Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning impressions - I reckon I'm not impressed

Back in January I played through the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo and was none too impressed with it. The demo left a rather poor taste in my mouth, like bad ale washed down at the local inn, but I hoped that my worries would be proved wrong once I got my hands on the full game.

Therefore I was cautiously excited when I finally got a copy of the PS3 version of KoA. Would I be immersed in a fantastic fantasy world of adventure and excitement, or would my fears of a game that was rougher around the edges than an axe crafted by a drunk Dwarf prove to be all too valid?

I think you're going to need a bigger sword, dude

Well, I'm only six hours into the game by now, but the smell of dwarven booze is wafting at me strong and rank.
Let me preface this impression by explaining that I pretty quickly concluded that I am probably not the target player for KoA. There is a lot of exploring to be done in KoA and lots of quests to do that are completely unrelated to the main narrative, which makes the game slightly reminiscent of Skyrim.
I am very much a story driven gamer and while I do enjoy a fully realized gaming world to frolic around in, I generally need a strong narrative motivation to spend hours clearing dungeons and collecting flowers. So if a big world with tons and tons of side quests to dump countless hours into is really your thing, then maybe you will love KoA, despite the numerous dagger stab wounds that I am about to deliver into its head and neck area.

First off my biggest problem with KoA has to be that it simply feels half baked in a lot of places.
The game feels like it was shipped about 6-9 months before the developers had time to smooth everything out and really polish up their digital baby. The UI looks a bit coarse and the inventory management in particular feels clumsy and unwieldy with long lists to scroll through to find what you're looking for.
Then there is the way that you can only ever see one quest on your world map (though on the local map you'll see markers popping up if you get close to your non-active quest). Oh, and speaking of quests, you better be prepared to ignore a lot of quest givers or scroll through a huge ass list of quests, since you can't abandon a quest after it is accepted and the amount of side quests means that you probably won't finish them all, unless you're really OCD about completing every quest in your log (in which case this game could quite possibly drive you insane(r)).

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review Round Up

A little while back I played through the Demo of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning both on Xbox and on the PC. I was somewhat disappointed by the experience, but not enough to completely destroy my anticipation.
Therefore I have been eagerly awaiting the reviews of the full game to try to get an impression of how the full game holds up.

"It gives a great review score or it gets the club again."

The reviews are starting to flow in now and it looks like my lukewarm reaction to the demo is more or less echoed in the reviewers articles:

Gamespot Review: 7.5 / 10

Giant Bomb Review: 4 / 5

IGN Review: 9 / 10

Edge Review: 6 / 10

The general impression seems to be that there are some very great and enjoyable elements in Reckoning, most notably the free flowing combat system and the ability to spec out your character however you want to play the game, but there are also some serious flaws with the game, like an over abundance of uninteresting quests and lack of a strong narrative.

I'm still waiting to get my hands on a retail copy of Reckoning, but from the reviews that I've seen so far it will probably be a game that manages to keep me entertained until the release of Mass Effect 3, but without leaving a lasting impression.



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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo Impressions

The Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo was just released yesterday on both Xbox, PS3 and PC (Available through Origin).
I've just finished playing through the demo on Xbox and I wanted to share with you my impressions of the demo. So read on and find out whether this is a reckoning that is going to reverberate with awesome delight through your spine or if it will go meekly into the cold darkness of the night.

"I really..really have to pee"

Let me preface my impressions by saying that I was initially not very interested at all in Reckoning. From the first footage I saw of the game it seemed like a rather generic fantasy RPG with some slightly interesting combat. But I gradually came around to Reckoning to the point that it ended up being one of the games I was most excited to play in 2012.

So when I was finally ready to fire up the demo and have a chance to poke around in the kingdoms of Amalur I was genuinely excited.Perhaps it is this level of excitement that resulted in the following disappointment.

*UPDATE* I just had the chance to play the PC version of the demo and I have to say that it was a much improved experience from the Xbox version. In particularly the combat feels smoother and faster and I found myself more easily being able to dodge enemy strikes.
I am still not impressed by the demo but at least the PC version made me feel much better about Reckoning.

Yep, the TL;DR version of my impressions can pretty much be summed up with "Meh, is that really it?".

For those looking for something a bit more in depth allow me to elaborate.