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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning?

Varn

Educated
Joined
Jun 24, 2010
Messages
152
Just played the intro of this till you get out of the castle and into the first zone. The camera in my view makes the game unplayable. Its zoomed in so close you can barely see where youre going. It prevents you from seeing the world and makes combat annoying, and it cant be adjusted. The game seems like it could have some promise to tide me over until diablo 3 but im not playing it further until the camera allows you to zoom out. Apparently this is being fixed but well see.

I cant believe 3rd person rpgs still have this problem. Its fucking amateur. WoW made a perfect camera a decade ago, just copy that for fucks sakes you cunts you copied everything else from there.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,079
But...

Further down the road you WILL meet another weary traveller with yet ANOTHER quest!
 

Heresiarch

Prophet
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
1,451
After 22 hours and 22 levels into the game, I finally officially finished everything in the starting area (the big forest), the main quest started like finally like Chapter 2, and I decided to go to the plains area out of the two choices. But then the tired or bored feelings, which actually appeared since like 5 gameplay hours ago, finally become unbearable...

Then I decided to run all the way to the next big city for a little sightseeing, which took me a few good minutes, because I needed to run pass a few zones, and the road was looong and the areas were biiig...

Anyway, here's my feelings:

The world is big. Damn big. Unfortunately, too big. I've played all the TES and 3D Fallouts and Tworlds and GTA and even WOW, I don't know how big KoA's world is compared to them, but despite all the nice eyecandy KoA provide (it's true eyeCANDY, with all the bright colours) and lots of chests and lorestones and other stuff to find, the world feels too "flat", generic and in general too boring compared to the other games with a big world. I didn't have the same feeling playing WoW even though they look extremely similar in style, but in WoW I could at least run through or fly over dozens of different areas which all have different terrains (plains, volcano, snowlands, etc) while chat with people, but in KoA, the only terrain I had been in the past 20 hours was a big forest, sometimes it's a darker forest, other times it's a forest with some ruins, and maybe it's a forest infested with spiders, but all forests nonetheless...

When I arrived in the plains, I saw there was around 6 plains areas on the world map, and from what I saw while running through 3 of them just to reach the next major city, they all look like the same. Plains with yellow grasses, plains with some ruins, plains with a river... I can't imagine spending the next 10-15 hours running around doing random quests in nothing but PLAINS, PLAINS, PLAINS...

The fact that the game's soundtrack plays very sparingly (I think at least 60% of the time the game is quiet) and are mostly forgettable doesn't help to relieve the boredom too.

Another thing that sucks is the enemy variety. Guess what I met when I ran through the plains? More boggart, more human bandits, more trolls, more barghests. Some of their names don't even change! Still Boggart Plaguebearers. Still Mountain Trolls...

And there's too many chests...too many hidden stashes...too many BORING dialogues...too many QUESTS. Frankly speaking, the dialogues and quests aren't too bad, but the problem is mixing them (which are already quite generic) in a huge generic world would make themselves and the game iteself even more boring.

I've spent 140+ hours on Skyrim, finished the main quest, explored about 75% of the world, but I've never got such a boredom feeling on it. With games like Arkham City or Human Revolution, even though the game finished under 30 hours, there's still some magic to attract me back to it time and again. But in KoA, I've spent merely 20 hours on it, played through 30% of the game, and I already can't help but yawn the moment I turned on the game...

In conclusion, it's a pity really, this game is one of the few ones that have an almost perfect score at technical part and being bug-free. The combat is fun, and some of the boss battles were very challenging. The plot were becoming interesting too...but all the favour got watered down way too much in a massive generic gameworld.
 

Heresiarch

Prophet
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
1,451
BTW, I'm going to play New Vegas now, I stopped playing it about two years ago after killing the fuck who took my platinium chip...
 

markec

Twitterbot
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Croatia
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.....but all the favour got watered down way too much in a massive generic gameworld.

Skyrim is a incredibly rich and original and captivating gameworld?

