Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on February 7th, 2012

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As the screenshots and videos of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning slowly began to trickle out, a fear grew in the pit of my stomach. A fear that these great talents were assembled to create to most generic action role-playing game of all time. As it stands they came dangerously close. Had the setting been slightly less fleshed-out, the characters slightly more wooden, you might be reading a very different review.

But the dream team came through in the end. The world is vast and varied, conveying a true sense of history through its design and the countless little tales lurking in every shadowed corner. The mechanics are sound and satisfying, marrying the tried and true with the risky and new to create something familiar yet different enough that it doesn't feel stale.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning doesn't come across as the beginning of a new franchise. Thanks to the combined talents of its development team superstars and regular joes alike it feels like the latest and greatest entry in a storied series. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Tellingly, the game is at its best when questing serves the lore. Visiting the gnome capital, for example, shifts the focus to political intrigue as you serve the machinations of small schemers with big ambitions. An even better strand has heroes enacting famous elfin stories, ensuring their history replays as written. As each tale is completed you assume the character's identity, slowly ascending the ranks of elvish royalty. At its heart, Reckoning is an interesting tale about disrupting cyclical fate ironic, considering the game's largely repetitive nature and when the story gets to shine, 38 Studios and Big Huge Games' friendlier design presents a welcome change of pace.

As I continue to play Amalur and try to find the edges of its vast expanse, I am continually delighted and entertained. I cannot recall a game that I have played that was so detailed and on such a huge scale. True, most things that KOAR does are not revolutionary -- but everything it brings it brings in an all-in manner, and the years of development that went into this experience at the hands of many talented folks is clear from the first hour.

The world of Amalur introduced by Reckoning is - to take a cue from the psuedo-Scottish accents prevalent there - frickin' huge. You can get lost for a hundred hours or more looking in each hole and completing each side quest, but even the main story will easily gobble up a quarter of that time before you know it. Reckoning may not revolutionize the roleplaying genre, but it delivers a consistently good package that will keep you entertained throughout.

While colorful, the world of Amalur isn't exactly inviting to explore. The environment feels a little too sparse. There are the random enemy encounters found in nearly every RPG, but it offered very little to distract players from completing main quests or straightforward side missions.

As a first attempt at the RPG, 38 Studios has crafted a satisfactory adventure. Battle mechanics are entertaining and honing characters feels rewarding. It's too bad Reckoning doesn't dig deeper into other elements to make this a truly engrossing epic.

I almost wish I didn't have to review Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. A game like this isn't meant to be powered through. Instead, you are encouraged to take your time, get to know the world and the inhabitants of it, and savor the universe surrounding you. This is a game that I want to be playing when not playing it. I wanted to see what new weapons I could get, what new equipment would show up, and see where the storyline would go to. The combat really sets the game apart, and once you play Reckoning you'll notice how stiff the combat in other RPGs is. I have to hand it to 38 Studios and Big Huge Games with their first RPG attempt. They have not only hit a home run, they hit it out of the park.

In closing, if you love any or all of the following - RPGs, rich fantasy worlds, action games - Reckoning is a rich action RPG with a deep narrative, even deeper character customization, and plenty of content right out of the box. Go get this game. It's not a perfect first title, but enough about it is truly great that very few would be upset about the depth of this game in both story and gameplay. It is good enough that it is already on my short list of games to bring up in ten months, during game of 2012 talks.

If this franchise continues to have a single-player branch, and it has been unofficially confirmed to do so, a tighter narrative with greater character development and more impactful choices would go a long way toward making Reckoning into a more complete package. As it stands right now, the loot-gathering is outstanding and the combat, with the full character progression system supporting it, is faster and more responsive than any other RPG out there. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is great, especially for a first offering, but if Big Huge Games takes this game's foundation and crafts something with a deeper, more involved story, the company will be a force to be reckoned with.

There's a lot more than can be said about this game than I could ever communicate in a review, but this is one that I feel especially strongly about. This is a game designed by lovers of RPGs, for lovers of RPGs. It sidesteps much of the typical issues and tedium found in the different subgenres of the role-playing game in elegant ways, offers brutal and inventive combat, a huge world full of lore and characters to steep yourself in, sky-high production values, and hours upon hours of content. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was clearly a labor of love from creative people with the ways and means to bring their ideas to fruition, and it shows.

If repetition is a fate of all people who create, it is admittedly churlish to turn up one's nose at the absence of newness in any given work. On the other hand, being resigned to the fact that repetition and reassembly is the best one can ever come up with obviates the very spirit of creativity. Reckoning is a perfectly functional and consumable distillation of old ideas, which, when reappropriated, lose any degree of meaning that might have been contained in their original, less perfected forms. It's an excruciatingly dull game, a garish succumbing to the inescapable limits of its creators' imaginations. It is a lavish catastrophe in which all the props have been borrowed from the past, and not a single thing worth doing can be done with them.

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