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I don't see how Amalur could be popular anywhere. Glad someone enjoyed it.
 
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Seems that way. I'm pretty sure I am the only one on here who raved about it :D.

I really like amular as well. Dartagon played the demo and came to those conclusions.

It's a shame many here cheered when the company went down. I thought it was an excellant first game that with refinements could be a truely great one...now we will never know.
 
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Cool rune. Glad you enjoyed it as well.

I did get the feeling that some people didn't give the game a fair shake. Not only that, but a lot of people had preconceived notions about the game before it even came out, and then they went into the game with those ideas and ruined the game for themselves. I noticed that a lot on the internet.

Just an example, but whoever came out and said the game was supposed to be an MMO (which it wasn't), people seemed to latch on to that for some odd reason. Next thing you heard was that all the quests seemed like MMO fare, or the game felt too much like an MMO, etc. Had the word MMO never been brought up I question if those criticisms would have surfaced at all.

Same thing with the action combat talk. Soon as people heard there was combat like an action game, well, automatically the game must be shallow and lack depth because hell, how can a game with action combat have any depth? Especially an RPG.

These ideas seemed to linger in certain circles and some people never got over them. Shame too because Amalur is a special game that doesn't come around all the time.

It's very sad to see what happened to 38 Studios. They were planning big things with the universe of Amalur and to see it all just go down the drain like that is just very sad. Who knows how great they could have been.
 
Okay! We'll have to agree to disagree about Skyrim there, then. :/

Amalur was a very large piece of fluff.. It was pretty fun most of the time I put into it, but something about the game felt distancing. I just never felt part of the world no matter what happened. It was a great first game of a new franchise. I wish they had the chance to release some patches and make a sequel.
 
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I did get the feeling that some people didn't give the game a fair shake. Not only that, but a lot of people had preconceived notions about the game before it even came out, and then they went into the game with those ideas and ruined the game for themselves. I noticed that a lot on the internet.

If you need to tell yourself that people who disagree with you didn't give the game a fair chance, then that's on you.

Personally, I pre-ordered it and I was hopeful enough to be taken in by the hype. I was here defending the game before release, where people like JDR weren't impressed. All you need to do is go back and search for KoA threads.

So, yeah, I gave it a fair shake - and more. It took me a while to realise just how empty and hollow the game really was (I started out really liking it) - and I had a hard time accepting it, based on Ken Rolston's endless tirades about how deep and great the game would be.

That's why I'm "after" Ken Rolston, because I've been taken in by him before, with Morrowind. I told myself it was just a matter of a single bad example - and the guy is respected, so I'm probably just seeing things. So, with KoA - I ignored my own warning signs that SCREAMED bullshit every time he spoke and marketed the game. It annoys me when people are that deceitful (knowingly or not) - and it annoys me even more when I trust them.

You love the game, and that's great. I'm not claiming you're dreaming up your positive experience. You're basically just a person with very different tastes in this genre than myself.

End of story.
 
I'll never get tired of saying "I told you so" about that one. :biggrin:

I don't doubt that :)

But, IIRC - your problem was mostly about it looking like a light Fable kind of game, and less about the world lore, etc.
 
The gist I got from the previews was fairly accurate compared to what I experienced with the demo. The world of Amular just wasn't convincing to me at all when compared to other open-world aRPGs. Things like smashing barrels for gold and the over-the-top combat made it hard for me to take KoA seriously. It reminded me more of an decent action-adventure console title than games like TES, Gothic, etc, which it was supposed to compete with.

I actually plan on purchasing it during one of the upcoming holiday sales and giving it another chance. However, I'll be going in with the mindset that it's an action-adventure rather than a serious RPG. I'm curious to see if I can enjoy it from that angle.
 
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If you can stand endless repetition in a huge samey world, you can probably enjoy it :)
 
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There are no hardcore AAA RPGs today.

Skyrim with mods, however, is about as close as we're likely to get for the foreseeable future.
 
