KOA: Boy have we stuffed a lot of stuff in here.
KOA: Reckoning has a lot of good points.
Varied locations, fun combat (mostly), loads of NPCs to chat up, lots of loot, some crafting and a lot of lore.
The variety of locations - forest, plains, desert, wasteland, etc. are well done. You have a scope of a large world and various cities dotting the landscape. There are hidden areas to stumble across and rewards for doing so. Some of the towns seem somewhat vacant, but numerous NPCs clogging the street only make for frustating gameplay to me.
The combat has variety and if you don't change your combat style completely at least twice during the game, you're missing a lot. I started with a longsword and bow at the beginning and stayed married to those weapons for some time and near the end game was using a giant hammer and chakrams. Added to the mix are abilities, standards spells like lightning and quake (a favorite of mine), effects like poison blade and shield (which you can turn on and then reassign those slots to different spells, though this blocks a portion of the mana pool). This gives a sense of satisfying combat once you have some levels under your belt.
The NPCs are all voiced, which makes the fact that the protagonist (male or female of one of four races) not voiced kind of strange. There is interesting stuff to learn from characters who aren't even quest givers, actually.
And there there is the loot. There is a lot of it. You can break some of it down for crafting. Crafting comes in three types - weapons/armor, potions from ingredients and sagecrafting (gems). None of these are particularly deep, and drops are somewhat random for harvesting from weapons and such.
The lore of the game is immense. Lorestones, books, conversations. They've built a large world here and I am glad it isn't my job to maintain it.
On the bad side of things.
Combat with some damage sponges can be annoying. Really, three Jottun in the next room? I just beat six. I know I can take these guys. But, I'm out of Fate, so I can't slip into Reckoning mode and polish them off.
A few missions require the AI controlled side character to survive. Most of the time in them main quest line, they just get up off the ground if they get killed. Ancillary quests can fail if that happens. I did a quest with "White Knight" in the title. She got trapped in a corner when I faced off against three consecutive rooms of brutes and I had to continually save (which you can do when not in combat, nice!). "Can you please survive against one bad guy while I eliminate the other three for about thirty seconds? Thanks."
There's no indicator for tracking certain objectives. Not quests, those are great. But there is no stat screen for how many times you successfully parried, or truly picked that ingredient you need ten of for the achievement, or how many books you've read, or how many times you used and ability to finish off an opponent. Was it once? Ten times? Fifty? Who knows?
But, there's a ton of content. I took some time and finished the game in about 75 hours and got 100% on the 360. If you liked the demo, get the game. It is more of the same. If you didn't get into the demo, don't waste your time or money.
