Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

It's a good game. I just finished it a few hours ago. But it's not a great game because the storyline and development is lacking. Here are the overall plus/minuses:

Combat is fantastic. I think Skyrim is the most comparable game overall to this game, and combat in Amalur is much, much better than combat in Skyrim. It reminds me of the combat in God of War, although it has more options than GoW does.

I'm not a huge fan of the art style -- prefer Skyrim's more lifelike look. With that said, art style is a matter of preference, and the art in this game isn't bad, but it's not spectacular either. Very similar to World of Warcraft; I think they could have done more. There's also a lack of variety in enemies....you'll be fighting sprites, trolls, barghests, and murghan from the very beginning of the game all the way until the very end.

In the end, the storyline is what keeps me from rating this game higher. It's not the most original, but that doesn't really matter to me -- what matters is the way it's told and the way characters are developed. There's no character development at all....your character has no personality and all the other characters in the game just show up a few times but you don't really get to know any of them. Mass Effect and Dragon Age suck you into the world, and make you care about the people involved -- I didn't really care about anyone in this game. It suffers from the same problem as Skyrim to me -- it's open, and there's a lot of stuff to do, but the game doesn't provide enough motivation to do it. The story in a game is what drives me forward, and when the story is poorly written, or doesn't present itself well, I lose interest. I finished the main quest in both this game and Skyrim, but by the end I was just forcing myself forward, instead of being drawn forward by wanting to find out what was happening next, or what would happen to this or that character. Hopefully they'll do better next time.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a diverse, open world RPG with lots of things to do. There are three talent trees: Might, Finesse, and Sorcery. You can mix and match these to use different "Fate Cards" which give you bonuses based on the amount of talent points put in each tree. You get different abilities in each tree. There are also tons of quests, which are entertaining for maybe.... 5 hours. Then the quests getting stale and extremely repetitive. The whole story of the game is based on a man or woman who gets brought back to life by a said "Fate Pool" (or something like that). You later find out that this man or woman (you) is not bound by fate and changes the fate of the people around said hero. There are also many different weapons, each which can be upgraded in speed and damage within the different talent trees. Swords, warhammers, and axes, maybe, for might, Bows, Daggers, and Faeblades for finesse, and Chakrams, Staves, and Scepters for sorcery. There are also different armor pieces, ones that have health and high armor rating for might, ones that have critical strike percentage for finesse, and ones that have magic percentage for sorcery. Both weapons and armor have sockets for gems, which brings me to the crafting aspects. There is gemcrafting, blacksmithing, and alchemy, which I will not go into detail with. There are also many other great aspects of the game.
Overall:

Pros:
Great gameplay and fighting
Good graphics
Great story
Many different weapons and armor to wear and craft
Tons of different combinations of skills
Huge open world

Cons:
Mildly difficult to control camera
Repetitive quests
Lack in graphic design variety of armor
Rather hard start, due to no health regeneration and lack of looted potions
No companions

Overall, I give Kingdoms of Amalur an 8, but I'm sure different people don't mind some of the Cons, and there are people who are more critical of this game. Great game to rent, not so much to buy.

I just finished the game and I thought I should share my opinion. I am a little OCD when it comes to RPG style games. I like to check everything, I like to complete all the quest. I am not very happy with this game. There really was no reward. Well accept fictional money and I had well over 8 million in funds when I finished. Yes I said 8 Million. I am sure i could have been over 10 if I would have kept selling the stuff I picked up instead of salvaging for parts the last half of the game. So the facts: Amalur plays a lot like an MMO. The quest and some of the character models reminded me of Dark age of Camelot. Some of the action reminded me of DAOC as well. It was almost like someone took pieces of several games and just kind of mushed them together. Weapon levels are HORRIBLE, just intensely stupid. I mean I almost have to believe its bad coding. I had green weapons that I picked up that said level 10 that were more powerful then rare items that said level 16. Finally item management is just terrible. You end up with some much trash, some of which you cant get rid of. There are rooms you cant enter, chest you cant open and worse yet there is still no fix after two dlc packages. On the positive note the main quest kept my interest and combat flowed well. However the most disappointing part of this game has to be general traveling. Your character does not jump and I found myself consistently walking along getting stuck having to walk around what the character should have thought of as a small incline. It was almost like my character would have gotten stuck crossing the road because a median was in the middle and he couldn't understand how to step over it.

Curt Schilling, the famous Red blood Sox pitcher gave up his gloves to settle in Rhode Island to pursue his fascination of MMO's to a developer studio.

The pitcher was infamously known for is love of MMOs as he used to write quite amount of reviews for PC Gamer/CGW, while playing for the Diamondbacks and took his laptop to every away game to get his Everquest fix.

Why do I keep mentioning the MMO genre? Because this game is essentially a non-persistent, offline MMO coated with fetch and kill count quests. Clearly, Schilling wanted this IP to be a MMO before abandoning it and instead tried to make a hybrid of Bethesda, Bullfrog, Bioware, and a bit of everything mashed together for a collage of wonderful colors and tight controls.

