Fun fact of the day: Curt Schilling, founder of 38 Studios, is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. And an MMO veteran, with a long past in Ultima Online, the Everquests, and World of Warcraft. He was even a virtual character in Everquest II for a while, and every time players beat him, Sony donated 5 Dollars to charity. The man has credentials.
Other key figures of 38 Studios are well-known comic artist Todd McFarlane (Spawn) and fantasy author R.A. Salvatore (Forgotten Realms). Together they conceptualized Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, a fantasy action RPG ultimately developed by Big Huge Games (Rise of Nations).
Enough with the namedropping? Alright, let’s get to the meat of it. Kingdoms of Amalur presents itself as a brightly coloured, open-world Action RPG. The emphasis here is on the word Action – the game was touted upfront to have very appealing combat mechanics.
You start off with a short, interactive cut-scene during which you select your character from four available races and define your base attributes. Then you are released into a linear tutorial sequence which will teach you almost everything you need to know. It also gets the story underway – although it doesn’t make too much sense initially. You were dead, and now you’re alive again. Some gnome talks to you about the Well of Souls, but doesn’t get very far, because just then, the Tuatha, one of the opposing factions, attack his lab. You run, end up in the open world and find your way around.
It quickly becomes clear that the focus of this title is on the combat. And heck – it’s good fun, and easily the most enjoyable I’ve seen in RPGs in a long time. It has a very accessible control scheme and practical combos. Rarely has it been so easy and fluid to switch between melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Every character class has access to all nine weapon types in whichever combination is desired – this allows every type of player to find their favourite combination. It’s fun, it looks good on the screen – certainly the best part of KoA.
The skill trees add to the variety by providing several character paths to choose from. Once you have found a weapon combination that works for you, you may want to invest your skill points into improving your abilities for those weapons. This unlocks special moves which in turn help you finish off opponents faster. In addition, there are a number of active and passive abilities available to spice up the mix. Also, at every level-up, you receive one point to invest into secondary skills such as lock picking, blacksmithing and alchemy – inconsequential because you’re not forced to use any of them, but it does add to your individual style if you so wish.
But alas, tedium sets in. Because fighting is pretty much all you do. Most of the minions drop easily, groups rarely pose a challenge. The occasional mini-boss will take a bit more of your attention, but even they are figured out quickly.
Despite the strong RPG guise, Kingdoms of Amalur is a Hack’n Slash at heart. The story, the side quests, tasks – they’re just vehicles to get you from one fight to the next. Especially egregious was an instance where I had to make a traitor confess to his crimes in public – and I had to do it by fighting him.
Kingdoms of Amalur has a very generic High Fantasy setting. The world, while being designed as fairly open, always feels restricted – almost like one large corridor. The story has the trappings of a fantasy adventure, but all the while it fails to make me actually care for the world, the characters and their problems.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
There’s a lot of Fable in the graphical style. The characters and their faces, as well as the voiceovers are very reminiscent of Microsoft’s RPG series, and not just because of the British accents. Unlike the monochrome worlds of some other RPGs, this one is very colourful, to the point of being overly bright – almost kitsch.
Animations are satisfactory, special effects look fantastic. On the downside, the environments are very static – not a leaf blowing in the wind, grass doesn’t move for anything, even water doesn’t leave too much of an impression.
Sound is similarly run-of-the-mill – nothing that particularly stands out, but nothing that’s really terrible. Except for the fact that my character is completely mum and hardly even utters a sound when running or fighting. That, dear developers, is so last century, and every time I experience it, it becomes more of an immersion breaker.
The bottom line is that we have a game that will generate diverging opinions. If the idea of a straightforward Hack’n Slash with a fairly open world, addictive combat mechanics, a good dose of MMO trappings and tons of quests, side missions, and items entices you, then this is definitely something you should buy. On the other hand, if you like immersive RPGs, strong stories and meaningful choices – you may want to give it a skip.
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