Why wasn't Kingdom of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

My problem is that the lore is too heavy handed. You speak to NPCs about the world and they vomit at you various terms that only exist in Amular. With Skyrim and Dragon Age, the terms unique to those worlds were less.

Another problem is respawning enemies. I've just murdered a clearing of fairy beasts. How did they return so quickly? They shouldn't have let enemies respawn. It would have felt like you had a lasting impact on the world.

The zone progression is very linear, and too much. There is too much content, and it's presented in a more linear fashion. Skyrim's content is broad, but it doesn't channel you through it. You don't lose sleep about ignoring some quests. In Amular you feel the need to do every quest. Which results in every quest going grey, and hitting the level cap before you're even half-way in the game. Afterwards the only incentive to keep playing is the narrative, which isn't exciting.
The idea of fate is interesting, but that's all it is. It's an idea you can think about, but isn't actually meaningfully talked about in the story. It might feature beyond a strange game-play mechanic later on, but I quit playing after I reached the capital city.

The DLC is much better than the main game. Because the game feels more focused. The experience feels more complete. The Pirates was interesting, and the secret flying city was absorbing. Shame the main story fell flat.
It's a fun game for the first half. But then it runs out of steam. I blame its length.
I rarely ever complain that a game is too long, but Kingdom of Amular is too long. It's unable to keep my interest for that long (and that's coming from someone who completed Dragon Age Origins 3 times and has 400 hours in Skyrim), and over 1000 hours in Pokemon games.

Combat is fun. But it stops being fun when progression stops (level cap/gear upgrades dry up).

The lore thing is definitely an issue. I find that a problem with many games just throwing out names at you, even movies do that quite often as well.

I haven't had an issue with respawning enemies because I don't run back and forth constantly through areas, it's fast travel for me.

I don't get why you feel you must do every quest in KoA. If you do the same thing in other games, the same thing happens as well. You have to pick and choose the quests you do instead of doing every one. In any open world game if you try to do everything (even like GTA), it feels like it'll never end.

I might have to get the DLC then if I beat the game and still want more it as you're the 2nd person in the thread that says it was good.

If you say KoA is a harder game then Dark Souls, you have lost all rights to speak. Dark Souls isn't insane like people say, but there is pretty much no way someone is going to beat every boss first try. Especially the Bed of Chaos. While you can avoid every trap by observing and understand 90% of boss's special moves by staring at them in the first 4 seconds of your first fight and looking at how the area is designed, you will NEVER be able to catch every single one before they eventually get you. And can someone please tell me how the fuck bows have any use at all in Dark Souls? They control like utter shit, do so low damage with any of the ones that don't take 5 minutes to fire that any enemy with a shield is gonna take fuck all damage and the ones without likely are fast enough to prevent you shooting them anyway.

You just lost all rights to speak by asking what the point of bows are in Dark Souls. The bow and arrow is immensely important, every time I got to a NPC that sells stuff, I bought as many arrows as I could hold. It's damage scales with Dex so that's how you get it to do more damage. I'm guessing the crossbow might scale with Strength so strength builds have a ranged weapon. The primary purpose of the bow is to pull enemies one-by-one to you so you can always fight 1v1 because the combat system sucks when fighting multiple enemies (you can't even backpedal with a shield up without being locked-on). Also, the bow can be used to cheese so many enemies in the game because if you are far enough away, you can continually hit them without them coming to you. I think every one of those Prowling Demons can be killed with a bow from afar. I killed the Gaping Dragon with just a bow. And guess how you can beat those Anor Londo archers.

There's been encounters in KoA that I had to retry more times than any encounter I ever had in Dark Souls. It took me an hour to beat these Niskaru hunters and then boss as a NPC was grabbing this spear. I may have gotten lucky with the Bed of Chaos because it only took me a couple tries. Then, I remember reading a post of someone saying they don't want to play Dark Souls again just because of the Bed of Chaos so I guess I got lucky or something. I think it's just bullshit that you can block just about every attack (from large creatures and many bosses) as a Dex build with a light shield and clothes on. In KoA, when you block as a rogue, you don't block all the damage like Dark Souls. Most bosses are just a joke in Dark Souls, there are a FEW tough ones but that's it.

