The Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo And Stupid Gameplay Mechanics

[girzwald]

Yeah, I too fell afoul of the psychic guards.

It seems that going to jail only incurs a minor XP loss, though there may be bigger penalties depending on the severity of the crime. Even so, the items you steal don't seem to be taken away if you go to jail, and I don't think I lost any gold, so unless there are time sensitive quests in the game it seems like going to jail is a slap on the wrist.

And it's certainly better than being forced to murder everyone in town.

It's also pretty cool that you need to find a fence to sell your stolen goods too, thought that was a neat touch.

As for the whole reagent/herb gathering thing, it seems that if you level up your alchemy you have a better chance of getting something useful. In any case, there seem to be meaningful trade offs between the various secondary skills in the thing, and they all seem useful in some way.

Needing fences is a stupid mechanic as well. I to played the demo, and I pick pocketed some items from some bandits. BANDITS, and the shop keepers wouldn't buy them cause they were "stolen". #1 They were bandits, why do they care. #2 Oh, so you are cool with me taking items from someones bloody corpse, but if I pick pocketed them oh no, for shame. #3 How do they know they are stolen?! More psycic NPC syndrome.

 

[Flailing Escapist]

It does have a few problems but the combat hooked me. It reminds me of Fable (1) in the best of ways and the demo plays so much better than Dragon Age 1 or 2. It flows well. I found swtiching between x and y easy, fun and quick (+, +, +). Yes, the bow isn't great but how often is the bow "done well" in rpgs?

I don't mind the weapon degeneration that much either. Skyrim felt a little wierd without it. It doesn't break too quickly (like Dead Rising) and I didn't notice the damage stats going down after much use. But I may not have noticed.

This will probably be a day 1 purchase for me because it looks and feels like fun. Too many rpgs are missing the fun factor of games and games should be fun. They don't have to be. I enjoy micromanaging spells, scrolls, multiple characters, combat stances you name it but the demo looks and plays like a lot of fun.

Yes, Skyrim is pretty fun to play too. But Skyrim really bent Mages over the barrel in that one. I didn't look at it too closely but KoA has many more skills and combat skills than Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls. It feels a lot closer to an rpg than Skyrim or DA2 and its fun.

I'm sold

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I have a feeling this game will be very moddable on PC. And I liked the demo. Sure there are some bad gameplay decisions, but it's nothing that breaks the overall gameplay.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Needing fences is a stupid mechanic as well. I to played the demo, and I pick pocketed some items from some bandits. BANDITS, and the shop keepers wouldn't buy them cause they were "stolen". #1 They were bandits, why do they care. #2 Oh, so you are cool with me taking items from someones bloody corpse, but if I pick pocketed them oh no, for shame. #3 How do they know they are stolen?! More psycic NPC syndrome.

Most certainly, I totally agree. The fence thing is just a stupid stopgap measure so that the people that are really good at stealing stuff in games can makes loads of gold by just stealing.

And usually "fence" is put at some stupidly high level, and by the time people can learn it, they already made plenty of money selling legit goods. I think in Skyrim, the player has to have Speech up to 70 to be able to purchase "fence" with a level point, which is ridiculous because I'm level 41 and I've bought and sold tens of thousands of items legitimately and paid a speech trainer several times, and my Speech is only around 51 or so I'll be pretty much close to level cap at that rate, before I can purchase fence.

You talk about stealing from bandits, well in Skyrim, I was in a dungeon and I saw a necromancer sitting in a chair watching an undead mine ore for him. I snuck up behind him to see if I was actually good enough to pickpocket him without him or the undead noticing. I succeed in taking a nice staff that he had and then assassinated him. Later after I had completed the dungeon and went to sell the things I didn't want, I found that I couldn't sell the expensive staff, because apparently the whole world was watching in that dungeon.

Criminals sell stolen stuff all the time without a lick of charisma, why can't I sell a nice sword I stole to a store that is all the way on the other side of the map?

On thing I've never got is that people will tell me that other mechanics are good because it brings out the realism in a game, but then the turn around and tell me that such a thing "like" fence is a proper mechanic. Which do they want, realism or non-real mechanics used to some how balance the game?

