RPG Well Worth Playing
I do not often play demos put I gave the demo for this game a try shortly after it was released. The verdict? A big, fat meh. I was not crazy about the art style, particularly the cartoonish gnomes that feature so prominently in the demo, the tightly restricted map and mute character all led to a feeling of really early 360/PS3 gen game. And if I recall properly one of the main reason why I played the demo was because EA offered some in game bonus armor or something for one of the Mass Effect games.
My overall impression after the demo was KoA was a fairly generic RPG with a lot of button mashing combat. It went on my list to pick up in the bargain bin at some point in the future. Fast forward a year or so and I did pick up the game for less than $20. Looking into it seemed like a game that would not be too difficult to get 100% achievement/trophy completion on and I am an RPG fan so what the heck.
The first hour or two were exactly as I remembered. Generic, cartoonish, not that interesting. And that is the biggest problem with this game. It's pretty good but nothing about it stands out much except for one or two decent boss battles.
But hidden underneath that generic finish is a gem of a game that has a lot, and I mean a lot, going for it. Combat is fun and generally responsive although occasional problems with targeting and response time show it needed some additional tuning and polish. Specifically, I had issues throughout the game with sluggish response to the second or third magic attack chained together and once in awhile switching from blocking to magic would confuse the combat system into thinking I wanted to go into another combat mode. That said, I want to reiterate combat in this game is a strength. No floaty sword swings here. Blows felt solid, chained attacks and attack combos were impressive and fun to pull off. Leaping into the air with a great sword and slamming everyone to the ground on impact never got old. Nor did tossing enemies into the air with swings from a long or great sword. Slicing enemies with chakrams infused with fire magic was great and sneaking up on as enemies and taking them out with a swift dagger strike felt appropriately stealthy.
The great variety of weapons and attacks felt right. Depending on the enemies and their attack strategies the player can swap weapons in and out of their inventory with ease and felt like you always had the right tools for the job. I played the game as a generalist which meant I carry max level warrior armor, craft gems and slot them in to regenerate health and magic, wield magic or bows to attack targets from a distance or get up close and personal with daggers, knives, swords or hammers. I enjoyed having the flexibility to deal with enemies in the best way I saw fit and even on hard the game was not overly challenging. In fact it felt like about the right level of challenge.
For those that want to be more specialized you have the option of building out a mage, warrior or what the game calls a "finesse" which is built around speed, traps and stealth.
And your character progression through the game feels about right, leveling up never takes so long that it feels tedious but it's not so rapid as to eliminate the sense of accomplishment from earning a the next round of skill points to allocate.
Enemies scale to the level you are when enter an area for the first time so a word of caution to not get too far ahead exploring the map if you do not have quests to take you there. There are floors and caps on the enemies in each area so if you do enter an area to early you are likely to get killed often but that come back a few levels later and you may find all the enemies nothing but a nuisance to hinder your travel time from point a to b.
And going from a to b happens a LOT in this game. There are literally hundreds of quests to do. I completed over 150 quests in my 100+ hours of play and still had dozens of side quests that I did not complete. To say I was surprised by the number of quests is an understatement. There is a lot of everything in this game. The total land mass is substantial. Ingredients for potions, loot, enemies and quests are plentiful.
The downside to this cornucopia of plenty is that most of it feels like filler to a greater or lesser extent. The main quest line is moderately interesting but does not really pull you in. The faction quest lines again are moderately interesting but again not very compelling. The dozens of side quests range from borderline interesting to tedious fetch/collection quests. They are okay but because there are so many it was hard for me to care about any of them after playing the game past the first 50 hours or so. If I was in the area I may have made an attempt to finish them, if not they got left.
RPG's frequently have a difficult time pulling off this balancing act. If you like your quest log full then this is definitely a game for you but I was within a few thousand XP of maxing my character level, gear and cash had become less interesting and I just could not muster up the effort to care about the dozens of unfinished generic side quests.
Overall, I recommend this game to any fan of RPG's. It's worth playing through, you can easily sink over 50 hours into the game as I was well past double that. Kingdoms of Amalur was a good game that had the potential to become a solid franchise. It is unfortunate that the studio went bankrupt and we may probably will never see a follow up but this game deserves your attention.