1UP's Pre-Review Write-Up Expresses My Impressions Deftly

Quote Thierry Nguyen:

...Reckoning is a game that you grow into rather than try to rapidly understand within the space of a 20-minute demonstration, a two-hour hands-on from the end game, or an outsourced, 45-minute-long consumer demo that teases you with how it begins. It's traditionally been something of a warning flag to say that a game requires the player to invest a significant amount of time before they can enjoy it -- the classic "It gets good 15 hours in!" -- but in all honesty, Reckoning didn't quite click for me until I found myself, 15 hours in, deep in a hunt for bandits in a side quest; dealing with a reincarnated faery knight for a faction quest; adventuring with a raging drunk for the main storyline; deciding whether to be a magic-thief hybrid who can teleport versus being a pure warrior who can automatically resurrect herself during battle; and breaking down swords in order to craft my own through the blacksmithing skill...

I told ya so. Okay, maybe I like reading stuff that panders to me and my opinions. I think everyone should agree with me more often, because I'm usually so very right. Anyways - Thierry Nguyen over at 1UP wrote a 2-page write-up about how the world at large kinda doesn't see Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning quite yet for what it is. It's his job to school the ignorant and hit us with some wisdom. So read up on his thoughts. I found them quite enlightening, but that's because it's mostly what I want to hear.

You might not want to hear what he has to say, so brace yourselves. Go get!

Idk about you being "right" since it's all really opinions anyway, but that was a good read. Demo had me on the fence, but after reading this I think I'll be picking it up in it's release week.

Yeah, we knew you worked for EA.

The demo actually drug me, kicking and screaming, back to the fence and planted me firmly (and painfully) back onto it. That is never a good sign.

Honestly, it was just kind of boring. Combat was boring, dialogue was boring, quests were... well, OK, they weren't bad, but I don't find myself wanting to dive back into the game when the entirety of Skyrim and Dragon Age Origins sit on my shelf to fulfill my fantasy RPG needs.

It still annoys me visually and there's nothing that can be done about that, unfortunately. Also, I don't have the attention span to wait 15 hours for something to turn good.

"Meh". That's about all I can muster for this game.

Interesting read. I'll probably still wait for a price drop or a steam sale seeing as how I still have so many other games lying around that need finishing. The game came off as good but not amazing to me. I thoroughly enjoyed the mage's combat in the demo though. They actually managed to make a mage's melee cool. It's not often that I get to feel like I'm fire bending with a staff.

I actually really want this game, despite it being the type of game I would never find myself playing.

I guess I just really like Irish mythology.

Getting good 15 hours in? Sounds like Final Fantasy XIII. Does this mean Reckoning will get as much hate? Somehow... I doubt it :P

Personally, I've got serious doubts about Reckoning - the combat is the only thing that I found interesting about it. The story seemed as generic as anything I've seen in a long time.

I may still pick it up - if I find myself sufficiently bored. Though with February looking more like a November, I doubt that's going to happen.

@CaLe said:

"Meh". That's about all I can muster for this game.

still think opinions may vary and your might not be the 'right' one

Congratulations.

edit: ok, I didn't mean to sound dismissive, but aren't all RPG's kind of like this? I could have told you that you need to play an RPG for a decent amount of time before you are hooked. The longest session I ever played of Skyrim was 30 hours in, because I was completely obsessed with it.

Jesus titty-fucking Christ, give this a rest. I'm actually pretty excited for Amalur myself, but the way you keep forcing it down everyone else's throats makes me want to cancel my preorder solely to spite you and your overbearing affection for the game.

It's going to do fine. Reviews will no doubt scour it with 7-8/10s and 4/5s (at the very least, I think Jeff is assured to give it 4 stars) more than likely, and while I don't think it's going to sell well at launch, I have a feeling it'll quickly pick up down the line when it can be found at a cheaper price.

@believer258 said:

The demo actually drug me, kicking and screaming, back to the fence and planted me firmly (and painfully) back onto it. That is never a good sign.

Honestly, it was just kind of boring. Combat was boring, dialogue was boring, quests were... well, OK, they weren't bad, but I don't find myself wanting to dive back into the game when the entirety of Skyrim and Dragon Age Origins sit on my shelf to fulfill my fantasy RPG needs.

