Developer: 38 Studios
Publisher: EA
Release date: 10 February 2012
Kingdoms
of Amalur: Reckoning takes place as the name suggests in fantasy realm of Amalur,
which already has a 10,000 year history thanks to the 22 time New York Times bestselling
author R.A. Salvatore.
The game has some very big names to it including Ken Rolston who is of Morrowind an Oblivion fame and the artist
Todd McFarlane, best known for his work on the Spawn comic. The developers
claim to have set their sights on a game that will change the RPG genre forever
and after playing the demo (Available on Xbox Live, PSN, Steam and Origin right
now.) it seems they are well on their way to hitting that target.
Story
Reckoning
casts you from the start as a dead person. Now seeing as that being a corpse is
hardly an exciting way of playing games you're promptly resurrected by a gnome called
Professor Hughes, whose experiments have finally paid of seeing as you are the
first ever person to return from the dead. This in turn means your character
has no destiny and is free to craft his own path through a now war torn Amalur.
You get to choose between four races ranging from the Sea faring Varani, the
dark elves known as Dokkalfar, the noble Almain and the Lfosalfar light elves.
Combat
Studio
founder Curt Shilling describes the game as a marriage between God of War and
Oblivion, and while that statement isn’t a hundred percent true, but its dam close.
The game uses a one button combat system but manages to do this without making
combat to simple. The game allows you to have two weapons equipped at any time,
that are mapped to the face buttons meaning that you can switch from slicing
you opponents with daggers to beating them senseless with a hammer without
skipping a beat.
But
were the game excels is how diverse each weapon’s play style is. Hammers rely
on you to not keep beating and not give your enemies time to attack. Striking with
the sword, pausing for a moment and then striking again send your enemy flying
into the air whereupon you can proceed to juggle them with your weapon. Heavier
weapons cause you to rely on blocking and counter, while daggers and faeblades
provide you opportunity to dodge and counter attack from behind.
Charging up an
attack with the daggers cause you to
enter a stance from where you can proceed to teleport through enemies causing
damage in the process.
Mages
on the other hand can dish out damage with some great spells but luckily you won’t
miss out on beating stuff to death thanks to stave's, wands and chakrams.
 |
| Mages can dish out melee damage with these Chakrams |
Proceed
to beat everything around you however you please and eventually you’ll be able
to enter Reckoning mode. Reckoning mode makes you faster, stronger and tougher
than usual but the real kicker is that instead of killing and enemy you put
them into a kneeling position where their life starts to unravel. After doing
this with all enemies in your area you can perform a Fate Shift Kill, these are
handled in the form of quick time events that can double your experience gain from
the battle if preformed fast enough. These Fate shift kills has you summoning a
assortment of shiny weaponry and using them in some surprisingly brutal ways.
The
combat feels brutal, fluid and like it’s been ripped straight out of something
like Darksiders and serves it purpose beautifully: It makes you feel like a
badass.
Role Plating Mechanic
Know
we’ve established that Reckoning has great combat it’s worth noting that the development
team hasn’t skimped on the role playing mechanics completely. There are three
skill trees players can invest skill points each time they level up. The trees
called Might, Sorcery and Finesse loosely translate into Rouge, Warrior and Mage,
the pinnacle three classes of any decent RPG. While you can invest heavily in
making your character some kind of berserker that will charge through everything
or make an arch mage capable of killing only by raising a finger, Reckoning promises
that a hybrid will be easier than in other RPGs of its kind. In other words: “Your
battlemage won’t suck.”
Final Impression
Now
generally comparing games is a sin but I'm doing it anyway. It’s impossible to
play Reckoning without comparing it to games like Gothic or Fable. But this is
anything but bad because the comparisons only make you realize how superb
Reckoning is. The graphics, art style, gameplay, weapons and story all promise
to combine in a game that is going to shake up a genre that has been busy of
late and assert itself as a threat to big games like Fable an The Elder Scrolls
series.
In
short, this is a RPG fan’s wet dream.
PS: Mass Effect Fans take note: Go and play the demo as it will unlock a exclusive weapon and armor set (pictured below) if you play all 45 minutes of it.
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