Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – Demo

I played through the Amalur demo on PS3 and it’s well worth a download if you’re curious about the game. I liked it, but it’s a mixed experience overall. I think this game shows a lot of potential, but I doubt it will become one of my all-time favourites. Both Dragon Age and Skyrim are better RPGs, but Amalur is different enough from either to demand attention nonetheless.

Visually, I dig the artwork, but the tech is lacking. The framerate fluctuates chaotically, there’s unsightly pop-in, much of the environment geo is flagrantly low-detail, and the lighting strikes me as off in a lot of places. Many of the characters and enemy mobs look great, but simply put, Amalur isn’t as pretty on the PS3 as it is in the videos I’ve seen online (I figure those are from the PC version).

Gameplay-wise, this is definitely an action RPG, with lots of dodging, blocking, and hacking. There are options to play the game as more of a ranged character or spell caster and I’m not sure from the demo how much that changes the dynamic of the game. The action is fast-paced and the controls are responsive. I found the camera sensitivity to be unusually high on its default setting. Hacking enemies up is satisfying, at least in a small dose, and the demo shows a nice range of challenge too.

In terms of setting, tone, and dialog, I didn’t find anything immediately lacking. It doesn’t strike me as any better than the aforementioned Dragon Age or Skyrim, but it’s not much worse either. The outdoor environments in the demo are definitely sunnier and have more of a fairy tale feel than anything I’ve seen in either Dragon Age or Skyrim, and it’s nice to see that Amalur isn’t mindlessly chasing after the same dark fantasy vibe as either of those games, as much as I like them.

The thing I found most worthwhile about Amalur, judging from the demo, is the open-world nature of the game. It does a great job of presenting an open, yet meaningfully constrained environment, in which there are lots of NPCs to interact with and quests to undertake. I’m confident that simply grinding up a character and gathering loot will be a fun experience.

This being an EA production, the level of polish seems uneven throughout the demo. Parts of the game look and feel great, whereas other bits are glitchy or simply feel rushed. I get the sense that Amalur could have used an extra year of development time, but of course EA is not known for releasing carefully polished games. This doesn’t meant that Amalur will not be worth playing.

I will most likely be buying Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning simply for the straight-up action RPG grind element of the game. My backlog is loaded with heavy, tactical RPG experiences that dole out gameplay payoff as a steady trickle; it will be nice to play something where I can run and slash for a while. Whether or not it’s worth a full $60, though… eh, I will probably play it for at least 20 hours, so that’s not a bad trade overall.

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