All the classic RPG motivators don't really work in a finite and tiny demo. Leveling and loot - the whole aspect of character building really. Exploration cannot work, if you get 2 out of 40+ zones which make up the tapestry of the open world (and much of the content in them being locked away). Except for one faction quest, which sets a quite intriguing stage, there's but one-off sidequests in the demo, so storytelling is circumstantial at best. It's the starter era too - so it's the 'kill 10 rats' content of the game. Things are supposedly going to get a whole lot more challenging quickly with bigger monsters and more powerful foes and larger groups of enemies and more aggressive AI. There's always hard difficulty for those who want to tweak the experience more in the direction of a twitch action game and away from a primarily stats driven RPG combat experience.

For how ill-equipped a demo is for conveying KoA:R's supposed greatness, I seen it shine through, and as far as feedback from the ethusiast press community goes, it really does come together in a big way once you're balls-deep into it. This article does urge people to look past the 0.x% experience players got from the demo, to look past expectations and ill-conceived notions about what other games KoA:R's gameplay is referential to, because what seems at first to be derivative of a tonne of other games does come together as something great and unique, an experiece you shouldn't miss out on - distinctly Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning.

At least that's the vibe I'm getting from those who already play the full game, and what I've extrapolated from my experiences with the demo and the coverage I've read.

I should've known this would happen after that negative Amalur thread got posted.

I'm pretty sure I don't have 15 hours to spare before I start to enjoy something,

I'm with you bro! We may be the only two in the entire GB community who buy, lets go get some KoA tattoos!

@JasonR86 said:

I'm pretty sure I don't have 15 hours to spare before I start to enjoy something,

I think he's talking more about 'clicking' in the sense of all the pieces falling into place and forming something more than an amalgamation of derivative elements stolen from other games - it takes 15 hours for KoA:R to establish itself as game with an own personality and soul. Combat is quite fun to begin with for example.

It starts off rather bland and forgettable, yet perfectly enjoyable (what we've seen in the demo ), and every gameplay aspect continously grows into something more and starts to mesh better with each other and keeps on growing - until finally it's been an unforgetable and unique journey. A modern RPG gem. Maybe even a masterpiece.

It's usually a bad sign when a demo gets released and then all you hear afterwards is excuses for why the demo was so shitty and "not representative of the finished game". The vast majority of the time it in fact does turn out to be representative of the finished game. The rest of the time I just end up thinking 'why would I want to buy anything from companies who collectively are so incompetent that they managed to put out a non-representative demo which made their own game look worse than it is?'. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

@Jimbo said:

It's usually a bad sign when a demo gets released and then all you hear afterwards is excuses for why the demo was so shitty and "not representative of the finished game". The vast majority of the time it in fact does turn out to be representative of the finished game. The rest of the time I just end up thinking 'why would I want to buy anything from companies who collectively are so incompetent that they managed to put out a non-representative demo which made their own game look worse than it is?'. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

The demo worked well enough outside of technical issues caused by 'breaking off' part of the code by an outside team. Gameplay itself split players into two factions - those who just see what's there, and those who look forward to where it all leads.

Many enjoyed it for what it is, a tiny fraction of the beginning of a much larger game, where naturally everything is at its simplest. Many a simpleton just isn't capable of seeing past that and comes up with fallacies such as 'too generic, too simple - or simply boring'. 'Killing 10 Rats'-type of content is never that great and as far as killing 10 rats goes, I rarely done it in more style with as much swagger as in Kingdom's of Amalur : Reckoning.

I for one don't apologize for the gameplay, I'm merely pointing out the fallacy of thinking that that's all that's there. It's the starting point, not the destination - and the journey is what makes it better and better. How good it will eventually get is everybody's best guess. I for one am confident that it's going to be tonnes of fun.

I'm pretty sure I don't have 15 hours to spare before I start to enjoy something,

@Seppli said:

@believer258 said:

The demo actually drug me, kicking and screaming, back to the fence and planted me firmly (and painfully) back onto it. That is never a good sign.

Honestly, it was just kind of boring. Combat was boring, dialogue was boring, quests were... well, OK, they weren't bad, but I don't find myself wanting to dive back into the game when the entirety of Skyrim and Dragon Age Origins sit on my shelf to fulfill my fantasy RPG needs.

All the classic RPG motivators don't really work in a finite and tiny demo. Leveling and loot - the whole aspect of character building really. Exploration cannot work, if you get 2 out of 40+ zones which make up the tapestry of the open world (and much of the content in them being locked away). Except for one faction quest, which sets a quite intriguing stage, there's but one-off sidequests in the demo, so storytelling is circumstantial at best. It's the starter era too - so it's the 'kill 10 rats' content of the game. Things are supposedly going to get a whole lot more challenging quickly with bigger monsters and more powerful foes and larger groups of enemies and more aggressive AI. There's always hard difficulty for those who want to tweak the experience more in the direction of a twitch action game and away from a primarily stats driven RPG combat experience.

For how ill-equipped a demo is for conveying KoA:R's supposed greatness, I seen it shine through, and as far as feedback from the ethusiast press community goes, it really does come together in a big way once you're balls-deep into it. This article does urge people to look past the 0.x% experience players got from the demo, to look past expectations and ill-conceived notions about what other games KoA:R's gameplay is referential to, because what seems at first to be derivative of a tonne of other games does come together as something great and unique, an experiece you shouldn't miss out on - distinctly Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning.

At least that's the vibe I'm getting from those who already play the full game, and what I've extrapolated from my experiences with the demo and the coverage I've read.

You missed my first sentence. I realized all of this and wanted to like the game, but what I played felt underwhelming. Was I completely turned away? Hardly! In fact, I will probably get to play it sometime this year or next. I was, however, turned away from a preorder or an early buy.

And besides, I said that quests were OK. It's mainly the combat system that I didn't really enjoy. It felt more like a button mash extravaganza than something that would take a good bit of real skill and challenge to do. But, again, those are just initial impressions.

If they really wanted to show off how later quests could go and how much better combat might be, they should have released a demo with some pre-set characters set later in the game, with a full questline included.

EDIT: Aaaaaaannnnnddddddd I forgot to add something along these lines:

@JasonR86 said:

I'm pretty sure I don't have 15 hours to spare before I start to enjoy something,

Most games take fifteen hours or less to beat. Why the hell would I want to play something that takes that long to get started!?

I'll probably get it. My expectations are low, so hopefully I enjoy it. The areas on the map that you could go later looked cooler than the generic fantasy forest the demo was in.

Dude. YOU DO NOT NEED A NEW TOPIC FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING REVIEW/PREVIEW THAT COMES OUT FOR A GAME. STOP IT.

The demo froze up on me more than 100 hours of Skyrim has. And I didn't have fun in the demo so I'm not really interested anymore.

The setting and the look are too generic for me to give a damn. It's really off-putting to me. High fantasy is a setting/theme that has been done to death, as well as the WoW-chunky art style.

The demo was a massive failure. A demo is supposed to put its best foot forward and they failed in every regard to that.

I just really hate shoulder pads/pauldrons.

Also.

@cstrang said:

Dude. YOU DO NOT NEED A NEW TOPIC FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING REVIEW/PREVIEW THAT COMES OUT FOR A GAME. STOP IT.

@cstrang said:

Dude. YOU DO NOT NEED A NEW TOPIC FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING REVIEW/PREVIEW THAT COMES OUT FOR A GAME. STOP IT.

@Seppli: What is the point of this thread? Does anyone know who this guy is? Why would you start a thread saying haha I was right when no one knows who you are or anything you've said about the game?

@Hunkulese: Thierry Nyugen is a pretty respected game critic. I value his opinions and views.

That said, I do think Seppli has been making a few too many threads.

The game is going to be great, though.

The majority of responses I've seen in this and many other threads regarding Kingdoms of Amalur remind me of when Darksiders was coming out. I kept saying that the game was going to be fucking awesome, and everyone kept saying "looks mediocre" and "meh" and "it's bland".

Then it came out, and everyone shit their pants, turned the corner like Steve McQueen freaking out in a Mustang, and said "OMFG CAN'T WAIT TO PLAY THIS"...especially when GB gave it a good review.

I'm expecting the same shit to happen with KoA.

I don't think I want to make a 15 hour investment in hitting X repeatedly and occasionally tapping B.

The write-up hasn't sold me, the demo definitely didn't sell me and pretty sure even Donald Trump couldn't sell me on the QTE's and generic-ass fantasy trappings.

I put a good six hours into Reckoning already and so far it's been an okay experience, I'm pure finesse right now and the combat is getting kind of repetitive (I'm going to hope this gets remedied when I have access to more of my abilities,) it's at least not as fun as say, Dark Souls combat.

Another thing, so far all of the finesse equipment I've picked up (daggers, armor and such) use the exact same model as what I had previously. I would at least expect them to front load the game with different weapon and armor models, they don't even have the decency to pallet swap them, but it's not game ruining.

The demo had me utterly and completely sold. Never have I had that much fun with a demo before in my life. I seriously cannot wait for later on this week :)

@Seppli: Make another KoA thread! So far you have created only 13 (thirteen) of those and there are still a few other topics displayed on the front page of the site. ;)

@CaLe said:

"Meh". That's about all I can muster for this game.

That's remarkably constructive and communicative of you. Thank you for your input.