Reckoning: Kingdoms of Amalur is a single player multiplatform fantasy role-playing game that was developed by 38 Studios and published by EA on February 7th of 2012. You play a silent protagonist who was brought back from the dead with no memory of your previous life. Your quest is to find your place outside of fate and alter the course of events laid in motion within the game world. Now, for my first post on my blog, I'm going to critique this game from the eyes of a game design student, but also an avid fan of fantasy role-playing games.
Right:
Amnesiacs Story
One of my chief complaints with the amnesia story is that while you're part of the world, no one knows who you are. Really, go back and play games where amnesia is the reason why you have no idea what is going on and you can literally talk to every NPC in the game, no one recognizes you and treats you as if you're an alien from another planet. Unless of course that happens to be the case, which, to my knowledge has never happened. In Fallout: New Vegas, you were a Courier and even the guy who employed you has no idea who you were. Even with a DLC that tried to explain your origins, it still doesn't make sense why no one knows who you were. In Reckoning, you meet someone who knows you were, but doesn't give detail, and for good reason.
The Journey
Reckoning also provides a lengthy main quest that takes time and effort to complete. And faction quests take a while to complete as well. At early levels, you can't rush through the game expecting to beat it quickly. No, Reckoning forces you to slow down and enjoy the experience. All too often, we find ourselves being able to complete a main quest line within a few hours (Skyrim, I'm looking at you.) and not really having anything to do afterwords. Sure there is a whole world out there to explore, but at that point, why would you? Main quests in Fantasy role-playing games, like life itself, should be about the journey and not the destination.
Quests that Matter
And speaking of quests, side missions should have some sort of impact on the game overall. In Reckoning, when you complete certain quest lines, you get "Twists of Fate," little perks for choosing certain paths in the game. While meaningless once you reach the level cap, these perks help in more ways than you can imagine, while not shoehorning a morality system into the game that forces you to choose a good path constantly or a bad path constantly. Should you want the good path with the Warsworn and a bad path with the Scholia Arana, then you can do so. Each path has its own perks, but isn't necessarily good or evil.
Wrong
Useless Antiques
In game, you can find common, infrequent, rare, unique, and set pieces, each represented by white, green, blue, purple and gold color coding respectively. While common, infrequent, and rare items can be broken down for components for crafting your own items, unique and set pieces cannot be broken down. I understand that and am fine with it, but why is it that near the end of the game, those pieces are useless? Sure, set pieces should be only as strong as the level you find them and thus cause you not to wear them the entire game, but seriously guys, my own crafted items are stronger and carry better bonuses. At least allow me to break the items down and utilize their looks in my own story. Same for unique weapons. Some are amazing and a lot of time and effort went into creating them, yet, for all that time spent, they are worthless when compared to my own mastercrafted items. Sure, this is my story and I should be telling it using my own weapons, but seriously, my Prismere Sword Agni's Flam looks no different than a crude Prismere Sword. I'd have liked to have seen unique item pieces that would alter the overall look of my own personal inventory. Even to create some flavor text of my own would be nice or at the very least, after completing certain events those items have their own flavor text to indicate the use they had. Here's an example:
Venomed Edge:
Used by the Siegebreaker at the Battle of Mel
Senshir to defeat the Balor.
Tells me when and where I used it. It connects me to the item. Just a thought guys.
Useless Chests
You're in a dark dungeon. You've battled countless Faer Gorta, Sprites, and killed 3 Crudocks. You find in front of you a treasure chest protected by a very hard spell that needs to be dispelled before you can open it. You play the minigame, open the chest and your reward for you hard work is.... flower petals. Surely this is not the only... yes this is the only item in the chest. You hard work for some flower petals you can find nearly anywhere. Now, I understand the whole,"Its random loot," excuse, but come on guys, you could have made it to where loot rewarded was dependent on the difficulty of the chests unlocked. It got to a point where I was finding better loot under rocks and tree stumps.
In Closing:
Get this game. If you don't have it, stop what you're doing, find a Walmart and buy this game. The sound track is amazing, the graphics are beautiful, combat is visceral and satisfying. I cannot give a stronger recommendation for a game. Aside from a few minor hiccups, this one earns top points. And DLC is being released for it regularly, unlike some other games (again, Skyrim, I'm looking at you).