Ok, all of the Dark Souls arguments are terrible. Not just by OP, but by a lot of the responses. Seath is very easily exploitable by standing tight to his stomach, and many of the enemies are exploitable with arrows/kiting/ledges, that's just a fact. However, saying that with an underleveled thief character you can block and win against most enemies is strictly bullshit, especially when it comes to Sif. Unless you have a shield very highly upgraded, you'll run out of stamina very quickly fighting the canine blender if you block every hit, and then he'll gib you. The AI could be a lot better, there are plenty of points where it is exploitable, but you don't have to take those options. You're free to play the game that way if you want, but it's unfair to assume that you're supposed to play that way. You shouldn't be able to, and it's a design fault certainly, but that's not a fault with the combat system itself. The camera functionality isn't nearly as bad as you make it seem, and while lock-on is handy and almost never bugs, playing with camera unlocked is easy, and is actually a key strategy in PvP. Also, the progression on melee characters argument is ridiculous. The progression in that game isn't based on active skills for fighters/assassins, it's based on weapons that have completely different kits and learning new strategies.

I have never played KoA, I have no problem with it. It looks like a fun ARPG, but your arguments about Dark Souls are viewing the game in the worst possible light and some are straight up hocus.

I'm not a Dark Souls expert, I didn't read guides or anything. I just felt like a dragon fight should be HARD. I didn't know Seath was easily exploitable; he cursed me in my first encounter, then I put on curse resistant stuff and he literally couldn't do anything. There was a poster in this thread that said I was lying about how I beat Seath and he had like 400 hours played. Against Sif, I'm not sure if I was underleveled or my equipment as my main weapon did like no damage against him and I had to use Lightning Spear to do any decent damage. I did start leveling my equipment late as I thought Dark Souls was a game where you got new better shit, but it's mainly a game where you level the shit you got. I did a combination of dodging and blocking in the fight, it's just that I shouldn't be able to fully block attacks from large creatures, you can't in KoA but you can in Dark Souls. You can block the Knights' triple sword attack fully as a thief with a light shield for example, that shouldn't be possible. If I could backpedal with a shield up and not locked-on, the combat would be much much better, that is the thing I hated most about the controls. You Dark Souls fans make way to much of an issue with the weapons all have different heavy and special attacks, the moves are only a minor difference from weapon to weapon and the functionality is usually the same for the most part. Most of the time is spent just standard blocking and attacking, which is the same with every weapon.

When the game goes out of its way to cheaply kill me (like Anor Londo archers), I will go out of my way to cheaply exploit it. Putting enemies camping corners like a camper in a FPS is just stupid, not fun, and not hard either. KoA doesn't do that so I don't feel the need to find some corner where I can't get hit or exploit the AI, I feel like fighting the enemies straight up because they attack me straight up.

I've had to retry encounters in KoA more times than I've had to retry encounters in Dark Souls. KoA is harder in my opinion. All you have to do is play cautious, patient, and smart in Dark Souls and it's easy. I never get hit by a trap in Sen's Fortress for example because I was cautious.

 

[gavinmcinns]

Because it was a shit game. Too easy, too cheap, too devoid of any good reason to play. Which is actually why it should have sold very well. The human organism is confusing and random in many ways.

 

[pearcinator]

I agree with you TC...I thought the game was awesome! Such a shame what happened to the developer because it was a solid game and I had a lot of fun with it (even though I didn't quite get to finish it cos my laptop hard drive got wiped)

 

[piinyouri]

Less brand recognition for one, but also it's also got problems all it's own, and is far from perfect.
Granted Skyrim and Dragon Age have their problems as well.

I enjoy the game quite a bit, but I can understand why it doesn't appeal to some people.
Probably it's biggest flaw is it's just too easy, and this is coming from someone who really hates super difficult games.

 

[Rattja]

Ok, i've been reading this back and forth about Dark Souls, and come to a conclusion.
It has a good combat system at it's core, but the AI is somewhat broken, and it in turn breaks the combat. I have not tried PvP yet other then the odd superpwoered idiot ganking me after kindeling.

The bad AI breakes the combat as you can more or less cheese your way through the whole thing if you want. I think the only bosses that I didn't find an exploit/easy tick for was the four kings and Bed of Chaos (seriously fuck that boss).

As for how hard it is? It depends on who plays it and what they are used to playing.
If you have been playing a lot of games like this, you will know how things work and it won't be that hard.
If you have been playing other games mario or gta the enitre time, you will find the game quite brutal.
Reading attack patterns is second nature to some of us at this point, not everyone has that. Easy to forget.

 

[aguspal]

...'Cos it's bad?
It felt like if Fable touched up on the combat but decided to remove any sense of charm of parody in the process. The camera defaulted to tilt downwards so no matter how pretty the game actually is you spend 75% of the time staring at the shitty floor textures.

