Review - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the world is threatened by the an evil member of the immortal Fae race called Gadflow and it soon becomes apparent that you are the only one who can stop him. There’s just one problem, you’re dead.



Reckoning is the debut title from 38 Studios, a slightly bizarre development house created by apparently rather famous baseballer Curt Schilling. The story goes that Schilling wanted to make an RPG of his very own and he created the company and teamed up with Big Huge Games to get it done. What’s more, he roped in some of the biggest names in the business to help him, including The Elder Scrolls’ Ken Rolston as the designer, acclaimed fantasy author R.A. Salvatore as the creator of the universe and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane working on the art.

It’s an impressive mix of names and ambition and, some four years on, their first project has debuted. And it’s a rather mixed bag.

Reckoning really doesn’t make a very good first impression. Plain and barely functional menus lead to a lacklustre series of opening cutscenes full of portentous voice over and no real sense of what the hell is going on. Character creation is basic and the non interactive cut scenes strangely dull.

And then you die.

Indeed, much has been made in the run up to release of the fact that your protagonist is dead from the off and it’s a neat enough solution to the requirements of an RPG narrative, rather than the tried and tested amnesia. It leaves the character as a completely blank slate and also ties into one of the game’s main features – the ability to rewrite your destiny and also the fates of others.

As you were supposed to expire, your very presence is rewriting what is supposed to happen. This means your every action has an impact on fate and, in the case of enemy encounters, changes how they were supposed to die. Using Reckoning mode, players can buff their strength and take out hordes of foes before unwinding their fates is pretty spectacular fashion.
It’s just one element of perhaps Reckoning’s most successful feature – combat. Rather than the stuffy, stat based fighting of most RPG’s, Reckoning takes inspiration more from action titles for a system that includes dodging rolls, blocking and arcade style quick time events. Essentially, this boils down to a single attack button and mixing up different primary and secondary weapons to get the gruesome job done, with attacks building up your Reckoning mode so it can be unleashed on crowds of enemies.



There’s no denying the combat in Reckoning feels far slicker than most comparable RPG’s, and the solid weapon selection means things are more tactical than they might at first appear – including swords, bows, hammers, daggers and staffs as well as universe specific items including the bat’leth like Faeblade and Frisbee-ish Chakra. There’s also readily accessible magic with an unusually high regeneration rate that lets you fling electricity and fire with ease.

Choice is key in Reckoning, so much so that even character progression can be reversed at any time. The skill tree itself is a straightforward affair that gives you plenty of options to develop in any direction you like. Better yet, there are no penalties for pursuing a particular path – if you’ve got the time and the talent points, you can become a badass mage who just so happens to also wield a sword real good. And your fluid destiny means you can always swap out your fate card whenever you are levelling up (or any time for a small fee), giving you buffs to new skills so you can go down a new path.

The freeform nature of Reckoning is commendable but it also has the knock on effect of making it feel as though little that you do really matters. When choices can be reversed at a whim, there’s no consequence to finally deciding to favour magic over might, no rush of making yourself that little bit weaker in combat at the expense of being able to set people on fire from a distance. And while upgrades and plentiful and levelling never takes long, improvements to your character are rarely all that noticeable or gratifying. For better or worse, players like to know instantly that they are now measurably more kick ass than they were before they picked up that new perk.

I haven’t yet mentioned much about the story and that’s because it’s really rather forgettable. Bad stuff is happening and you are probably going to help, beyond that it’s a collection of typical RPG elements thrown into a vagule familiar world. And that’s part of the problem – there’s no point of reference here, it’s clearly a fantast realm but the mythogly is either opaque or unknown. Salvatore apparently spent many moons forging a 10,000 year history for Amalur but it never seems through the screen in the way other universes do. The world lacks the detail of Bethesda’s creations and the wry touches of something like Fable while your mute protagonist does nothing to add some personality to proceedings.



In practise, there is a definite feel of the Fable series about Reckoning – in the focus on combat and the general mechanics of getting from place to place. The world feels similarly constrained, far more linear than it initially appears in everything from the relative lack of interactivity in the world to the rigid paths that your character must follow – for fear of an insurmountable tree root. Sadly, the technology often looks similarly dated – the worlds are sometimes pretty through a very mid 2000s kind of filter but character models are basic and there’s a jarring lack of detail in some of the environments. And that’s one ugly HUD you’ve got there, KOA:R.

But despite its many flaws, Reckoning is actually a lot of fun to play. The combat is relatively slick and plentiful and Big Huge Games get one RPG element spot on – loot. There are bazillions of things to pick up, with practically every container or corpse providing some new weapon or piece of armour for you to sell or beat the crap out of something with. There’s good enemy variety and you’ll often be seriously outnumbered, though don’t rely on your infrequent AI companions for help as, while immortal, they also deal next to no damage. And steer well clear of the casual difficulty level as even normal is often a breeze.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is several steps from greatness but it’s a noble effort from a first time developer and much more than a mere vanity project. Genre siblings could learn much from the dedication to a robust combat system but the narrative is rarely engaging and the world never feels particularly lived in or compelling. Add in a mute protagonist, rather staid dialogue and a plethora of genre stereotypes and it won’t be long before you run crying back to your Dovahkiin.