Compared to Amalur yeah. To be honest I quit both games rather quickly (Skyrim 30, Amalur 10-12 hours) but I still found Skyrim to be far more interesting (and I found Skyrim to be quite bland). I plan to play Skyrim again with mods, Amalur I will never touch again. Also the game gets so much praise for combat (i played it only some 10 hours so it is probably too early for final verdict) but as a mage pretty much every fight looks the same, throw a spell, roll around a bit and throw it again. People here say that it takes some 20+ hours to get to the good part but honestly fuck a game that forces me to play 20+ hours of utter boredom to start being fun.
 

Condiments

Educated
Joined
Nov 10, 2011
Messages
72
Location
Shoulder of Orion
.....but all the favour got watered down way too much in a massive generic gameworld.

Skyrim is a incredibly rich and original and captivating gameworld?

I think Skyrim like amalur, at least for me, was one of those games that floods you with game content in the hope you'll perceive it as substance. I remember initially playing skyrim and awed by its scale(like I had previous elder scrolls). This initial enthusiasm of the beginning content fades away and you begin to feel this bored sickening feeling like you're simply wasting your time. Even as the quests keep piling up there is no motivation to keep playing as you'll simply reach the same tired conclusion of randomly generated loot, and boring quest lines.

Developers need to realize that scale isn't an inherent quality to a game if other positive qualities don't coincide with it.
 

Stabwound

Arcane
Joined
Dec 17, 2008
Messages
3,240
I can't bring myself to play this game anymore, especially after reading comments from people that have played it 20+ hours. The whole game just feels... I dunno... bland and shallow. I've only played about 8 hours maybe, but it's really just not that fun. Maybe it gets more fun, but I don't even care to find out. There is nothing interesting about the game world or character progression, and I can't imagine playing it for 100+ hours. There isn't even any exploration. The entire game is just hammering the mouse/controller button and following your mystic GPS. You can't even explore to find the hidden items on the map, because you need the actual in-game "detect hidden" skill, and when you get that it makes the shit show up on the map.

Whatever. I'm done with this shit.

Are there any other recent action RPGs that are good and can be played with a controller on a TV? I didn't like Skyrim either. Divinity 2 was okay, but I doubt it's playable with TV/controller considering the text is so small and it doesn't even have an option to use a controller, so it's probably terribly-suited for one.
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
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In quarantine
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Are there any other recent action RPGs that are good and can be played with a controller on a TV? I didn't like Skyrim either. Divinity 2 was okay, but I doubt it's playable with TV/controller considering the text is so small and it doesn't even have an option to use a controller, so it's probably terribly-suited for one.

Dark Messiah can be great fun, but I'm not sure how the PC version plays with a controller. Avoid the XBOX version like a plague.
 

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
I think Skyrim like amalur, at least for me, was one of those games that floods you with game content in the hope you'll perceive it as substance. I remember initially playing skyrim and awed by its scale(like I had previous elder scrolls). This initial enthusiasm of the beginning content fades away and you begin to feel this bored sickening feeling like you're simply wasting your time. Even as the quests keep piling up there is no motivation to keep playing as you'll simply reach the same tired conclusion of randomly generated loot, and boring quest lines.

Developers need to realize that scale isn't an inherent quality to a game if other positive qualities don't coincide with it.

Exactly right. While it is getting increasingly rare for developers to actually provide an acceptable quantity of content for the outrageous AAA prices they charge, many of the ones that do ignore the fact that boring and generic content is still boring and generic -- multiplying the amount of it by a factor of ten doesn't make the game better. For all of it's size the game lacks depth. It's basically a hack and slash version of Borderlands (which I've probably already said in the past twenty pages) with it's shallow story, wooden npcs, forgettable dialog, and over saturation of loot.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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33,055
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KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Playing this too now any mostly enjoying it, but I agree that there is too much filler content with pointless sidequests (but at least less MMO-like "go fetch 20 of x" quests than Skyrim had) that aren't too bad by themselves but there's just so much that it becomes repetitive and boring.

But due to my fucking gaming OCD I have to do all the sidequests.
 

GreyViper

Prophet
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Messages
1,523
Location
Estonia
Well its clearly better then Dragon Age 2 ever was minus few companions or NPC. combat is way better then in Divinity 2 then again you cant DW swords. In conclusion DS3 would have turned out better in this engine and with Obsidian writing the backstory and NPC it could have been a great game. Right now we have decent game with only large world and fast combat making it to stand out.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
BTW, I'm going to play New Vegas now, I stopped playing it about two years ago after killing the fuck who took my platinium chip...