Not to mention that it was easy as balls. On hard mode smithing is hardly needed, and potions dropped with such frequency that every battle devolved into "spam chakram attack, dodge to get range, spam chakram attack". Barely any of the attacks had a good feeling of impact or were even that useful since they either did so little damage or had so much wind up time the spam of 50 minor enemies would stunlock you to death for attempting to break away from the same repetitive dull grind.

Maybe the story and characters and dialogue make up for all this but after playing the demo and listening to the uninterested voice actors jabber on and on and on about "guuu destiny" and "huuur fateweaver" I decided I'd nip that one in the bud.

All my opinion of course. If you like the game then on your head be it but I thought it was kind of really shit.

Wow, thread owned in just 1 post. Well done!

 

[RevRaptor]

honestly I think gamers now days are spoiled for choice. Amalur's a pretty good little game but it has its problems, with so many other options out there, its understandable why some people won't play it. We have only so much time to play after all and there are a lot of good games out there.

I tend to think of it as games grouped into tiers. 1st would be your elder Scrolls, Zelda's and Fallout's. 2nd would be Amalur, Fable and Overloard etc.

There 2nd tier games are still fun but if you only have enough time to play one game you might wanta stick with first tier games

 

[Phantom Kat]

So I got bored and played a couple hours of KOA.

I could kill pretty much everything with daggers and gratuitous amounts of rolling. The only times I died were because I got stuck on terrain, the camera arbitrarily moved while I was busy trying to dodge an attack, and a quest npc got in the way when I was trying to dodge an attack.

It's far too easy and the only deaths are cheap deaths.

 

[S1leNt RIP]

Dark Souls is all about the combat, and KoA beats Dark Souls at what Dark Souls is supposed to be all about, KoA is even a harder game to boot. That's why I brought up Dark Souls.

Wut? No it most certainly isn't.

And Dark Souls is NOT all about the combat. It's all about the ATMOSPHERE. Every single bloody thing in that game goes to service the main strength, which is the ATMOSPHERE. It gives Pripyat a hard run as one of the most atmospheric games of all time. The combat, frankly, is more than a little janky.

All that said, to answer your OP, KoA did not receive the same acclaim as Skyrim, Dark Souls or Dragon Age: Origins because it's nowhere near as good as any of those titles. It's a fun, slightly underrated action RPG with lots of polish and flair and a lamentable amount of bland flab...a casualty of Curt Schilling's everlasting hard on for Everquest and inability to keep MMO mechanics from slipping into a single player game (where they really have no business being). If it was a tighter, more focused experience it might have been received better. But it wasn't, so it wasn't, and now Curt is broke, and Amalur is a footnote in history and a cautionary example of how not to run your business.

The only good thing about Dark Souls was atmosphere, I'm not sure if I would say that is what Dark Souls is ALL about. The game really tries to sell itself as having a great combat system (which it doesn't) and being hard (which it isn't). Gameplay-wise KoA succeeds where Dark Souls fails. A game needs more than atmosphere to be good especially when you spend so much of your time fighting enemies. Now if Dark Souls was like survival horror instead, then it would be a different story.

It blatantly steals its mechanics from other games, the fighting is Fable, the lockpicking is Skyrim/Fallout and the story is... well, it just feels pointless.

Not really, the fighting is way better than Fable. Before I even downloaded KoA for free, I watched Angry Joe's review as because just because the game is free doesn't really mean much; he literally said KoA is Fable 3 if it didn't suck.

Are you really saying KoA is better than Dark Souls? Fuck, I mean that's your opinion, but JESUS is it misguided. Dark Souls combat is MEANT to be simple and slow, it's not about jumping around spitting sparkles from your magic sword. It's a methodical, more realistic boxing match between you and the enemies/environment, COMPLETELY different from the combat in KoA or any of those games you mentioned. It also takes brains and planning, not just mashing each ability as it comes off cooldown. And no, the game isn't as hard as it is hyped up to be, but in a market of games for dipshits that hold your hand through everything it's still a refreshing breath of air, and worth talking about.

If you think the atmosphere is the only good thing about Dark Souls you are very misguided. It's fantastic in its gameplay, aesthetic, design, amount of depth, the bosses, the enemies, locations, the characters and story. Far better than anything else I've seen in the past few years, and many would be inclined to agree with me.

You have my Chaos Zwei! I just couldn't hear those things said about my precious Dark Souls!!! Thank you for representing my opinions and or beliefs!

