG for me.
@fang_proxy did u even know the definition of RPG? dull world? lol im guessing u are one of the person that review the game and gives 7.5 lol
The only available DLC so far are the special delivery chest that you can loot near the inn in the town of Gorhart. You can loot special set of armor & weapons fitted for specific class. I use the "running man" armor set & faeblade weapon coz i use a rogue class. My character looks like a ninja, it's awesome!
I really love the "Dragon Age" world, and I will love it more if the combat system is the same, if not better than, as of Kingdom of Amalur. It's the best combat RPG i ever played so far. The score for this game should be 9.0.
If you would like to read reviews writen by gamers for gamers check out:
www.allthatgamingstuff.com
7.5? Oh, the words "Call" and "Duty" are not in the title. That would explain it. Thank goodness they added "of", or it probably would've gotten a 5. I also noticed it's not the umpteenth sequel to Halo or another Uncharted, so they probably had to shave a few points off for that too. Anyone else just using gamespot as a glorified release date calendar, and screen cap viewer these days?
Woow just woow at gamespot!!! 7.5 for game like amalur? this is just absurd... alot of crappy games got better score just because the publisher is a big company... u really need to learn how review again gamespot!!! nuff said
I'm sorry to say, but I'm never going to trust a Gamespot review. The arguments aren't solid at all to give this game only a 7,5, while other unoriginal games with crappy gameplay (not gonna name them now) always hit a 9 or a 9,5.
1 Like FAAAKEEEE *POINTS AT REVIEWER* (go to ign.com for a real review of this awesome game)
First and Foremost, This game has stolen my life. Its amazing. The review is way off, makes me thing he never played past the demo. Yeah it has some generic moments, but GAMEPLAY, GAMEPLAY, GAMEPLAY!! Everyone is comparing this game to Skyrim... This is the first game they ever made, and if its already compared ti Skyrim then I'd say its pretty damn good! Skyrim has had 5 games previous and its still not what it should be... KOA is awesome! I like it more than Skyrim, someone might ask why? here is why, because its more fun to play. The combat is amazing, the character progression is fun and its just more fun. Skyrim tried to be all serious, I like this game because it is more light hearted. All around I like this game way more. I have played countless hours of Skyrim, yeah I had fun, but not like this. KOA is the better game IMO. Its all about gameplay to me, and this game has it. Plus the gear in KOA is better than Skyrim, I like collecting purples and set pieces.....
This was said about Skyrim: Immense world stuffed with varied tasks to perform (Really?) Dragon battles are a blast (Boring after the third) Lovely art design capped by some beautiful, atmospheric touches (Again, really?) Enjoyable battles that you can approach in a variety of ways (Reckoning does that too) Lots of compelling, self-contained stories to experience in addition to the main one. (Once more Reckoning has tons of this too). Once more I wonder: are GameSpot reviewers a bit biased? I am not a fanboy and loved Skyrim but really ES:V gets a 9 (!) with all the bugs and stuff that had to be fixed by modders (!) and KoA:R just a 7.5? Not that 7.5 is a bad vote but really a one and half point difference with a game that has LESS of the same with a different graphic? KoA offers better fights, a world that is freshly new (ballads, fae and a lot more stuff), ES:V offers, what, ah yes. Dragons! And? Dragons! Bah. They should have gotten the same vote or a 0.25 difference at max. Once more a bad job done here. I wonder why I still come here to read the crappy reviews...
i personally don't like this game except combat.the world seems boring. game needs more polish for inventory,while buying and selling goods,etc
I'm playing it and it is a very decent and amusing game. Solid 8.5 for me. Something new to play while I wait for ME3. I am glad that I can skip all dialogues because then I can go right to what makes this game awesome. The combat. Most fun than any recent game. Definitely better char progression than DA2 and Skyrim combined. And its responsiveness on my kb/mouse makes me wish TW2 had some of it. If Origins, The Witcher series and Mass Effect series are my favorite games, KoA joins Gothic and Risen in a close to the top position for me. I restarted the same char after 30 hours in the game only because I really sucked when I started and I improved a lot, enough to start from scratch in Hard difficulty and make it a bit more challenging. Normal is way too easy. I think the main plot is very interesting too.
Voice acting was simply perfect,and at some levels it was actually better than Bioware games like dragon age but obviously dialogs weren't better.u have to have a very keen sense of hearing to distinguish a same voice actor which acts for 2 or 3 characters. the graphics and artwork is very fit to the world around,some say that it does not fit the story but the fact is that it's not a dark fantasy or anything like it,and its not a fairy tale either! its just a world that is different,u can feel it in every way,u can see that every little thing has a style of its own,but there is one big problem:they did not reinvent anything,every little thing is somehow a copy.they had a lot of influences but at last they didn't give the world of the game the identity that it needed there are a lot of good or bad things about this game,but i'm not the one that have to review the game properly now am i? just doing Kevin's job for him!
the game obviously has issues but it's not that big of a deal to cause so many problems. the story is not bad at all,and questing is not bad either. personally i think some factors that had nothing to do with the game made the review poorer than what was expected. the fact that the game is expensive and gamespot doesn't wanna risk making fans angry by giving the game high scores in review and making fans buy the game which they eventually don't like. another fact is that everybody expected this game to b perfect so this high expectation made everybody disappointed when they saw that quests are like every other RPG.about the story i wanna say that amalur delivered as expected.it was stupid to expect that it'll have a story like Bioware RPG's but it was better than most of elder Scrolls Series in both lore and main storyline.
I'm biased by the review and the score it got. He found huge fun in the game but. Diablo and alike are action&loot oriented rpg-s still they got good score. Here we have the same and its not good. And I will never get why Skyrim got so much hype. I starting to hate that game, because people refuse to acknowledge how BIG CONS has that game. Ok has plenty of good parts (or I wouldnt invest so much time in it), even awesome parts for some (I didnt encounter), but what about the bad? When I hear people talking about bugs and mentioning only mamouths droping out of sky, please give me a break, even an ant bitting me would annoy me more. No I'm talking about HUGE bugs which make u waste hours. I think I wasted more than 10 out of 60 hours on bugs. Ok I was unlucky, but .... that awesome game. Oh what a huge game, I can count the monsters on my fingers, they are 3: plain melle and plain shooters and the dragons, which u shoot them plain simple, nothing more.(Oh I liked when kids are playing outside when I was fighting dragons in their vilage, or entering an inn and inside the mage cast ward because outside is a drag, oh its constant) The mages they only shoot at u, in 60 hours of play I couldnt find one who could cast an invisibility, or weakness or something. Skyrim's battles are extremely boring so Reckoning its the opposite of skyrim, why do u compare it?
Conversation powered by Livefyre
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Not Following
- Publisher(s): Electronic Arts
- Developer(s): Big Huge Games
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release:
- ESRB: M
Kingdoms of Amalur Navigation