However, the repetition kicks in real fast. About after level 10, you realize the grind is the same with upper skill tiers offering some solace. The story is as shallow and superficial as it can be as the nameless one in Planescape Torment far outweigh this atrocity.

It's not a bad game by a long shot, but definitely not the 10's I see in here. I give it a solid 7 at most and if you have delved into this genre before, you might rate it even lower as there is nothing new offered here except a bigger world and fillers to give you an illusion of quality, 100 hour gameplay.

I love RPG's I have played 150 hours on Skyrim by itself. But I have to say i was excited when I saw this game and its background development crew. However when I started playing the game I have to say it wasn't as exciting. I actually grew to be bored with it really fast. The combat system was new and really fun but the questing grew to being very old very fast. I felt like I was playing WoW again. I even found it to be very lacking in the challenging dept as well. The monsters grew to be repetitive and lacked any real toughness unless you were ganged up on by a lot of heavy's but then it was kite kite kite 4tW. It was like it wanted to be God of War meets generic RPG but was a little lack luster at that. But like I said it was ok. Very Polished great story but bleh delivery.

~NOTE~
This game is not Skyrim. Do NOT COMPARE THIS GAME TO SKYRIM. This game is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and focuses more on the fun of diverse, fast paced combat rather than storyline or open-world discovery.

-Good Animated Graphics.
-Excellent Combat.
-Open world-acts mostly as ground you run across to get to next city or mission, nothing too exciting here.
-Ok story
-Many different types of weapons(daggers, longswords, broadswords, greathammers, faeblades, bows, scepters, and staffs).
-Abilities add a fun twist to combat, such as attacks that cause earthquakes and make arrows fall like rain
-Stealth attacks are included, always powerful yet fairly limited.
-Different levels and quality of armor and weapons lends to sense of excitement when found and satisfaction when used
-Ok frame rate, combat is somewhat choppy(shields appear from nowhere)
-Shallow missions-talk to elf chick. go kill the evil elf man. grab magic rock.return."here's some money." now go collect magic moss.
-different class trees keep things interesting, each is very different and you can switch to sorcery/might/finesse whenever you want(armor and weapons for each type is not hard to find)

Conclusion-This is a solid fun RPG with many action-adventure aspects that adds to make a fun experience, though a shallow story and repetitive missions detract from overall experience.

Overview
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Let me start off by saying I'm not a big RPG fan. However, I decided to give this one a go. I found it to have a good story and was very satisfying to play. You can see why this is one of the highest rated RPG games. That said there are flaws.

Pros
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1) good story
2) character building is in-depth
3) ton of quests that fit with the story (not mindless)

Cons
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1) framerate/lag issues (even after patch 1.4)
2) still decent number of bugs (not game breaking though)

To start off, action RPGs are my favorite genre of game. I was very excited to play this game after trying the demo for PCs and the game started out fun, but the novelty quickly gave way to a generally unexciting experience.

To the games credit, the controls are fairly tight. Your character dances around the screen nearly as smoothly as A-grade action games. The camera performs admirably and the character animations are excellent. The work put into some of your spells and abilities is impressive, resulting in some epic attacks. The game is long, expect 15-20 hours through the main quest and 60+ with side quests.

Now for the not so pleasant parts. On the PS3 and XBOX versions you get 4 hot keys. As any of the classes you get between 6 and 8 activated abilities and using them all in combat would require pausing the game, remapping your hot keys, unpausing, using, etc. The voice acting is dull and sometimes grating. If the kind of fantasy you enjoy is where NPCs talk in corny Irish accents you may not mind, though some of the voice actors don't really appear to bother. Maybe this is due to racial differences but I didn't notice any consistency. Even one of the main characters sounds like a pretentious zombie. There's a general cheapness to the soundtrack that sets the mood at boring and keeps it there. Although there is the occasional nice looking view, the environment design is generally bland. By continent, each zone is almost exactly like the last and connected to the next with a simple hallway. The single greatest flaw was the difficulty. After about 3 hours of game play (sorcerer at least) combat was basically reduced to a single button with perhaps another to finish off whats left, even on the hardest difficulty. Sadly this alleviated the hotkey problem. Even bosses are trivialized by reckoning mode.

In summary, if you like A-RPGs and you're looking for a time sink, look no further. If you like a challenge and you haven't played Dark Souls, get that inst

This game is blowing my mind right now. I am having a very hard time finding anything wrong with this game. Only thing I wish it had was some mods, but I am sure they are in the making and will make this game so much fun for years to come.

"Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning", the first big open world RPG of the year, has plenty going for it. Author R. A. Salvatore has created a rich history of the world which you uncover as you explore and complete your various quests. Graphics for the environments are well done and detailed, offering a nice variety between caves, forests, open plains, and etc. While the character models of your playable character, the NPCs, and those you fight are nicely done, there's not a lot of variety in them. Not that there's not a large number of beasts and beings that you will meet, it's just once you've met one, they all pretty much are the same within that type, with only slight variation. The character creator isn't exceptionally deep, but it works in the context of this game. Music is sparse but well done, and the voice acting is generally terrific. The main story is interesting and I found it to be engaging from the beginning. You begin the game as a corpse tossed into the Well of Souls, where you revive, and unlike others in Amalur, your fate is a clean slate and your own to make. This allows for plenty of freedom to mold your character to fit your play style. The main quest is a decent size- if that's all you concentrate on it can take you 25-30 hours to complete. But Amalur has much more to offer, with plenty of side quests and five Guild arcs to distract you, easily giving you plenty of play time for your dollar should you buy this. The quests are all typical of most RPGs (fight monsters, fetch this item, etc) but they're all enjoyable. Fast travel is available from the start, so once you've uncovered a location in your travels you can go back and forth quickly. There are loading screens between areas, but the wait isn't too bad. Combat is a joy and very fluid, enabling you to mix it up how you choose with a primary and secondary weapon. All in all, this is an action RPG that's well worth your time, if not your money, as there's plenty of game here to enjoy.

I just finished skyrim with well over 100 hours of game play. Although i belive that skyrim is the greatest rpg game ever, i still miss the hack-n-slash games of old. If you liked baldurs gate and champions of norath then this is the game for you. Plenty of weapons and upgrades to keep you very busy. Exellant game with a good plot and good graphics!

I am a big fan of these Open World Midevil Sword and Sorcery games , where one can choose dialougue and "Destiny". The fact you can craft weapons is great , explore , and decide certain things even better , and fabulous you get houses , but just a few small things were missing. 1. If you have all these big houses ...how come you cannot have servants , or cooks ? And 2. I wish the characters would have been a bit more "In depth" and lastly ....Where are the Romance options? Dragon Age had them , and all though lacking ... so did Skyrim , and with all the pretty elven women and warrior chicks running around? Does the Hero not want? Other than that pretty cool so far ...especially if I get 10 houses and 10000 side quests , along with choosing my own path Hope there will be an even BIGGER and Better sequel.

I really liked this game. This is the best RPG I played in awhile. I am even thinking about buying this title from GF. A most have for collectors trust me.

I love the game but fell victim to a glitch that did allow me to fast travel. Still a great game but just don't play the "Her Righteous Fury" Mission and you will love it.

This game actually suprised me in many ways. The controls were easy to master and the gameplay was relatively smooth. This game, to me, has played better than many other rpgs that have came out. The graphics are pretty decent except for your character and the other npcs. A con of this game is the repeating side missions which make you go get something every time, but this is a growing concept of rpgs these days. Overall this is a top contender for one of the best rpgs in a long time.

For a big fan of western RPG's like myself this game was a disappointment. The combat is more of a button smasher and really not satisfying. The world is for the most part large but really not interesting like Skyrim for example. Another thing is that none of the characters are memorable at all, the dialogue is boring to listen to, i found myself skipping through it most of the time. Thats something i rarely do in games like Skyrim or Mass effect. Overall i would say rent before buying. I think the main reason for me disliking this game is because i'am a huge fan of Dark Souls, my game of the year for 2011. this game is too easy and streamlined compared to it

There was a major glitch that kept me from completing the game. I played for 2 weeks and was not vary happy.

So I wasted 20 hours of my life only to find out that the game constantly freezes during the main quest thereby making it impossible to finish. I am very happy that the company went out of business as they can't even create a game that you can complete.

It's been a while since i've played a game that i had trouble quitting so i could go to bed! This is one for me! Great game, interesting story. Definatley a must try!

This game has it all and it is really deep. This is the true open ended RPG that keeps you wanting to play. The user interface to this is really good and simple. You can figure out where your items are really fast. The only downfall to this game is that there are glitches in this from time to time that could cause you to die if you are fighting a big creature. Other than that, this game is perfect for those of you that love RPGs and are sick of games that call themselves RPGs when they aren't. So you have to get this. I would rent this first and if you love it buy it. But plan on spending a lot of time playing this because it is very addictive.

If you do not like world of war carft then i would not want this game when i first played it it was ok then it just got really boring plus i do not like world of war craft so i rate this game a 4

Now you have to like RPG games with a few DLC but i have to admit this is a winner. The camera play if off a lot but it's nothing you can't work with. Camera goes on a hinky state let go of stick keep wacking away and it settles it's self. The story line is all over the place but i have to admit it works. I sat down and played 13 straight hours and had no clue i had done tha. This game is a definate buy or rent.

This was a weak version of Skyrim sorry but I try to like this game.... It was really bad

reckoning is bad it has bad graphics and a stupid plot it like a horrible version of skyrim