Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review (PS3)

Written by Gregory Laporte on February 8, 2012
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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Publisher: EA

Console: Xbox 360, PC, PS3

Release Date: February 7, 2012

The hotly anticipated and often spoke about Kingdoms of Amalur review is finally upon us. Find out if you should pass on this title or run to your nearest game store and pick up a copy. Enjoy!

Single Player:

The single player in Kingdoms of Amalur is an absolute magnificent experience. The story begins with the death of your character. If you have played the demo for this title, than you will already know how the story begins. The camera issues that were prevalent in that build are no longer there and what we have is an enormous, robust, and fun experience. I spent the first five hours or so of my adventure in the Kingdoms of Amalur becoming acquainted to the controls, which are extremely easy to pick up. After becoming acquainted and leaving the first area, I exited to the world map where at first glance after pressing the select button; I thought it looked smaller than what it should be. I was amazed, as I looked upon the map that by pressing the triangle button, it enables a fast travel system to access previously visited areas.

This will most likely become your suggested choice of travel throughout the game. After getting into some of the game’s main quests you will know that you have only just touched the surface. There are varieties of quests that you must complete. They range from stealing items, exploring caverns, to finding people or items, or playing delivery boy. You will be busy for hours after you finish the main storyline. In Kingdoms of Amalur there a lot of enemies that can kill you rather quickly whether it be bears, wolfs, or any other extra magical creature you may come across.

Traveling around the world is a pain at first because there is not a particularly fast way to get from town to town until you reach it the first time to enable fast travel. The story is very deep with characters that are weird, quirky and interesting. These characters may even join up with you at times and help you in battles against bosses or lead you to your next objective. As you progress, you will obtain information in your quest, of a dark lord that wants to murder you because you alone have the ability to change people’s fates. You gained this ability because of your resurrection from the well of souls. Your reincarnation into your body allows you to change fate’s design and unravels what fate previously had planned as your told by the Ysa. You will traverse dangerous jungles and deserts while facing dangerously strong trolls and bosses.

Gameplay:

The gameplay in this game is great and the first aspect of the game that i know most RPG fans would want to know about is the character progression that essentially has three areas to it. When you max out your experience bar, you will see it after killing an enemy or completing an objective. It grants you the opportunity to level up. Leveling up goes through three processes, skills, upgrade points, and destinies. First, you have one upgrade point to upgrade your skills. What you chose to upgrade depends on your character preference. You can choose to upgrade skills such as alchemy, stealth, blacksmithing and others. After that you are given three skills points to upgrade stats for either the might, sorcerer, or finesse abilities for the type of character that you are controlling. These can be distributed anyway you want. This allows you to create a character that is versatile of centered on a deciding trait.

Combat in KOA is not the best as it mostly involves you hacking and slashing away enemies, but there is more to it than you would expect from RPG’s with gameplay like this. You can map items to a quick select wheel that will allow you to use them at a moment’s notice. There are also magical wells that have buffers that you can use for a limited time so that you will able to handle tougher enemies in certain areas.

Treasures are abundant in the world, as you will find chests that you can loot, steal from, dispel magic spells and lock pick to obtain the treasures. There are tons of items that you can obtain while in Amalur. These items help to construct new items, armor, and weapons that will need. It will not be easy to make all of these products, as it will require many rare materials. There is a load more that you can do as you enter into the world such as crafting potions by alchemy benches and other more advanced crafting techniques. This also holds true for weapons and armor, as you have to maintain their durability.