 

[scw55]

I don't get why you feel you must do every quest in KoA. If you do the same thing in other games, the same thing happens as well. You have to pick and choose the quests you do instead of doing every one. In any open world game if you try to do everything (even like GTA), it feels like it'll never end.

The thing is, Kingdom of Amular isn't open world. It's a linear game with a lot of quests. In every none-open world RPGs, you pretty much try to complete every quest you encounter because it ensures you're the highest possible level for future content.

If Kingdom of Amular is open world, then so is Dragon Age Origins. It's the fact you have to visit each zone in sequence as it follows the main story. To me, an open world game is where the world almost opens up fully without you even having to invest much in the main story line. In open world games you can get fulfilling enjoyment by ignoring the main quest line.

 

[Orc Town Grot]

Having player Amalur to the end and ALL the side quests, have to say it became a painfully BORING game. First impressions are fair, and after 10 hours you start to think it is getting better. By then you are comfortable with the combat, picked up some big loot, beat up some bosses and explored a few zones. But the game doesn't get better it gets worse. New zones aren't more interesting. New plot lines aren't more engaging. The combat becomes repetitive, stale and then dull-as-dull. The loot drags out to a thousand pieces of useless crap that just clutters inventory and kills any hope of getting good drops. It's not a BAD game but it is a terribly MEDIOCRE game.

Comparisons to other games are beside the point. Though I find Skyrim and Amalur to both be around 6/10, I'd rather play Skyrim any day. Likewise Dragon Age: Origins is not perfect either but still better than Amalur.

 

[Latinidiot]

Because it wasn't as good? It got stale pretty quickly. Where with skyrim, after my first playthrough I desperately wanted to play it again, in spite of having discovered most of the world. In demons souls I was challenged to be quick, be wary, not to trust. To know rhat the world itself was hostile and I was an unwanted guest. Amalur was allright. There really was nothing that made it stand out. The story focuses on the past that your character doesnt remember, and you dont either making him/her someone who is not you, and also really bland so one can roleplay. Combat was okay, and lore was pretty interesting, being based on irish myth and fairytales. But nothing really made
IT stand out. It was bland after 20 hours, and it is a miracle that i lasted another 30 before i kind of just lost interest.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The thing is, Kingdom of Amular isn't open world. It's a linear game with a lot of quests. In every none-open world RPGs, you pretty much try to complete every quest you encounter because it ensures you're the highest possible level for future content.

If Kingdom of Amular is open world, then so is Dragon Age Origins. It's the fact you have to visit each zone in sequence as it follows the main story. To me, an open world game is where the world almost opens up fully without you even having to invest much in the main story line. In open world games you can get fulfilling enjoyment by ignoring the main quest line.

KoA is an open world game. You can explore the whole first half of the world at the very start of the game if you want, there's literally nothing stopping you from going to the next area. I just got to the point where the main quest and faction quests have you take a ship across the water to the other side of the map (you probably can take a ship over without advancing the main quest because at least 1 faction quest takes you there). If you use the same logic, then games like GTA and inFamous aren't open world as you unlock access to other islands via the story. Borderlands is also open world as well. A linear RPG is something like FFX, Eternal Sonata, and Xenosaga and even in those games, you have no need to do the sidequests if you don't want. Mass Effect is linear as well and you don't have to do sidequests in that either. I don't get why you wanna be at the highest possible level for the content ahead because that usually causes you to be overleveled thus making the game a cakewalk (like Borderlands). With JRPGs, I purposefully never grind because the game becomes way too easy then. Basically, I never do all the quests in any RPG because I don't want to overlevel and most sidequests are crappy so why do them.

Having player Amalur to the end and ALL the side quests, have to say it became a painfully BORING game.

I started doing all the quests because the 1st area seemed to have about the right number of quests, but that 2nd city just piled on the quests and I did them, but the game was starting to feel like a grind. I looked at the map and saw I was barely pushing east across the map with like 20 hours played and I thought "Fuck this" and decided to only do the main quest and faction quests while doing any sidequests that seemed good and were on my way. Since then, the game is back to being enjoyable and fun, and I have over 30 sidequests piled up now and I'll do at most a quarter of them if that. I just don't get the point of doing every quest or if you're not having fun. There's some games that I absolutely love that I won't even try for the Platinum trophy because there's a few trophies that I just won't do because they are time consuming and it won't be fun getting them.

Side content in open world games and RPGs are there for the people who just absolutely love the game to death. Most players just won't have fun doing them and don't like the game enough to spend so much time with it. In a game like Disgaea, you go into items and fight, it's ridiculous.

 

[saxman234]

I'm reading some complaints and Dark Souls bashing, this is not ok (it is actually ok as long as they are well constructed criticism)!! Besides some balancing issues when playing pvp the game is fantastic. It has more atmosphere, character, personality, stories (yes, it has some of the most interesting lore and npcs, there are multiple popular youtube channels that just go into Dark Souls extensive lore) and the game gives a greater sense of accomplishment than any other game. There is so much depth to dark souls combat, design and mechanics. If you just use a long sword the entire game, yea it wont fricken change, and I seriously doubt most players did not have substantial difficulty on a majority of the bosses the first time they fought them. I haven't played Kingdom of Amalur yet, but the combat seems closer to an action game, which is fine, but is nothing like dark souls.

edit: So after watching gameplay footage of KoA, and reading through more of this thread, this is a completely useless thread and probably should just end. There is nothing here besides "this game has better combat", "no this game is easy piesy", "no this game has the same amount of problems", "No your wrong, I spammed this boss with 300 arrows and he died, this game is easy". I just find it silly to compare games that are completely different. Really besides the generic umbrella of "FANTASY RPG!", these games are all completely different. (Also, why is there comparisons to Bayonetta here?)

 

[Stabby Joe]

I get why several people like Skyrim or Dragon Age more, Battenberg posted why he liked Skyrim better. Even then, Battenberg posted flaws of KoA that just don't exist like there's no skill to bring down merchant prices; yes there is, it's called merchantile. But a lot of reasons why people (in this thread and elsewhere) didn't like KoA is because it's generic (so is Skyrim/DA), the characters suck (same with Skyrim), the sidequests aren't great (same with Skyrim), etc. KoA has better combat and far far less glitches.

My problem with KoA was that is was generic in the sense of only having combat. Granted I did enjoy the combat but I would want more to justify playing such a lengthy game. I finished it but I didn't pour into the sidequests, personally having my fill of the combat by its end. You seem to care more about the combat, which is fine but maybe others don't as much. As with your other points, it's clearly a matter of personal preference. However regardless if you like said game or not, you must realize that people are making distinctions whereas simply saying they like/didn't like the story for example but it could be for completely different reasons.

For example whether you liked the characters or not, in KoA most were NPC quest givers outside of the story related cast whereas in Skyrim there was at least more with dialogue, interactions with the quests, communication between eachother, secrets, radiant work etc. Again, you don't have to like those in Skyrim or KoA but they function differently hence why people can like one and not the other. Same with sidequests, someone might like the emphasis on combat in KoA, whereas in Skyrim the approach fluctuates.

In short, people disagree and like different games for different reasons... and yet 7 pages in. I don't even think KoA, Dragon Age or Skyrim are even similar enough to be compared. I would rather argue as to why I for example think KoA is better than DIABLO 3 as they seem to have more in common than KoA does with Skyrim.

 

[SushiJaguar]

I look back on my Steam copy of Kingdoms of Avalur and my six hours spent playing it, and I can't recall anything except ugly visuals, an incomprehensible story, and grinding. I don't even remember the combat as being outstanding because it was definitely one of those systems where you find quickly there is one very, very good way to fight and you have no incentive or reason to use anything else.

None of the voice actors sounded very invested in what they were doing, so everything story based fell to mediocrity, and to be perfectly honest, it was just too easy, on hard.

Also people who say Dark Souls isn't hard because they abused mechanics and didn't bother to actually look into the depth of the combat are ridiculous. Mostly because their posts are filled with indicators of "oh jeez better hide the fact I don't know how to roll properly, or parry, or backstab, or do anything except spam with a rapid weapon"

 

[Noly]

KoA is an open world game. You can explore the whole first half of the world at the very start of the game if you want, there's literally nothing stopping you from going to the next area.

Except, you know, the fact that the game locks every single enemy of an entire zone at the level that you DISCOVER the area at.

So, I guess you could kind of say that the one thing stopping you from exploring half of the world at the very start of the game is, you know, the fact that the game will lock every single enemy in that half of the world at level 1 for the rest of the fucking game.

 

[Noly]

KoA locks entire enemy regions to the level you DISCOVERED them at. This is the worst implementation of a mechanic I have ever seen in an RPG in my entire life, and that's saying a lot. Locking every enemy in an entire region to the level you fucking DISCOVERED the region at? This is an open world fantasy RPG game that "punishes" you to the point of ruining the game by locking every enemy in the first five zones at level 6 if you decided to go exploring.
That is embarrassingly bad game design.

