Dhruin
SasqWatch
Right, here we go with the first collection of Reckoning reviews and it's a bit of a mixed bunch. Most of these are console reviews. In no particular order...
Games.co.uk - 8/10: They compare Reckoning to an improved Fable 3 but criticise weak dialogue and quests:
Games.co.uk - 8/10: They compare Reckoning to an improved Fable 3 but criticise weak dialogue and quests:
Eurogamer - 8/10: The combat and itemisation is praised but Eurogamer notes the generic nature of the content:It is, however, weaker in characterisation and dialogue, which can often be flicked through and ignored to pick up another mission, and questing is largely of an MMO ‘go here, kill that, collect this’ nature – mostly uninspiring with a few exceptions. But somehow, despite being made of patchwork parts, it is never less than good fun to play and, at its best, a surprisingly intense experience – all credit due there to the twitchy and intelligently designed combat system. Reckoning is a big, meaty game that will thoroughly satisfy both RPG and action fans, and if you are a Skyrim player, then you should definitely make room for this too. You’ll love it.
Joystiq - 5/5: Broad praise all around:It's professional, tidy, satisfying - and deeply generic. The biggest problem with Amalur is that, for all its fine craftsmanship, it's obviously a world made to order. It's not the creation of a fertile young mind but of a successful baseball player's bank account. 38 Studios' owner, EverQuest and WOW fan Curt Schilling, decided to make an MMO and needed a world to build it on, so he had artist Todd McFarlane and novelist R A Salvatore drum one up. But you can't buy inspiration, no matter how big the names.
GamingNexus - 'A': Excellent "gameplay" (read: combat), though they had issues with some of the graphics:That love is evident from the moment your character emerges from the first dungeon into the light of day, escaping from the murk into a world of fantastic, vibrant beauty. Landscapes are bright and colorful, spanning golden and green forests to arid deserts and mountains that saw at the sky. Cities are gigantic, sprawling places with a sense of scale so vast as to make your character insignificant. Upon seeing a city or castle in the distance, you may find yourself uttering a few involuntary "oohs" and "ahs." I did.
OXM UK - 7/10: Damned with faint praise like "acceptable" and "tepid style":KOA is so good fundamentally and gameplay wise that it completely makes up for its technical shortcomings. The game isn’t bad visually, but it definitely has its issues. The world and its characters are all varied and interesting, but they have a lot of problems technically with things like pop up and a horrible draw distance. Seriously, there are times when the game looks like a first-generation Xbox 360 game, and perhaps even worse. The rest of the game is so well done though that none of that will matter; the gameplay truly compensates for all of the visual shortcomings and then some. On the other hand, audibly the game is a joy to experience. The voice acting in the game is absolutely impeccable; you will experience a variety of dialects and personalities, all of which are wonderfully portrayed by a stellar voice acting cast.
Edge Online - 6/10: Saying Reckoning is "roleplaying for a thunderously dull imagination", the streamlining is heavily critic...More information.An assured, substantial fantasy brawler, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning began life as an MMO, and it's tempting to ascribe the game's failings to this mingled inception. The massive, 60-hour-plus world is composed of sloping, easily navigable but actually not very invigorating basins that squirrel off into fractionally more labyrinthine dungeons, seemingly built to accommodate parties, not lone rangers.
Penned by novelist R.A. Salvatore, the fiction speaks to multiplayer tropes in spicy ways: it's founded on endlessly cycling heroic tales (read: quests) lived and relived by the immortal Fae - tales that spin awry in response to the tyrannical antics of renegade Fae sect the Tuatha. An MMO world whose static narrative structures are shifting and decaying? It's a sharp conceit, one the script has fun with, though it's suffocated by charmless dialogue direction.