Review on Kingdom of Amalur (KoA) : Re Reckoning

 My first post for 2022.

I have wrote this last year (in November) but decided to put it this year as a new post. My first post for 2022 will be my personal review of the game - Kingdom of Amalur : Re Reckoning.

In the month of November, 2021, I received a surprise addition to my game from Playstation Store, courtesy of being the Playstation PLUS members. Once a month, PLUS members will get to download some random games from the store for free. Surprisingly, I got Kingdom of Amalur : Re Reckoning. 

The reason for the surprise was that the game was recently remade for Playstation 4 and I wasn't expecting it to be given out freely so soon. Nevertheless, I did play it and finished it in a month (which included the DLCs). But first, we will speak of the background of this amazing game. 

Kingdom of Amalur was first released back in 2012 for Playstation 3 (and X-Box 360). Strictly speaking, the game was the biggest competitor at the time for the game Elder Scroll : Skyrim which came out a year before. 

Kingdom of Amalur's lore was written by R. A salvatore which also wrote for Demon Stone (Playstation 2 release in 2004) and various other fictions books. He was hired as creative director for the upstart game company, 38 Studios which eventually produced Kingdom of Amalur : Reckoning for Playstation 3. But bad luck have it that three months later, the studio went bankrupt and the future of the promising game had become bleak for nearly six years.

In September 2018, THQ Nordic game studios (from Austria) had purchased the rights for the series and remastered the game as Kingdom of Amalur : Re Reckoning for Windows, Playstation 4 and X-Box One. A Nintendo Switch version was released in 2021 and the game studio announced a third DLC called Fatesworn for the tenth anniversary (December 14th, 2021) for the game.

A lot of people who played both KoA and Skyrim were comparing both and it was a hot-topic during the early years of Playstation 3. However, being released now after almost a decade of disappearance, many of the gamers today did not bother to take a second try at the game and some who did (like myself), only to find that the game was lacking greatly compared to Skyrim. Don't get me wrong, KoA is a good game but it seems to be lacking in term of contents.

First thing I notice is the graphics. It is too "bright" and unnatural looking. Everything looks artificial without any hint of natural cycle of the World like raising of the Sun and the Moon, night fall or day time. Even the dungeon was bright and unnatural looking, when compared to Skyrim. 

Second thing I have noticed is how short the game actually is. I have finished the main game and the two DLCs in around 145 hours (doing most of the side-quests to obtain around 80% of the trophy on my first play-through) and to me, that signify that it is a very short game. I consider any game which takes two to three months to finish to be in an average length for a RPG.  Kingdom of Amalur : Re Reckoning is a very short game (or maybe I was too good at playing the game).

Third thing I noticed is that this game has a level-cap at level 40 (Normal mode). Level cap is maximum level a character could be raised in a single play-through. Not many games in Playstation 4 era has level caps nowadays (except maybe Horizon Zero Dawn). In the past, most Playstation 1 and 2 games had level 99 as its level cap mostly because the limitation of the system at the time and because the game actually gets more and more difficult as you progress, making you work for each levels. Most games remove any reasons for the need to have levels for characters and put them on their weapons and armour status, as well as skill sets. However, I find level 40 for KoA too short for my taste. It should have ended in a more meaningful number like level 50 or 60. 

Fourth thing I notice and I find this to be irritating is that the leveling up have random effects on the character status. For example, if a level 1 character has HP 100, MP 50, Defense 25. Upon leveling up, there could be a certain increase in the status of the character, like HP increases to 150, Defense up to 30 and MP up by 60. This increase of the status indicated that the leveling up has some meaningful implication to the character. 

However, I find that the leveling up in KoA has some random effects, which including reducing the HP of the character, reducing the level need to wear an armour which I already been using before and random reduction in MP. Choosing between Finese, Magic and Might could sometimes gives random effect which could force my character to run around bare-feet or shirtless (and I was using a female character at that time). This random effect makes it hard for me to manage my character properly.

But not all things are bad in this game. I did find some good features.

I really like the fluidity and the smoothness of battle in this game. When compared to Skyrim, I have noticed that the character I used in KoA can move and perform actions a lot smoother. Matter a fact, only other game which had similar fluid-motion is Horizon Zero Dawn. 

The skills in KoA are well-connected in battle where I could have skill from all three aspects (Might, Finese and Magic) used in fluid motions. I could hit with my longsword, dodge out of the way, use bows and arrows (using Triangle button) and then recharge my magic projectile for long-range attack. Only problem I saw is that there was no enemy auto-target system like in Sykrim or Horizon Zero Dawn so sometimes, the projectile I could fire could miss the target by a mile or does not auto-connect to another target after the first one dies. 

The game is not stingy with resources like the Witcher 3 was. I could easily buy everything I needed and still had tones of gold in my pockets for everything else. Buying healing items are redundant as you can get a lot from the dungeons and exploring the World as well as making your own through Alchemy. I just wished they could have made that part a bit more expensive or harder to obtain so I could have excuse to use my gold instead of hoarding it like a greedy dragon.

The story has a very good plot and smoothness to it, compared to Skyrim which sometimes become glitchy. The quests can be taken and completed without any problems and each sub-quests had their own sub-stories which could be confusing to some players who like to rush things through. This game is not for those who are rushing through. This game emphasis heavily on story-telling or plot-oriented. While it is possible to just concentrate on the main story of the game and finish it in a shortest time possible, I feel that the player could lost out a lot in term of understanding the rich lore that went into this game if they did that. 

As for the lore itself, it was NOT purely based on dungeon-and-dragon style of gameplay you could expect in games like Skyrim or Dragon Age. This game relies heavily in understanding of Fae Magic and Science of the Dwarves within the game - two underlying concepts which permeates heavily throughout the game and which the player could easily become confused (regarding the plot) if they did not pay attention to the plot and the lore from the beginning. I fear this game could be too complex to the newer generation of youths who are lacking in patience and has a shorter attention span than those who are older.

The similarities of enemies we encounter throughout the game become another factor which discourages the players to explore the dungeons more, and most of the time, stick to the main story or story-related areas as much as possible, which is one reason why this game felt to be so short in comparison to other RPGs. I really hope that they could fix this problem in the sequel which I heard that THQ Nordic planning to create. Frankly speaking, there is a great market for games with themes of Dungeons-and-Dragons, especially considering that new generation gamers did not have enough experience or even exposure to this type of game genre as the older generation gamers such as myself had. 

Over all, Kingdom of Amalur is a game with a vast potential of becoming popular RPG if THQ Nordic could update the game style to accommodate the current generation of gamers - which include removing the level cap, increase the difficulty of the game, diversify the enemies and make the gameplay a bit more challenging. 

They should not change the way the battle is conducted as it is superb and fluid in motion. They should not change the way the lore of the story are told and how the characters interacts. They should not change the way the quests are taken either. For these features were better than in Skyrim, at least in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning