Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review in Progress

It's finally time for the third and final update to IGN's rather extensive Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review in progress. Here, I'll tie up some loose ends in terms of my feelings about the game leading up to rendering my final verdict. I'll also answer more than a dozen additional reader questions and continue to tease you about my final review, which, by the way, goes up the afternoon of Friday, February 3rd, right after we do a two-hour livestream of the game right here on IGN.com.

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The more and more I play Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the more and more confident I become that this game will take people by surprise in terms of how unusually good it is. Few people were paying much attention to the sheer potential of Reckoning until recently, but the numbers certainly seem to be growing, and that makes me happy. Because this game will please RPG fans looking for a rock-solid gameplay experience.


Indeed, it's Reckoning's gameplay that keeps rising to the top for me, because it's just so much better and far beyond what its WRPG contemporaries have done. It's arcadey, to be sure, but when you compare it to the three popular fantasy RPGs of our time -- Skyrim, Dark Souls and Dragon Age -- Reckoning easily outclasses all of them in the gameplay department. The competition isn't even remotely close in any respect.

I'm having so much fun backstabbing enemies, hacking-and-slashing my way through dungeons, collecting loot and watching my pockets expand as I become more powerful, richer and more confident in my abilities. Of course, I'm also tethered to the conventions of RPGs like this. I often have to return to towns to sell or drop off all of my collected loot, I'm incessantly upgrading and changing my equipment and I'm conquering quests and side quests alike that are certainly fun in their own right, but also undoubtedly conventional in the grander scheme of the western RPG.

I've also found great enjoyment in Reckoning's largely optional customization and experimentation options, such as crafting potions, smithing new equipment and building supplemental crystals to strengthen my gear. I ignored these options at first, only because in games like this such things are usually daunting and lack any real return in terms of gameplay. But I've found these systems to be fair, accessible and full of risk and reward. I'm not a talented blacksmith or alchemist by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm certainly getting there and willing to get better.

At the end of the day, Reckoning consists of one major distraction after the other. I'm trying my damndest to play the game as organically as possible, and holding closely to this approach. As a result, I've accomplished scores of side quests and relatively few main game quests, but that's just the way it goes. Whenever I try to hone in on the main task at hand, I find a dozen things to sidetrack me. The amount of content completely unrelated to the main tale is awe-worthy, and as I've described before, the fact that the game also totes deep (albeit convoluted) storytelling and awesome and varied voice acting is icing on the cake. Everything really does exist for a reason beyond length and density.

Then again, it all keeps coming back to gameplay for me, and I'm excited for people looking forward to playing Reckoning to get into it for themselves. I'm sorry to hear that the demo people have been playing doesn't work properly for many, because the final product works extremely well. Can you believe that the game still hasn't frozen on me once? That I've never had to restart due to getting stuck in the environment? That minor technical hitches are the worst I've encountered, and that I've seen nothing even remotely game-breaking? The developers should be commended for making a game with such extreme scope that runs so well... at least on PlayStation 3. I haven't spent any time with the Xbox 360 or PC versions of the game yet, so I can't speak to how those titles run.

Otherwise, there's little else to say that I haven't already said in thousands and thousands of words over the last three weeks. In my final review, I'll boil this all down into something more easily digestible. But my feelings right now are almost entirely positive, and I'm super excited for the masses to finally see what all of the hype is about.

But enough about all of that. The next two pages consist entirely of all new reader questions that I've answered to help bring clarity to some outstanding questions you might have. And of course, sit tight for our Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning livestream and review, both of which will be happening on Friday, February 3rd. 'Til then, you'll find me wandering around the Faelands.