'Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a great game that any MMORPG fan can get a quick fix from.'
KoAR is a fun and addictive RPG that can easily fulfill an MMORPG fan's fix for exciting combat with welcoming Vanilla-like graphics.
Kingdoms of Amalur released February 7, 2012 which was developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games.
It's really a great time for gaming right now with Unreal Engine 4 coming out and lots of new games not disappointing fans. I've gotten the chance to enter into the Faelands, one of the Kingdoms of Amalur and home to the immortal Fae of the Summer and Winter Courts. This is where the story begins as you awake on top of rotting corpses after being presumed dead and thrown into the other failed experiments. After getting the hell out of there you grab your first sword, meet a guy rambling about how cool you are and learn the basics of the game in a timely manner. After twenty hours of game play in just a couple days I found myself surprised that I was still sitting at my Xbox 360 for the first time in a while. With a lack of a fun MMORPG i've found myself really bored recently because of the constant repetition and I found that KoAR really was fulfilling my need. After more time clocked here is my opinion.. :)
Gameplay Customization:
What really makes KoAR stand out? The way you can create your character to ft your own preferences through builds and combining weapons of different types with no limits on how you role play. Every choice and mistake you make isn't being tattooed onto your forehead so you can interact in the world any way you see fit. Unless you are running around killing the town...wait even that goes away after a while. You'll get sent to jail, be fined for pickpocketing or killing some people but it never affects your whole game experience. Tired of your character? Why not respec which is possible through the Fateweaving system. You can go up reset your stats and go from your stealthy sneak up and one slice kill thief to a crazy archer shooting seven arrows of massive damage all over the place.Hell, if you want you can carry around a sword, staff and run around planting bombs that explode when enemies step on them. Amalur is full of tons of possibilities you can explore and find what really fits you. You can create your own form of combat combining skills while dodging, shooting and blocking as you come upon enemies. It's a active game where you really have to think when doing large boss fights.
Questing & Story:
KoAR has a pretty basic system of main quests, side quests, tasks, and faction quests that any gamer is used to. The sorting of the quest log allows it to be a nice organized feel so you wont be pulling your hair out over the "where the @#$% am I supposed to be and why am I doing this" situation I often have found myself in. The really neat thing i've liked about the quest system is that you encounter so many quest and through manipulation of your text based choices that your making you can get a higher reward with some or just blow people off completely. While playing I really enjoyed joining a faction where you got some mercenary quests to mess with to get some extra money and check out your 1337 skills of discovering random treasures around the world. The diversity in the type of quests keeps your attention since each has it's own requirements and you get asked to do all sorts of exploring of the land around you. To add a cherry to the polished quests the game map fast travel features allows you to get places far away conveniently.
I've enjoyed skipping most of the story since I'm more for playing but if you love story you will have plenty of great stories to follow with including lots of side stories through side quests everywhere you go. Thankfully with the amount of talking the voice acting in the game is decent so you won't really complain about the quality of the story tellers. Your character doesn't ever speak when interacting with npcs which is great because I think it ruins immersion if your character is spitting out rhymes when I'm making the choices.
With that I must say the quest and story of KoAR is very interactive and satisfying for over 100hrs of game play that it offers.
Graphics:
The graphics are great! The vivid fantasy theme and colors are just everywhere which pops out to me in it's cartoon style makes the world a nice diverse place. This is where Amalur really starts appealing to MMORPG fans with the Vanilla WoW style graphics which is very comfortable since it's way better then the comparison. It puts you in a familiar environment where the combat and story can whisk you away and fill that need to fight some monsters and stack quests while your games patching.
Overall I think KoAR is a game for any MMORPG fan with time to spare.