Would have been fun to be on here when Amalur came out. I could write page upon page of stuff I didn't like about the game, but it's all a bit blurry now. It seems to be a game that really divides the ARPG crowd and those who prefer more traditional RPGs. And I do play and enjoy some ARPGs. Take Dragons Dogma, I really liked that game. It had its shortcomings, thin in the story/dialogue department for one thing, but it had something (I've never really managed to put my finger on it) I really liked that made me look past its imperfections (or nearly forget them, even). Then again they never claimed to make an RPG either.

I think that's my main problem with Amalur, there was just nothing about it that stood out, nothing that would make me enjoy it regardless of its shortcomings. It was like they tried to do everything they could think of, but they did nothing of it really well. All the story stuff, lore and so on just blended into the background for me and I never really felt engaged. Or rather, it didn't make me feel anything (that was my main problem with Amalur, now that I come to think of it). Nothing to connect me to and make me care about the world, the characters and so on. Not even the combat could save it for my part, because all the other content just took up to much space, making me wonder if I were playing an action game in a fantasy setting or an RPG, and I didn't even like the combat that much. It was fun, yeah, good fun in the beginning (I won't deny that), but it wore off after awhile. It was just too over-the-top, hitting people so they fly through the air kind of ridiculous. I'm more into pummeling people into the ground (keeping it a bit realistic), than sending them flying.
 
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New Vegas was definitely an AAA game and a "hardcore RPG", so I wouldn't say they don't exit. They're just very rare. DA: Origins is probably in that category to.

I admit, I can't think of many though, but I still don't think the genre as a whole has ever been in trouble. There are simply way too many people who enjoy RPGs, so there will always be a certain demand.
 
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New Vegas hardcore? No, I don't think so. Even on max difficulty level - it's a pushover - and everything is pointed out to you in logs and on the map, just like it was Fallout 3. You can't miss anything and you'd have to be blind not to complete the quests.

Dragon Age on above average difficulty was among the more hardcore in terms of combat difficulty, but I'd say it's still very streamlined, handholding and forgiving compared to what I consider hardcore RPGs. It's also the last game from Bioware that resembled anything like a hardcore RPG.

Then again, there's no official definition of hardcore - and if people think Fallout NV is hardcore, that's not unreasonable.

My personal definition is about the level of investment required to succeed. As in, for a game to qualify as hardcore - you have to invest yourself and think about things to get through quests and combat. Having an optional high combat difficulty is not sufficient - as even the more casual games have that - and they're generally silly implementations that don't alter the balance, but rather just adds hitpoints to enemies and increase their damage - instead of making enemies smarter, or the game more demanding in terms of your builds.

The only reasonably modern game with high production values I can think of, that qualifies, would be Neverwinter Nights 2 - but I don't consider it an AAA game. Also, it's only "semi-hardcore" because you can get by just fine by using recommended builds - and though some fights will be hard, you still have auto-resurrection for party members and other such casual features.
 
I really like amular as well. Dartagon played the demo and came to those conclusions.

It's a shame many here cheered when the company went down. I thought it was an excellant first game that with refinements could be a truely great one…now we will never know.

It's not true everyone here disliked amalur, actually many ppl enjoyed it and many do believe just like you that with "refinements" it could be a classic.

The only person on this forum that cheered when studio38 went down was - me. I'm the rotten scumbag who despises grinders and doesn't believe any "refinement" can help a game with the main quest: kill gazillion of respawns. Others were sad as we lost (another) RPG developing studio.

Every game should be fun. Noone can say hardcore is or isn't a future of wRPGs. Because of alternative funding, the future won't be the only stuff publishers bless. Also, the future won't be only clones of games Gamespot, IGN and other corrupted sites praise. But will be what audience wants.
 
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I'm 27, and Skyrim is a hardcore RPG.

Anyone that thinks Skyrim is a hardcore RPG is either plain deluded or just hasn't played any old games that are hardcore to actually know the difference.
 
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Anyone that thinks Skyrim is a hardcore RPG is either plain deluded or just hasn't played any old games that are hardcore to actually know the difference.

Maybe he meant compared to Kingdoms of Amalur :)

Sorry, couldn't resist.
 
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