Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo

Third-person RPGs have become increasingly popular in the last few years, thanks to titles like The Elder Scrolls, Gothic and even the Fallout series, starting with the third installment. However, all of the aforementioned games had one other thing in common as well: you were allowed to explore the world as you saw fit, even if that meant you might stumble upon powerful foes that could kill you with one hit.

Kingdom's of Amalur: Reckoning is an action-oriented RPG that presents you with a fascinating tale of fantasy, evil and powerful heroes, in an attempt to replicate the atmosphere of a sandbox-style game in which you get to make your own destiny and choose the desired path. Hence, to start off with, you are presented with the character creation wizard window, where you can customize almost every aspect of your in-game alter-ego.

However, things are not as exciting as you might first believe, since things quickly start to become a bit more annoying, starting with the fact that there are very few races to choose from and they are not that different to begin with. You quickly learn that the big, open world is filled with invisible walls that stop you from falling to your death, climbing the hills, or even jumping a few centimeters to shorten the path a little bit.

When it comes to combat, the attacks are very repetitive and mechanic, meaning that they must respect the original trajectory, even if the enemy has already avoided your swing. The bow attacks are far more ridiculous, because they require no aiming and no actual arrows, since they automatically replenish after a certain time period. The things are a bit better when it comes to spells, but just barely, since they are not at all original.

The visual aspect is quite pleasing, on the other hand, since the game opted for a more cartoonish look, rather than impress through realism and texture quality. The character animation is almost good, although it gets rather silly during combat, especially in the case of the enemies. Sound-wise, some effects are a bit out of place, but the voice acting is more than decent and it really helps with the atmosphere.

In the end, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning tries to blend too many things at once and fails on almost every chapter, making it a mediocre game at best. Quite a shame, really, since the universe was rather interesting and it could have been fun to explore.