Zero Punctuation: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

[Tiger Sora]

Yahtzee lost heir to the Kingdom of Meh.
I feel very ehh about that.

Theres an RPG easier than Skyrim? Not that I haven't died plenty anyways. Damn those enemies significantly stronger than your buddies.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Yes, I am indeed quite tired of fantasy, it needs more monster girls.

I hear Monster Girl Quest 2 has recently been translated, and no I haven't played it, and stop looking at me that way.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Can we come up with a new name for all of these northern Europe elves and dwarves shenanigans?
I mean, they're clearly not fantasy, because that would imply they had to actually think something up on their own.
Why can't we have fantasy games that are weird and inventive, like a Walter Moers novel or something. He wrote a book about a dinosaur novelist dressed like Shakespeare making his way through a labyrinth of subterranean libraries filled with horrible monsters in order to stop a villain who is half a shark and half a grub from leveraging his used book shop into world domination. Doesn't that sound like it would make a more memorable and enjoyable game than all of this generic sword-and-sorcery crap?

 

[Enduwolf]

I'm so glad someone finally shit over this game. I was sick of hearing about how Skyrim's combat was boring and that this was the answer.

Skyrim isn't a combat game.

 

[Dr. Dice Lord]

I'm so glad someone finally shit over this game. I was sick of hearing about how Skyrim's combat was boring and that this was the answer.

Skyrim isn't a combat game.

My thoughts exactly. If you don't like TES combat, don't buy the games. The Elder Scrolls has always been about the world and your character.

TES VI: Elsweyr or bust!!!

 

[Deathfish15]

Yatzee, you crazy kangaroo, you failed to see the best part of the game:


KILLING QUEST GIVERS!

Pressing the magical "H" button (on PC) allows for players to now become the evil-doer and go around killing whoever crosses their path.

Take for example this one Traveler who wants help attacking a troll to get a ring. First off, at the end of the quest you can chose to keep the ring for yourself (best choice), or give it to her. But, even after giving it to her and her PAYING you, the player can turn around and kill her and still loot the ring.

 

[floppylobster]

Best Zero Punctuation in months. And I'm not just saying that because I work at video store.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

IMHO, Those guys who made Skyrim can learn a lot from KoA:R.
Accidentally stealing a cup instead of taking the free item right next to it, then being chased down by the whole world isn't going to make the game interesting. Or God forbids that you even think about killing a chicken...

Skyrim tries to be to interactive. There are to many useless items that can be picked up, take a lot of space, but are worth nothing.

While playing KoA, I get the feeling that they didn't even try to make the world more interactive than it needs to be. You can take only items that you can use and that's it.
But the worst is that people complain that KoA is to easy and then say something nice about Skyrim. Really? Skyrim is the easiest RPG I've ever played. Pick the cat class, be a thief and you can kill everyone with your x15 backstab.

This game has maaaany bad things, but please stop comparing it to Skyrim and then saying how it sucks. This game is as good as Skyrim, if not even better.

Skyrim is only good because it has Morrowind as it's foundation, nothing more. The world didn't develop even a bit, the story is almost non existing, the combat is awful and the quests are fetch quests (except the thief guild, they have interesting quests). If you don't see that Skyrim is a bad, shiny version of Morrowind, than you obviously didn't play Morrowind enough. Play Morrowind and you will see that Skyrim is meh in every aspect compared to it (except the visuals).

 

[Malfy]

A sewing machine with a dwarf slave running the pedals is supposed to be easy? I must REALLY suck at sewing.

I've only played the demo, felt like it might have some potential behind it, but RPGs can only hold my interest for so long.

 

[Vault101]

well that was...surprisingly neutral

as ive said, I want to try this, mabye it will do for me that skyrim didnt

 

[Vault101]

I'm so glad someone finally shit over this game. I was sick of hearing about how Skyrim's combat was boring and that this was the answer.

Skyrim isn't a combat game.

Im glad somone said some bad things about skyrim...

...as its constant prais was annoying, and as I said yahtzee seemed surprsingly neutral on this one

 

[TheVioletBandit]

I don't understand why this game isn't getting more praise, it's a pretty good game. In comparison to skyrim I think it's far superior in almost every way. The writing is better, the game play is better, It's just smaller, and the character creation part is lacking. Also I wish that there were more varying armor designs, but I thought the same thing about skyrim.

 

[Therumancer]

The reason why you have "traditional" sword and sorcery dominating so much of game design is that it's probably the only real genere where the tropes reinforce relatively deep game design and progression.

More words go here...

Brilliant post. It's a shame that science fiction works like this though; As much as I enjoy the medieval fantasy games, I would still like to see more science fiction enter the fantasy genre. Mass Effect did this particularly well, Mass Effect 2 did this alright but not as good as its predecessor (I don't expect ME3 to do much better).

You might almost think Kingdoms of Whatever It Was was at some point planned to be a MMORPG but chickened out when they saw all the skulls piled up outside World of Warcraft's cave.

It's funny he says this, because Kingdoms of Amalur is the "prologue" for an upcoming MMO, codenamed Copernicus. It's still in the works and is now being developed by 38 Studios (who also worked on KOA: Reckoning).

Source: http://38studios.com/products/copernicus

That however, doesn't justify the repetitive and tedious quests and general progression that KOA: Reckoning provides. Just because it's the precursor to an MMO doesn't stop it from being a singleplayer now. Being a singleplayer it should've aimed to please the group of people who play singleplayer games, not those who play MMOs, since the latter would be playing MMOs right now anyway.

