Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning Review

Have you finished Skyrim yet? That’s the big question with Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning, really. It’s very good, but it’s not so good that anyone’s going to abandon Skyrim in its favour.

And it’s not different enough to feel like an actual alternative either. In fact, the one thing Reckoning is good at, above all else, is being similar to other games.

We mean that as an only slightly barbed compliment. Originality certainly isn’t a strong point here. Pretty much everything you see and do in Reckoning will strongly remind you of something you’ve seen or done in another game but, more often than not, Reckoning will have improved it. The basic mechanics, while all very familiar, are remarkably well done.

The combat, in particular, is superb. It works in a similar way to that of Dragon Age, only with the satisfying physicality and fluidity of a proper action game like God Of War, Dante’s Inferno or Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow.

You have more basic attack options than in Dragon Age and fewer special abilities, but the fundamental structure and control system is almost exactly the same.

On the face of it, Reckoning seems simpler and shallower than the games it borrows from because you get a mere handful of combos and skills to work with, as opposed to the multitude you might be accustomed to.

But where you’ll usually only use a fraction of the options available to you in an RPG like Skyrim or an action game like Castlevania, in Reckoning you’ll frequently find yourself drawing from all of the options available to you.

You are limited to only four abilities at any one time, so picking wisely is important for each battle.

This is the mark of really good game design – every choice feels meaningful and every decision has a tangible impact. Combine this with Reckoning’s chunky, full-blooded action mechanics and you’ve crafted yourself a recipe for fun.

The design principle of offering you simple but meaningful choices permeates every aspect of Reckoning’s gameplay, not just the combat. The crafting systems illustrate this very well.

Again, on the face of it you have a simplified version of ideas you’ve seen in other games – alchemy, smithing and enchanting, just like Skyrim.

But whereas in Skyrim you have to craft literally hundreds of useless items just to get your skills to the point where you might be able to make something good, in Reckoning there’s a decent chance that even the most basic of crafted items will be worth hanging on to and using.

You won’t make anything really great to start with, but even the lowliest of potions will have just enough of an effect to make a noticeable and meaningful effect. This offset by a comparative scarcity of resources, so it’s not like you’re overpowered.

Even a failed alchemy experiment will result in an ‘unstable’ potion, which will have a random positive or negative effect when consumed. This is a brilliant little idea, and we’re delighted to report that, on one occasion, gulping down an unstable potion saved us from death and turned the tide of a particularly hard-fought battle in our favour.

It turned out to be a health-regeneration potion – exactly what we needed at that moment. It was a bona fide ‘YES!’ moment. Don’t you just love those?

This guy is a Fateweaver, and the main springboard for the game's storyline.

There are loads of other brilliant little ideas in this game, like the ‘why isn’t it like this is every game?’ sprint button and the intelligent dynamic camera.

We could tell you about them, and about how well-designed the character-development system is, and about the way the variety of enemies complements the combat superbly, but we’re running out of space and you need to know why a game with such perfectly refined basics at its core isn’t the greatest RPG ever. So let’s rein in this gushing praise with some cold criticism.

The first problem should already be obvious. Reckoning is so unoriginal and generic. It wears its influences on its sleeve – The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, God Of War, Fable and World Of Warcraft are all very blatantly there.

While most of its numerous refinements to existing ideas are brilliant in their own right, there’s nothing game-changing or revolutionary here. It’s actually a little less than the sum of its parts. Although they really are very good parts.

It doesn’t help that the quest design is largely uninspired. Once we’d settled in and got a feel for the game, we found ourselves drifting towards quest markers on autopilot much of the time.

It’s a problem common to RPGs – Dragon Age II had it bad, and even the mighty Skyrim falls foul of it sometimes – and Reckoning does a good job snapping you out of it with a tough encounter or a new skill or item that forces you to change your play style, but we felt these incidences were getting fewer and farther between as the game went on.

The story, despite having some interesting themes and ideas, is fairly poor too, thanks to weak voice acting and a clunky conversation system.

But these weaknesses are easy to forgive when the fundamental game mechanics are so expertly designed and so much fun. So, Reckoning might not be worth rushing Skyrim over, but if you’re an RPG fan, we’d recommend making it the next game on your to-play list.