You'll be going from what is, in my view, the worst RPG ever made (Reckoning), to the very best (New Vegas).
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
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Vault Dweller
Interviews game's lead designer.
Calls his game "the worst RPG ever made" the next week.

Dweller's gonna dwell. :love:
 
Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 29, 2010
Messages
17,867
Location
Ottawa, Can.
Vault Dweller
Interviews game's lead designer.
Calls his game "the worst RPG ever made" the next week.

Dweller's gonna dwell. :love:

Maybe it's not so much that the game has anything bad from a technical point of view, but that the game itself, which is basically God of War lite with stats and dialog, is an insult to an adult's intelligence and good taste? If I want to play an action game I'll play something like Devil May Cry. If I want an RPG, I'll play an RPG. This stuff satisfies neither fanbase.

I've played the demo and came out of the starting area and I absolutely can't stand it, like no other game I've played before. I never thought that WoW's artstyle could look decent from any perspective whatsoever, but this is a sheer abomination and assault on the senses. Mcfarlane's art direction bothers me even more than I could have ever dreamed of. The setting and plot is such an unholy, incoherent, disastrous mess. My head hurts. Maybe I would've enjoyed it if I was 12 but I don't see how an adult can actually enjoy and revel in this stuff. Skyrim, which I also thought was generic, is much, much superior to this. And Divinity 2 is infinitely superior.
 

Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
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Привислинский край
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As a setting and art direction go TES is superior to Amalur while in gameplay it is oposite. As Jarl said quests are less MMo like, you are not forced to take them, much more choices in solving and you do feel your actions change the world. Not to mention the combat is funnier than in Skyrym. Dessert locations looks better BTW. Game is indeed too big.... 40 hours of best quests and half the map would be much better as I almost quit the game too in this damn forest.
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
May 3, 2011
Messages
5,698
I don't speak for Vault Dweller, but if his publicly-discussed definition of RPG is anything to go on then I have to agree. As far as actual role-playing goes, on a mechanical level, Amalur just does not give you any reactivity. Doesn't matter what character class you pick - aside from your animations and item type, the combat is basically all the same (except for stealth kills and bows), and while there are a good number of places to use non-combat skills, they almost all feed back into combat or the item grind.

Even if you go full persuasion, lockpicking, etc. you're not really enabling new play options or modes, you're just getting a "MOAR REWARD" or "skip combat" button that works in a handful of situations. RPGs should be about facilitating different styles of play on a level beyond "do I want to hit this with a club or a mace?" and Amalur totally fails at that despite having some smart character development and progression otherwise. It's a shame too, because it has all the mechanics in place and instead they just kind of made a fun, but empty and completely shallow single-player MMO instead.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Maybe it's not so much that the game has anything bad from a technical point of view, but that the game itself, which is basically God of War lite with stats and dialog, is an insult to an adult's intelligence and good taste? If I want to play an action game I'll play something like Devil May Cry. If I want an RPG, I'll play an RPG. This stuff satisfies neither fanbase.
Pretty much.

The setting and plot is such an unholy, incoherent, disastrous mess. My head hurts. Maybe I would've enjoyed it if I was 12 but I don't see how an adult can actually enjoy and revel in this stuff. Skyrim, which I also thought was generic, is much, much superior to this. And Divinity 2 is infinitely superior.
Exactly. Kingdom of Amalur excels at one thing - it makes you appreciate Bethesda games more by showing that design can be infinitely worse.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
I don't speak for Vault Dweller, but if his publicly-discussed definition of RPG is anything to go on then I have to agree.
It's not about whether or not the game can be called an RPG. It's an action RPG. It's about killing monsters and feeling good about it. The problem is that the design is fucking atrocious, which makes it very hard to feel good about killing monsters.

It's a shame too, because it has all the mechanics in place and instead they just kind of made a fun, but empty and completely shallow single-player MMO instead.
What part of Amalur's gameplay is fun? A serious question.
 

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