Overall, KOA: Reckoning isn't an entirely bad game. I mean, I've played much, much worse. It's just not particularly "good". I felt that gameplay wise, games like Skyrim were much better (though honestly, Skyrim is just as easy as KOA is - the difficulty sliders only increase health and damage, as well, not the actual AI mechanics) but story-wise, KOA kicks the crap out of Skyrim (Skyrim's story had so much potential that it never used).

Only real issue I had with KOA's story was the whole paradoxical effect of being separated from Fate. You have this whole thing about your character NOT being driven by Fate, yet obviously Fate had to decide that you would be reborn and your powers unfolded in the first place (this is implied about 30-60 minutes in, in fact).

Hmmm, well as another bit I'll mention. One of the reasons why I was kind of disappointed with the game was that with RA Salvatore writing I expected a fairly original storyline, even if he was cribbing from Celtic Myth. The entire plotline about the "chosen one" who is fated to be the only one outside of fate is pretty much ripped off from David Eddings and his books about Sparhawk. I won't say it's identical, but comes very close on a lot of levels.

The problem with this storyline is that as far as I experienced they don't really spend much time dealing with the ramifications of what exactly this means. They prattle on about it, but miss obvious questions that formed a lot of the plot points in Sparhawk's adventures. I won't harp on the specifics of that series because it's been a very long time, and I didn't read all of the books due to interruptions when I started, and by the time I had time, years had passed and I had been reading other things... etc... to be honest I didn't think much about it until this game came out. On some levels I feel like one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite artists have turned into the Batman and Robin of plagerism, with Salvatore knocking off Eddings, and McFarlane knocking off World Of Warcraft's art team.... and in the process becoming the dynamic duo of mediocrity.

At any rate when it comes to making a prophecy about someone to whom prophecy does not apply, that's a question I can sort of answer. See, since everyone else has a destiny the guy can sort of be "seen" simply by being the one thing that isn't there so to speak. So the existince of the arrival of that blank can be predicted by everything else around it.

Likewise, when the dude who has no destiny takes action he doesn't exactly prevent everything he effected from having a fate, he merely changes what it is, and on a high enough level (like a god) he can be sort of tracked back through that by seeing what was altered. What's more those controlling fate can also changed fates in response themselves (you'll notice there IS a goddess of fate in Amalur). This kind of thing incidently also presents a threat to an entire cosmological power system, which I think should have come up far more dramatically almost immediatly. Sparhawk (to referance him again) deals with the ramifications to an extent by being something between a high priest and a paladin for the good gods. He's a threat to them on a lot of levels, but also a weapon that can be used to screw with the mechnitions of other gods, and able to turn things on a global scale. The hero in Amalur might follow a deity, but he's not in a position where I really think he could be considered a divine ally, especially not quickly enough.

Amalur never really sold me on why someone like say the Goddess of Fate didn't look at that prophecy and decided this super-dragon/demon/cthulhuesque terror from beyond space wasn't now fated to demolish the a 100 square kilometer area around the well of souls right at that moment. I mean sure by his nature the guy could technically change things and avert that, but it he was that vastly overpowered to the point of being killed as a weak, newly resrurected goober, it wouldn't matter.

They hint vaguely at things like that, but never really give a satisfying answer, focusing more on the whole faerie war thing and your abillity to muck up all these carefully laid plans in force for millenia. Walking out of the tower to meet the first fateweaver guy I was thinking "okay, well now this is probably going to be pretty dramatic" I was kind of amazed at how well he took meeting a guy that is the anti-thesis of his entire religion, and power base.

 

[pearcinator]

Its certainly more difficult than Fable games so it's not fair to call this game too easy. Try playing through the game on hard without using Reckoning mode or putting points in blacksmithing (all your equipment is looted not crafted). That would make the game quite hard I reckon!

Im like 50 hrs in and only fully explored 2 regions (out of 5). Fills in time while I wait for ME3 (puts up flameshield for all the haters here)

 

[Kapol]

Honestly, from the demo, it just felt so utterly generic in nearly every way that I didn't bother to pick it up. I hated the graphical style they chose, at leat what I've seen from the demo. And the main quest quickly became lost to me as I ended up doing silly chores for people I didn't really care about. At least the NPCs for the side-quest had some kind of characterization though. I did care for most of them to some degree. But they still seemed to be broad arch-types for every character.

Likely pick this up eventually, during a Steam Sale I'd bet. But... I dunno. The demo just made the game feel lifeless to me and I got bored with 25 minutes left before it ended.

 

[Maxtro]

Play it on hard.

It can actually be pretty difficult at time. (Though having terrible camera angles also adds to that)

 

[irishda]

Baby's first skyrim? Did Yatzhee play something else and just told us he played Skyrim cause fuck it, it's not like we'd know? What the fuck was so complex about Skyrim? Don't get me wrong, these are definitely two very different games, but there's nothing complex about either of them.

Although I will give the advantage to Kingdoms because the combat, while just as easy, is infinitely more enjoyable than Skyrim.

 

[katsabas]

Messing with a tiger's bollocks. Geeeeeeeeeenius.

 

[antipunt]

The only problem I have with this game is that the side quests can get -really- bland. The rewards are pretty piss poor too, I have over a million gold already

Still like the game though

 

[Gatx]

I disagree about monsters respawning. It makes the world feel more alive if not everything revolved around your actions. I mean, apply this where needed, like wild animals should respawn, but that bandit camp you cleared out should not be re-inhabited by a new group of bandits that saw a bunch of unused camping equipment lying around.

As for the size of the world I heartily agree. The world is vast and expansive to be sure, but part of the time, and it's quite visible on the map, it feels like you're running through corridors. Really wide corridors with lots of stuff in them but corridors nonetheless. The camera thing also takes away any "vertical" feel to world so while it's wide and expansive to be sure, it's extremely flat.