I just tried out the demo for this last night. And I have to say, this game seems really, really cool. Beautiful graphics, fun gameplay and combat, and a pretty engrossing story. Not to mention character customization and what looks like a very solid crafting system for players that are into that sort of thing.
You start off as a "blank slate" and then - similar to the Elder Scrolls games - you pick your race, gender, and class while the beginning parts of the story are playing out. In fact, I believe the lead designer of the game was the same guy that developed Oblivion. (Apologies for not remembering his name. I could look it up, but I'm way too lazy for that.)
Anyone familiar with RPGs will see a number of aspects and elements that invoke several other RPGs. Even the PC's name, The Fateless One. Right off the bat, this is Planescape: Torment. You even start in the Well of Souls amongst the dying and rotting corpses because you yourself are dead - very similar to the starting place in PS:T. (It even looks similar.)
Then the character creator also reminds you of any recent Elder Scrolls game. The combat, particularly for the rogue class, is almost exactly like the stealth professions in ES, complete with an "eye" indicator above each enemy NPC target while you are in stealth that lets you know if you are about to be detected or not. The lockpicking system is also similar to ES games.
Visually, the game looked like a cross between Fable, Rift and even Drakensang for good measure. I know you might be thinking, "WTF? Fable and Rift are nowhere near alike visually." But those two games are what I kept thinking about the most. The character models, which were designed by THE Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame, really did remind me of Fable. As well as the surrounding environment, which was stunning to me. I played the demo on my Xbox, so I can't imagine how beautiful this game must be on a high end gaming rig at max settings.
Also from the pages of Albion, you encounter Lorestones while out questing which are very similar to those Demon Doors in Fable. Only difference, as far as I can tell, is that Lorestones don't offer any quests the way Demon Doors did. But the stories they tell and their "personalities" are entertaining and sometimes hilarious, and I believe you get XP for discovering them.
The lore of the world as well as the backstory was written by R.A. Salvatore. And so right from the get-go, I was completely engrossed in the story. This was a really big deal to me because I often judge RPGs by how well they grab me from the opening moments. Classic RPGs like the aforementioned PS:T or the Baldur's Gate games immediately grab the player by their story. In fact, a good majority of the first parts of Torment were spent reading. It's kind of like that here.
By comparison, Dungeon Siege III and Final Fantasy XIII-2, two games I also recently tried out, failed to grab me in any meaningful way, although FF13-2 did intrigue me a bit. But KoA
had me hooked right away, which is a great sign.
The world of Reckoning is wide open with a very large map to explore, and it also offers fast travel to any place after you've discovered it, so the developers made sure to cut down on the tedium of a lot of RPGs by not punishing new players so much by having us run around to every place on foot to turn in quests and such. Again, this is another sign of a well developed game, in my opinion.
And for those of you that are just in hack and slash and couldn't care less about the story, the combat system greatly echoes God of War with its reckoning mode, which is kind of like a berserk state where a cutscene starts and you have to press a random button to initiate a special attack that basically annihilates everyone around you. It was just fun but epic at the same time.
Anyway, I know this write up was rather extensive but I just wanted to share my experience and opinions of the game thus far, and also get a few more from others that have actually played the game all the way through. I really am surprised I don't see more about this game on here or anywhere else?
Kingdoms of Amalur seems like a really solid RPG.
You start off as a "blank slate" and then - similar to the Elder Scrolls games - you pick your race, gender, and class while the beginning parts of the story are playing out. In fact, I believe the lead designer of the game was the same guy that developed Oblivion. (Apologies for not remembering his name. I could look it up, but I'm way too lazy for that.)
Anyone familiar with RPGs will see a number of aspects and elements that invoke several other RPGs. Even the PC's name, The Fateless One. Right off the bat, this is Planescape: Torment. You even start in the Well of Souls amongst the dying and rotting corpses because you yourself are dead - very similar to the starting place in PS:T. (It even looks similar.)
Then the character creator also reminds you of any recent Elder Scrolls game. The combat, particularly for the rogue class, is almost exactly like the stealth professions in ES, complete with an "eye" indicator above each enemy NPC target while you are in stealth that lets you know if you are about to be detected or not. The lockpicking system is also similar to ES games.
Visually, the game looked like a cross between Fable, Rift and even Drakensang for good measure. I know you might be thinking, "WTF? Fable and Rift are nowhere near alike visually." But those two games are what I kept thinking about the most. The character models, which were designed by THE Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame, really did remind me of Fable. As well as the surrounding environment, which was stunning to me. I played the demo on my Xbox, so I can't imagine how beautiful this game must be on a high end gaming rig at max settings.
Also from the pages of Albion, you encounter Lorestones while out questing which are very similar to those Demon Doors in Fable. Only difference, as far as I can tell, is that Lorestones don't offer any quests the way Demon Doors did. But the stories they tell and their "personalities" are entertaining and sometimes hilarious, and I believe you get XP for discovering them.
The lore of the world as well as the backstory was written by R.A. Salvatore. And so right from the get-go, I was completely engrossed in the story. This was a really big deal to me because I often judge RPGs by how well they grab me from the opening moments. Classic RPGs like the aforementioned PS:T or the Baldur's Gate games immediately grab the player by their story. In fact, a good majority of the first parts of Torment were spent reading. It's kind of like that here.
By comparison, Dungeon Siege III and Final Fantasy XIII-2, two games I also recently tried out, failed to grab me in any meaningful way, although FF13-2 did intrigue me a bit. But KoA
had me hooked right away, which is a great sign.
The world of Reckoning is wide open with a very large map to explore, and it also offers fast travel to any place after you've discovered it, so the developers made sure to cut down on the tedium of a lot of RPGs by not punishing new players so much by having us run around to every place on foot to turn in quests and such. Again, this is another sign of a well developed game, in my opinion.
And for those of you that are just in hack and slash and couldn't care less about the story, the combat system greatly echoes God of War with its reckoning mode, which is kind of like a berserk state where a cutscene starts and you have to press a random button to initiate a special attack that basically annihilates everyone around you. It was just fun but epic at the same time.
Anyway, I know this write up was rather extensive but I just wanted to share my experience and opinions of the game thus far, and also get a few more from others that have actually played the game all the way through. I really am surprised I don't see more about this game on here or anywhere else?
Kingdoms of Amalur seems like a really solid RPG.
