Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning

Better performance/graphics?

Scratched wrote:

Better performance/graphics?

This! Once you go PC you never go back!

I started off with a mage build but I have decided to mix in some warrior (or whatever its called) skills and be a battle mage type character.

I'm really digging the world, the art style and the voice acting is overall good, I get really sucked in by it sometimes. Plus I love the music, its reminds me of John Williams (Star Wars/Indy) style music.

OK, so no. =)

I'm trying to minimize computer use at home in an attempt to help deal with some attention-deficit/compulsivity issues. No, games are OK as long as they are purposefully played, and it's easier for me to do that on a console where I don't have the option of tabbing over and browsing reddit/facebook/whatever for hours at a time.

I am a firm believer in the glorious PC master race, but I'm just taking a break to get back with the people for a while. Plus the video card thing. Motherf*cker sounds like a wind turbine.

Maq wrote:

I've dusted it off with the plan of finishing it. I actually rerolled a Chakrams/Bows toon and parked my Greatsword/Bows dude. Mostly because I could never find a bloody greatsword to use so ended up respeccing him to hammer instead - as I'd found a good one of those - then got bored with hammer combat. Oh well.

I mostly just enjoy romping about and chopping things up. It's fun and pretty and actiony and not too taxing so it scratches the same itch I got from playing WoW solo.

If you're near max level, you might want to google "Rhyderk" and go up the questline to reforge the legendary sword yourself. It packs a really mean punch.

Actiony, light games like this are perfect for the console & couch experience, imho.

I know you hate questions like this, but: Enable me on Amalur, based on my response to the PC demo. Camera was wonky, couldn't pull back enough, made me sick, combat seemed floaty and superficial, overly colorful world meant I had problems "seeing" important stuff, big and bright and blocky, maybe too "console" oriented?

I want to play on PC, but I had a bad experience with the demo. I loved Skyrim, I am currently liking The Witcher 2. However, any time I hear about a large RPG experience worth 100s of hours, I always want to get into it.

I'd say the demo is a pretty good representation of the full thing.

Montalban wrote:

I want to play on PC, but I had a bad experience with the demo. I loved Skyrim, I am currently liking The Witcher 2. However, any time I hear about a large RPG experience worth 100s of hours, I always want to get into it.

This game doesn't have much in common with Skyrim or TW2. It feels more like Diablo in third-person and if you don't like the combat, you probably won't like the game as that's pretty much all there is. It's sort of an open world game, but the world is fairly static.

As Scratched says, the demo is fairly representative of the game, though the demo had a few bugs and a bit of jank that the final game didn't have.

This isn't really a role-playing game; it's an action game with levelling and quests. I found it fun and put quite a bit of time into it (25-30 hrs), but once I put it down to play something else, I never felt compelled to come back to it. I think the people that really enjoyed it are the ones that wanted to master the combat. Beyond that, neither the world or the story are that big of a draw (imo).

It's not really Diablo-esque in the sense that you're not really farming areas or bosses for drops. You just do the quest and get the item. It's also not an isometric point-and-click game. It's definitely on the actiony side of action-RPG, though.

It's really more like inFamous if inFamous were set in a medieval fantasy location and were based on a brawler rather than a TPS model for its action. A look at the demo and any of the vids on Amalur will show that it's very brawlery, and later combat can get hectic and involved. But it's not Skyrim. It's not even on the same wavelength. Different game entirely.

Thanks for the feedback, all. I guess I will give this one a pass until it's down to a few bucks on Steam. I will trust my demo experience. Everyone in this thread speaks so well of the game that it had me doubting my instincts, so I appreciate the response.

KoA: Reckoning + 2 DLCs for $15 at GamersGate

I'd rather buy it on Steam, but because it seems EA has selling rights, I don't see this big of a discount happening there. That said, this is quite tempting, as I haven't played KoA.

MeatMan wrote:

KoA: Reckoning + 2 DLCs for $15 at GamersGate

I'd rather buy it on Steam, but because it seems EA has selling rights, I don't see this big of a discount happening there. That said, this is quite tempting, as I haven't played KoA.

Hmm. Does this activate on Origin?

Yep. Looking at the system requirements on the GG page:

Requires Origin account for game activation and online play

Oh well. Still tempting.

Has anyone ever posted anything negative about Origin, or is it just that it's not Steam?

BF3 players all have to use Origin, and it's a complete non-issue.