 

[veloper]

Yeah, I honestly don't get the "that's your opinion!" sentiment. Normally, it's stated in a realm where that fact is obvious, but it gets even worse when you've literally and explicitly qualified it as such.

I mean, obviously, nobody's realistically going to call things they like "flaws," anyway.

I mean, would anyone call "fun, fluid combat" a flaw?

Anyway, I haven't played the demo yet, because I want a good block of time to seriously muck about, but I would automatically consider omniscient guards a flaw, even if it might not bug others. And I've never seen a wear and tear system that was implemented in a way I thought was good, so I'd call that a flaw. Though there's the remote possibility that this game might change my perspective forever.

Yeah, I might end up getting the game anyway, since I think I might able to over look the flaws since the rest of the game is pretty fun and the story does sound kind of interesting.

On the combat thing, no joke, I actually have encountered people that called fun and fluid combat a flaw. It was of course in one of those nightmare threads where people that like Dragon Age: Origins are doing battle with people that liked Dragon Age 2.

I had mentioned that I felt the combat was much improved in DA2 because my character could actually run in combat instead of walking like a dope or semi-jogging like in DA:O, also that I liked how I now had complete control over the basic weapon, that my character could actually attack fast and natural, instead of like in DA:O where I had no control over how and when the basic attack happened and my character acted like his arm was caught in tar, because of how slow he swung his sword and how incredibly long it was on between swings.


When I say all that(I've said it multiple times in countless threads), I get loads of people popping out of the woodwork saying that such combat is messed up because it is too fast paced and doesn't allow time to plan the special attacks(them ignoring the fact when one uses a special attack it pauses the action to let you plan where to send the attack, at least for all the attacks that actually need planning). They also tell me that such control of the basic attack is stupid because it turns that part of the combat into a button masher(in bizarro world button mash apparently seems to automatically mean bad combat controls), that they would much prefer that the computer have control so they could keep their thoughts on their other attacks. I find this dumb because that is basically saying, I want the computer to control and play part of the game for me. Frankly, I rather mash a button knowing that my attacks are going to be really fast, not worrying if they are fast enough, then worry that the computer is going to use the basic attack in time or fast enough.

The comparison between DA2 and KOA doesn't really hold up.

Amalur has pretty decent action combat. The controls could be a little more responsive, but timing your blocks, rolls and attacks still matters.

DA2 was bad because you're just spamming the attack button over and over, with no gameplay mechanic behind it whatsoever. Might aswell set it on auto-attack then and save yourself some repetitive strain.

The people you cite who prefered Origins, prolly feel that way because they played the game on PC where the game plays more like a mini-RTS (with 4 units) that gives you a tactical overview from above and enables some features like friendly fire.
The sequel was neither a good action game nor a tactical game.

EA seems to get away with focussing on making KOA an action game(RPG) and doing an okay job.

 

[Mugen]

i was really excited for this game, got the demo, fired her up.

not 5 minutes in i receive a shield, which i proceed to equip. nothing happens.

i re-check my inventory, make sure it is equipped. still nothing.

now a tool tip pops up and tells me how to use the shield.....MY CHARACTER PROCEEDS TO PULL IT OUT OF NOTHING/THE ETHER/SOME FUCKING UNKNOWN DIMENSION....but only while the trigger is held, and then its gone, back to whatever plane this in-animate object inhabits until it is needed.

really? a game will come out in 2012, and it is so budget that they cant even have an effing shield animation on my characters back? how hard is that, REALLY?

also, this game seems to suffer from Dynasty Warriors Syndrome, in that the same attack patterns are repeated X Infinity. Sure, its only a demo, but i played it for 2 hours and each weapon had the same animations. I PROBABLY SAW THOSE 3 ANIMATION 1000 TIMES EACH. that is effing ridiculous in a modern game.

and the staff having set spells as its combo?
we KNOW that doesn't work, remember Dragon Age 2, people? remember how much it sucked?

will you be taking my hard earned dosh this February, Amalur?

METHINKS....NOT

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

I think the OP's criticisms are fair, but they also demonstrate why I tend to play all of these games the same way - as a goody-two-shoes mage.

