Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

pro

An interesting story with even better side quests inhabits a big, bright and colorful world. While this is no Tamriel, there are still tons to discover and people to talk to. You won't go far before someone offers you a quest or task.

pro

While the idea of factions isn't exactly original, the various groups and their extensive side quests in Amalur are very good and their stories are fun.

pro

The amount of weapons and skills are plentiful and easily controlled, which makes for great combat as you roll, evade, parry and attack your enemies. The skill trees are big and gives you ample opportunity to mix and match to find a perfect blend matching your style of play with the various classes of weapons available. It also helps that a lot of the weapons look amazing both while idling on your back or as they furiously take down your foes. The ease of combining spells with ranged attacks and melee in what looks like a seamless dance of ass-kicking is fulfilling.

con

Degrading weapons is an old mechanic that rarely fits in a game or is fun. In this game it is simply annoying and kills the pace. You will always have too many repair kits or merchants available to fix them, which further weakens the point of if being in there.

con

While the combat is fun and engaging, there is also a lot of it. This might seem a strange point in an rpg where leveling up is a part of the deal, but simply wading through random encounters towards every single destination gets tiring after a while. In the last quarter of the game I found myself running away from enemies more than actually fighting them.

con

And this might be the reason for the above con. The aren't a lot of enemy types in Amalur, and a lot of them are variations on a theme with small differences in their equipment or simply annoying to fight. Fighting 5 ice trolls only to round the corner and find five more of them is indicative of the lack of variation that the game suffers from.