You can kill bosses on Hard with one use of your Reckoning bar the very first time you encounter them.
You craft craft the most powerful weapons in the game around level ~16.
There's an absolute pile of loot to discover and find, but here's what will hapen: You explore a dungeon. Your gear looks like trash. During the exploration, you'll be excited when you find two blues and a purple throughout your journey. Too bad they're all terrible in comparison to your greens. Rinse/repeat for the entire godamn game.
Whoever designed the way the loot drops work should have been fired. There was so much potential in that aspect alone and it was completely squandered.

The part that ruined the majority of the gameplay experience was, despite all of these things, that it WAS actually far too easy. Hard mode in any game should be actually hard. The fact that most people that regularly play games on Normal difficulty felt obligated to play KoA on Hard should tell you something. The game was a joke. There was zero challenge on Hard difficulty. That pissed so many people off that the launch of the game was destined to fail right from the start. There was an absolute shitstorm on how easy the game was and the devs failed to address it, despite their forums being ravaged for weeks by angry gamers with buyers remorse.

Many RPGs have the exact enemy level issues. Borderlands (in both games) it's easy to get overleveled and become way too powerful. You actually have to read a guide to know when to properly play through each piece of DLC. JRPGs are all the same in that regard too. Skyrim is just as easy as KoA. Again, why are these same flaws leveled more at KoA than other games?


No, "many RPGs" do not have the exact enemy level issues. What other RPGs lock a zone at the level you discover it at? You cite Borderlands as a source to back up your claim and yet the enemy level system isn't even remotely comparable. You can enter a high level zone in Borderlands at level 5 and you'll get fucking one shot by every lv40+ enemy. You enter a higher level zone in Reckoning at level 5 and every single enemy in the zone is now locked at level 5 permanently. How on earth do you think these are comparable scenarios? The way that your brain applies logic is fucking flawed bro.

And no, Skyrim is not "just as easy as KoA". Put Skyrim on the hardest difficulty and then start the game and get your fuckin shit slapped by any bear/troll/mage that you come across for hours on end after you start the game. You will have to kite the majority of enemies around and you will be unable to kill dragons without taking potshots at them while investing large amounts of time. Put KoA on the hardest difficulty available and you'll still be able to one-shot enemies and lay waste to BOSSES with one single use of reckoning mode by the time you hit level 7. As in, an hour into the game. Again, I do not in the slightest understand how you believe these scenarios to be comparable. 5/5 Mark of Flame one shots entire groups of mobs on the hardest difficulty in KoA, likely because the entire zone is locked at the level you discovered it at, BEFORE you've even discovered a single godamn quest in the zone, let alone begun completing them.

The flaws of KoA aren't leveled more at KoA than other games. They aren't IN other games.

 

[beastro]

Was uninspiring. It had no sense of progression, but since gear was very bland and the game went from easy to a cake walk the high you got in levels so you didn't feel rewarded for becoming more powerful, since you already were to being with.

Even as a casually played game, it didn't catch me nor the story. The fays songs and stuff are interesting take on "elvish" lore and repeating history, but they didn't tackle it head on and by the time you realize what it's all about, those quests are pretty much over.

It did the worst thing any game can do - it bored me. I felt neither joy playing it for frustration, since frustration brings challenges, even a broken game can be challenging trying to work around the bugs, but it lacked ever that. I got to where I'd explored the main landmass and thought "So it's just going to be hours and hours more of the same thing?.... I'm uninstalling this." Something I've rarely, if ever done to a game.

I only found out after I had ride my computer of it what the other landmass was shorter and sparsely populated with quests and other features so it was shorter, and blander that what I originally assumed showing that they'd run out of ideas and just rushed to the end with a lot of land being unused.

And no, Skyrim is not "just as easy as KoA". Put Skyrim on the hardest difficulty and then start the game and get your fuckin shit slapped by any bear/troll/mage that you come across for hours on end after you start the game.

Max hard Skyrim is the exact opposite, it's too hard to be fun. You don't do enough damage early on and God-forbid you try to melee anything because you'll get one shotted by finishing moves no matter what your stamina bar is at. The one shotting is what pisses me off more than the pittance of damage you deal to mob heal bars.

I don't mind long, hard battles, they make you feel like you earn victory, but if you're stuck trying to avoid any melee attacks that'll kill you in a flash, spending less time damaging enemies and thus making the fights longer and less involving, it's as futile as playing Amalur... but it at least make you feel SOMETHING.