You see, being "evil" or "criminal" in just about any RPG ends up feeling extremely stupid or forced, and being "stealthy" ends up breaking the game and/or producing idiotic NPC behavior.

As a mage, you typically get more varied and numerous abilities to keep combat fresh, and your standard approach to combat doesn't test the limits of the game's AI. And as a good guy, your actions tend to make greater inherent sense on account of the clear motivations and chains of logic - you're not randomly murdering or stealing or acting a dick.

I played Reckoning in this fashion and had a rather nice time. I'm definitely picking it up. If I were intent upon testing out the more stealthy or villianous elements of the game, I might not be so keen.

Edit: lol even the ridiculously stupid "vanishing shield" makes a fuckton more sense as a mage because you're using some sort of energy barrier instead of a traditional metal one. Also, the combat obviously becomes more complicated as you unlock new abilities.

 

[Something Amyss]

Ah. No. My Gold account ran out when I stopped playing Halo 3 online. Sigh.

You should be good next week, then. It's dumb.

I'd actually forgotten this until I went to XBox.com and it told me it was a gold exclusive.

 

[KageUsagi]

This demo was quite awesome. I understand most of your criticisms are your own personal gripes but I don't really mind most them.

For me the combat was great, the setting was unique and very beautiful, the characters were fun, the quests were pretty cool (wolf stuck in a man's body), and did I mention how much I loved the combat?

The combat in this game was perfect. All the different weapons flow nicely into one another and the spells are awesome. I barely used the bow so I can't really comment on that. The quick time events are done nicely as well since it effects the amount of XP you get. This makes it kind of fun for me even though I hate quick time events.

Also this game has huge amounts of lore. I'm pretty sure like 10,000 years or so have been written. They also have two websites and one of them has a HUGE amount of lore on it. It looks like a great game if you love a good, and unique world.

So this demo made me pre-order this game. I really hope this new IP succeeds because I hope we get to see more from this studio.

 

[Palademon]

I thought it looked interesting.
The demo killed it for me.

 

[putowtin]

I'm just playing to get the weapons and armor for Mass Effect 3. I have no intention of buying this game.

I gotta admit that's the only reason it's currently downloading, one quick playthru and that badboy will be deleted.

 

[Roganzar]

my only problem was the whole silent protagonist thing.

Really? I would've thought the abysmal controls and way-shittier-than-Skyrim UI would be everyone's major problem. Having a silent protagonist is small fry compared to those.

The demo is a bad console port. I have no guarrantee that the game isn't going to also be a bad console port. It's wrong, lazy and unacceptable, and the developers should feel very very bad about it.

Very. Bad.

Allow me to amend that.
My only other problem, than what the OP had originally stated, was the whole silent protagonist thing.
It's not going to do very well going by the demo (controls, UI, lack of voice acting, limited animations, take your pick) but that may just be the demo and the real thing could have much better versions of all of that. I don't believe that for a second. I want to, I just don't.
It would have been a great game seven, yeah seven, years ago but today, I don't think it'll do well.

 

[AD-Stu]

Downloaded and played it solely for the free ME3 loot.

My impressions are that it's yet another generic fantasy RPG. The cartoony visuals really don't do anything for me and I could nitpick a bunch of other things too, but those two alone are enough to convince me that I've played the game for the first and last time.

 

[Tony Tony Chopper]

The nail in the coffin for me was when I found out that, like Skyrim, the game becomes cripplingly easy after about 10 hours of play if you are doing all the side quests (and building your skills well). Supposedly by halfway through the game (even on the hard difficulty) you essentially cannot die and practically one shot most enemies.

But then I found that someone had written scripts for "Cheatengine" that make the game significantly harder. With some pretty gnarly handicaps on, this game now feels like an rpg version of god of war, which kicks ass.

The only problem for me now is the camera follow distance, which is way too low.

The awesomeness of this game with altered difficulty settings far outweighs the insignificant problems the OP mentioned, which I do agree are all stupid game mechanics (but you forgot the worst one of all! mentioned below).

The game also employs the worst mechanic from god of war, button mashing sequences. The are, however, not very prominent, so not as annoying as they were in god of war.