KoA: Reckoning - "Two thirds played on easy"

I'm playing nearly all my RPGs in hardest difficulty possible. For me the definition of good RPG is which can give challenging gameplay and a sense of progression at the same time. In this aspect Skyrim surprised me much because it can give me both, while Oblivion has disappointed me deeply. I even play the few non-RPGs in hard mode like Batman Arkham City. An RPG must be really really hard at the beginning and must become easy with progression.

I purchased KoA but haven't begin playing yet. I don't want to involve in two free roam RPGs at the same time. But out of curiosity I took a glance at it and unfortunately I didn't find the difficulty challenging. I even travel to farther areas to see are there more difficult creatures there. Nope. I find aggressive magics too powerful at the beginning. There's some talk about Kurt Chilling considering to add a new difficulty mode to the game. I hope they will add with a future patch.

By the way, I agree with you Turjan on Evil Island. It's one of the unforgiven RPGs that I have played and because of this it's more fun.

kalniel said:

Why would they have any reason to make it up? They can gather the stats as to what people are playing on, much like Steam games do.

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According to the story, they are basing the claim on internal playtests, not on actual after-purchase usage data or surveys. As such, they could say anything they want and not have it contested. What I am saying is that I find it hard to believe that if they used actual post-sale data from actual players who bought the game, it would be anywhere near this. And they do have a vested interest in covering their arse which is understandable but not necessarily 100% honest. I would love someone to pull the data from steam and we can compare.

i always play in ridiculously easy first to understand game mechanics, i think all games are meant to be first played on easy because who likes reloading when you can avoid wasting your time ?
I have not played KOA but i recently finnished DEUS X on the hardest difficulty, it was a real fun putting my aquired skills as a player in use . I think clear distinction between easy normal and hard is where the replayability of modern rpgs lies (since we don't get to do thinks in a different way).

I played the demo but couldn't get a good feel for the game and had false hope it would be more interesting as a finished product. Btw I also played Dragon Age ii demo and thought it was awful but did enjoy the actual game.

Anways there are different opinions on what is fun and not fun and I'm merely stating that I've not foudn this enjoyable. But as a contrast I know a lot of folks on RPGWATCH found dragon age ii very unejoyable...

fatknacker50 said:

I'm playing on Hard as well,its a nice challenge,I can thoroughly recommend KoA.
Did you play the demo at all ? If not,why not? you'd have saved yourself a few bob on a game that you clearly have issues with.

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I often find that some games are too hard for me even on "normal", that's why I've made a habit to play games on "easy" first (and often for the only time).

Maybe this is what has happened here, too ? That people feared that this game would be too hard on "normal" in the first place ? Maybe people have found themselves in this position with the last games they have played ?

Or, another possibility could be that they were only after the loot ? Because ... I think there isn't better loot on higher difficulty settings, no ?

Neil(Two Worlds two modding) has made a easy to use difficulty mod that doesn't even change the games files. Start the game and alt tab to start the mod and back to the game. Now combat is quite difficult and he has another mod for those of us who like to tinker further. The mod is listed right on the Amalur forum where most of the people complaining have ignored it.

I know, why can't the games own devs implement something and I believe they will.
But with the majority of the complaints about difficulty, I don't take seriously people who can fix the problem now with a 6 meg mod.

I must admit I'm a little surprised how many ppl here play games on easy. I haven't played a game I could enjoy on anything less than hard in years. An earlier poster nailed it; the stories in the best story games are pretty mediocre, so whats left to enjoy but strategy? Oddly, my one exception was dragon age ii. It wasnt terribly hard on insanity, but it was so mind and finger numbingly long and boring that I just set it to easy, messed with the friendly ai for two minutes, and then let the game finish itself.

For me, it's just a question of : What does the developer consider as "hard" and what as "easy" ?

For example I remember the demo of "Fantasy Wars. Even in "normal" mode this was very hard for me !

Playing a game in "hard" mode also involves a lot of knowledge of the in-game system. Math calculations : Which weapon does the greatest amount of damage ? In DDO, for example, I found the number telling me the possibility to land a "critical" strike only very late - and becaue of my number weklness (aka dyscalculia) I still have poblems with it.

I think that probably my dyscalculia is the reason why I prefer "social role playing" so much, because I just don't like "cruching numbers". In understand the sheer logic behind it, but it's the numbers that I can't digest, expecially uneven numbers and percentages. I learned how to calculate percentages only very late, and even today I have difficulty ith "unven" percentges/percentage numbers.

On the other hand I'm fairly strong in the "words" section. Which is usually vastly underrated in RPGs.

Well, I had to drop the difficulty in Elven Legacy down to easy for the last few missions. That game became to boring and repetitive otherwise.