Just finished up my playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning. A little something over 102 hours for a 100% playthrough (or some close approximation of it). I had good to great fun throughout most of it, though it did overstay its welcome a bit.

• After about 80 hours I started to tire of the VOs. Whereas before I was able to successfully ignore all the redundancy and immerse myself, it just wore me down over time, being fed the same informations countless times over. That's when I started to 'click away' VOs frequently.
• Combat broke on multiple occassions due to too well optimized gear, respectively gamebreakingly overpowered itemization. I tried out crafting in the final zones too, which again was instantly gamebreaking with my survivability and crit rates getting stupid high and enemies getting pretty much one-shot.

Is it just me who did a 'content clear' playthrough and had like 100 hours less on their playtime than Big Huge Games advertised? Wasn't there an article about a 200 hours internal speedrun clicking away all dialogs? I bet 30-40 hours of my playtime was dialogs alone. Oh well - I got my money's worth and then some.

All things said. These are my lessons to having an enjoyable 'Clear KoA:R' experience. There's some really bad and boring sidequests, but I'd estimate it's about a 30/70 split. 70 in a 100 sidequests are actually worthwhile doing. If you can live with such odds, do them.

• Don't zone, before you're done with all quests.
• Don't craft.
• Don't minmax too much.
• In combat, do what's cool and stylish and challenge yourself to perform well, rather than just going for what works (because button mashing works).
• If you break combat, roll back to less optimized gear.
• Read all the books and notes.
• Engage in VOs and really listen and look - procedural facial animations and voice acting is much better than you'd think at first glance.
• Click away VO redundancies.

How about you guys? What's your playtime tally been? How did you like it overall? Your tips for prospective clear playthrough players?

With some effort, I managed to get a great gameplay experience out of KoA:R, albeit it did overstay its welcome at the end and combat and loot and crafting and consumables just lack the checks and balances to maintain a fun challenge throughout - though with 'combat roleplaying'/'pretending' the visceral 3rd person action mechanics managed to stay satisfying nonetheless. Good fun and a great value proposition.

Just finished up my playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning. A little something over 102 hours for a 100% playthrough (or some close approximation of it). I had good to great fun throughout most of it, though it did overstay its welcome a bit.

• After about 80 hours I started to tire of the VOs. Whereas before I was able to successfully ignore all the redundancy and immerse myself, it just wore me down over time, being fed the same informations countless times over. That's when I started to 'click away' VOs frequently.
• Combat broke on multiple occassions due to too well optimized gear, respectively gamebreakingly overpowered itemization. I tried out crafting in the final zones too, which again was instantly gamebreaking with my survivability and crit rates getting stupid high and enemies getting pretty much one-shot.

Is it just me who did a 'content clear' playthrough and had like 100 hours less on their playtime than Big Huge Games advertised? Wasn't there an article about a 200 hours internal speedrun clicking away all dialogs? I bet 30-40 hours of my playtime was dialogs alone. Oh well - I got my money's worth and then some.

All things said. These are my lessons to having an enjoyable 'Clear KoA:R' experience. There's some really bad and boring sidequests, but I'd estimate it's about a 30/70 split. 70 in a 100 sidequests are actually worthwhile doing. If you can live with such odds, do them.

• Don't zone, before you're done with all quests.
• Don't craft.
• Don't minmax too much.
• In combat, do what's cool and stylish and challenge yourself to perform well, rather than just going for what works (because button mashing works).
• If you break combat, roll back to less optimized gear.
• Read all the books and notes.
• Engage in VOs and really listen and look - procedural facial animations and voice acting is much better than you'd think at first glance.
• Click away VO redundancies.

How about you guys? What's your playtime tally been? How did you like it overall? Your tips for prospective clear playthrough players?

With some effort, I managed to get a great gameplay experience out of KoA:R, albeit it did overstay its welcome at the end and combat and loot and crafting and consumables just lack the checks and balances to maintain a fun challenge throughout - though with 'combat roleplaying'/'pretending' the visceral 3rd person action mechanics managed to stay satisfying nonetheless. Good fun and a great value proposition.

I am 41 hours in and 125 quest complete. Level 35. I THINK I am close to the end of the main story though which is nice. I love the game but damn, it has been non-stop quest running for 40 hours straight.

25-ish hours. Did the House of Ballads (which was great, btw) and about 20 side quests before getting super bored and started to follow the main quest. Played on Hard and the game was still a little too easy. I played Might and I did force myself to do things that were more then just pressing one button over and over. Problem is there is little you can do to keep the combat interesting when you have about 4 different means of attacking (normal, from block, from roll, from parry and x2 with two weapons but no from roll with a hammer).
 
As for the dialog I pretty much passed through it after reading and didn't really listen to the VO.
 
In the end, the game is okay but I have little desire to go back to play the other faction quests.
 
Also, fuck everyone who pointed at me in that game.

Hit the 30 hour mark of 'doing everything.' Completely bored with the game. Started non-stop skipping dialogue at 20 hours. Feeling pretty bored with video games all around though, so it may not be Reckoning's fault.

My full clear save with the warrior/mage is 86 hours. I pretty much scoured the game for content 202 quests done, but I missed out on a few quests in one zone due to an NPC bug (Headsman)

My pure finesse run through just the main quest plus all the guilds is 25 hours.

Both on hard, plus i'm a type of player who tends to waste a bunch of time minmaxing. But I do believe the play time is only counted when you are in the world not in dialogue or menues (at least it did for the demo). Somone can correct me if im wrong.

65 hours - 60 quests in my first play through. Played on hard and full finesse and hit level 32 before finishing. I tend to work the main story and two faction quests picking up the odd quest here and there. I plan on hitting up the other quests and factions with new characters.

I rarely stayed in a zone for long. I typically plot my quests closest to furthest and walked/ran when in the same zone or nearby so I could look for lore stones and loot. I also found myself enjoying the story more so than most RPGs so I did listened to a decent amount of dialog and extra back story.

Hard was often a good challenge. I didn't craft weapons and kept potions limited to only what I could find or make. I also used gear I liked even if it was many many levels below. I had a pair of 50dps daggers I used until almost the very end of the game. I have heard a lot of people talk about how easy it is even on hard but I died a fair amount of times. It isn't difficult to become over powered - and maybe that is what some people like - but to get the most enjoyment out of the combat I found a few self-regulatory rules helped keep things balanced.

@Tennmuerti:

That'd make sense. I always thought my 'played' was somewhat low for the time I've spent on KoA:R.

I took me 52 hours, wasn't rushing and did pretty much every quest I found, but I did miss a few that I'm going back to clean up, level 39 pure finesse, normal difficulty(big mistake).

I had fun with it and I'm going to play it through again once all the DLC is out.

It took me 65 hours (that is what the save says) to get all trophies in the game. That means I played thorugh all guild quests, the main story and about 50 side quests. Enjoyed it all the way, but I have no desire to do more side quests. Good game to expand on in KoA II.

For me it took about 65 hours according to the games internal clock. Am level 40 nightblade with about 198 quests completed. At about level 20 I switched to hard difficulty as before that I played on normal. But as others have said it got way too easy.

I didnt do any crafting other than finishing that one quest where crafting was needed.