Reviewing a game like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is tough. It is a massive experience and very hard to capture in the span of even this much text, and furthermore, in trying to hit so many markets (action gamers, RPG fans and everything in between), there's always going to be someone who's disappointed, or something that I failed to touch on. Encapsulating it in a nutshell for a final verdict, a "buy or don't buy" statement is going to be hard simply because everyone's going to want something different out of it.
Reckoning is one of the strongest mainstream RPGs in some time when it comes to its core mechanics, and brings together some excellent combat with a genuinely interesting, if somewhat generic, fantasy universe. However, its own sheer size gets in the way of it achieving its potential, with too many filler quests, and too much time spent running around empty expanses of terrain hunting down level-scaled loot. If you can force yourself to stick to the main storyline and the faction quests, Kingdoms of Amalur provides a great 40 or so hours of gameplay that fares far better than most other open-world RPGs. I just wish it wasn't wrapped up with an extra 60-odd hours of less-than-stellar content.
All that said, the world of Amalur is an interesting one, and I'd love to see more of it explored in the future. Reckoning is, despite its flaws, still a very solid RPG from a studio that has never put one out before; given this fact, I'm very excited to see where Big Huge Games and 38 Studios will take their universe and gameplay in the future.