$15 is a steal. I've easily had $15 worth of fun, and I'm not halfway through the game. I've been wanting to get back to it after I wrap up Dark Souls (soon).

It was cheaper last month. $12 on Amazon for the same deal, game + DLC.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Has anyone ever posted anything negative about Origin, or is it just that it's not Steam?

Partly it was "why am I being forced to use Origin for ME3 and BF3?"

But also, it's inferior to Steam in pretty much every way. No groups for games. 100-player max friend list instead of 300, so I can't have all you GWJ people on my list to even play ME3 with. No features like screenshots, which I use a ton on Steam. The overlay is worse, and only really for Friends list... no achievements, web broswer, etc like Steam.

As far as playing a game, and having a cloud save system, it's capable, now. The cloud saves weren't there at the start with ME3 and that was really annoying.

For a single-player game like DA2, I had no problems with it. So for KoA, it's probably fine.

I consider those issues to fall under the heading of "not Steam", yeah.

Origin is perfectly competent. There's so many facets to game clients nowadays, steam has added in so many features on tangents from game store/downloader/patcher that it seems unfair to make it the comparison, it's almost a different type of app now, whereas origin is fairly 'vanilla'.

I just got to the point in the main quest where you go to the second continent and the game is burning out on me. It lets me play for about 20 minutes and then my video card starts crashing along with my interest in it. This doesn't happen with anything else and I've tried reinstalling my drivers. I'm around level 25 or so and have tried sorcerer and fighter, played both included DLC sequences. I've followed Jeff Gerstman's recommendation of doing zero side quests (since they are all boring).

Should I go on? Is there anything interesting coming up? I could respec as a sneaking character, but I'm not too intrigued by that.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I consider those issues to fall under the heading of "not Steam", yeah.

As a Canadian living in Japan I am not permitted to purchase from Origin unless I learn to read Japanese (was not able to change language settings at the time) and get a Japanese credit card. Steam allows me allows me to purchase with my Canadian credit card and even gave me a link that switches all the prices to Canadian dollars. So for me, Origin is useless.

I'd call that an actual Origin problem!

Sounds like a Vector problem to me. Learn the language, gaijin!

LiquidMantis wrote:

Sounds like a Vector problem to me. Learn the language, gaijin!

Still would have to get a Japanese credit card which is completely useless in Japan other than for Origin. It's a 100% cash society.

I've also made the weird decision that it's just easier for me to teach English to everyone I meet rather than make a strong effort to learn. Somehow, that's working extremely well.

I finally managed to pull the trigger on this one. $12 including DLC

Grumpicus wrote:

I finally managed to pull the trigger on this one. $12 including DLC

killer deal considering I put 112 hours into that game...

Well crap, I just bought for $9.50 at Gamefly yesterday without DLC.

*shakes fist at heavens*

Grumpicus wrote:

I finally managed to pull the trigger on this one. $12 including DLC

Very nice - I'm finally in. Now I just need to find time to actually play it

MyBrainHz wrote:

Well crap, I just bought for $9.50 at Gamefly yesterday without DLC.

*shakes fist at heavens*

There's a ton of content in the main game, so before you shake your fist, play enough to actually need the DLC. Maybe the base game will be enough, or maybe the DLC will get super cheap in some sale.

So what was the final conclusion on this game? Thinking if picking it up. I played the demo. I liked the combat, but does it get more complicated? I'm not looking for anything too deep, but not just hitting the same button over and over for 60 hrs.

I saw it on quite a few top ten lists in the community thread.

So enable/disable me.

Also, I tend to not be interested in game stories. I find them more as a necessary evil. I also heard the difficulty is on the easy side. I don't want a huge challenge but not a breeze either.

It's a brawler through and through, so it never gets that complex. Offhand, Muramasa on the Wii has a somewhat more complex combat system (not that anyone really notices). Having said that, it's not a button-masher on the normative and harder settings. You're enabled to switch between two weapons at will, which essentially translates to customizable light/medium/heavy attacks, though you can only have two at a time. In addition, each weapon has unlockable basic and advanced combos and charge abilities. Finally, you have available hot-key class active powers.

On the whole, the game isn't what I would call hard, but you can actually die a lot if you don't "get" how a monster is supposed to be handled. All the monsters have recognizable simple attack patterns - kinda like Megaman. So long as you know how the patterns go and take them apart systematically, it's easy.

I'll say this much - there are combos, animation frames, and cancelling moves (basic cancels are block and dodge); and they matter. That's a lot more than you can say about your garden variety button masher.