Traversing the world
After I left the first dungeon, I was introduced to the outside world. I immediately noticed that the art-style was definitely more geared towards full-on fantasy as opposed to realism (more like Fable or WoW than Oblivion) where environments are colorful and characters look like a cross between Tolkein and WoW.
We were given a guide of the main quests and side quests we could reach if we so chose to use it but I, with a gamer’s heart at my core, did the sensible thing everyone would expect: when an arrow told me to go one way, I typically explored elsewhere. Thus, for the 5-6 hour experience, I more or less dicked around, searching for loot, building my character, and finishing the occasional side quest here or there. What I ended up with was some very cool loot (including two items from the same set!) and a pretty powerful hero that was able to defeat a rather difficult troll in one of the side quests I embarked upon.
After walking around the map for only a few minutes, I instantly realized that the game was big when I opened up the world map. The distance I traveled from the first dungeon to the first town was quite a long ways and after seeing the distance traveled on the world map and comparing that with the overall vastness of the map, I was astonished by the overall size of the game. Thus, my goal was to run about as far as I could through the map for the first several hours of my gameplay.
After probably 2-3 hours of generally travelling due east (the map starts you out in the most north-west position of the world), I had probably traveled 1/6 of the way to the eastern part of the map. However, the distance north to south was about 1.5 times the size of the distance from east to west. Conclusion: Just walking the entire map could easily take you 50 hours. And, that’s not to mention the fact that there are a number of towns, dungeons, and other areas to explore along the way. Thus, the claim of hundreds of hours of gameplay seems to hold very true for the game. The only fear I had, however, was that of recycling material for the sake of inflating the size of the game (sure, everything I played during the experience was extremely cool but I’m hoping it doesn’t become stagnant at, say, 40 hours in).
In order to help you traverse the enormous world map without doing a lot of unnecessary backtracking, Reckoning also allows you to use its fast travel feature to instantly move to a location you’ve been to on the map. This also makes quests more dynamic as characters can literally tell you to go anywhere to perform a quest and it’s not a hassle for you to do so.
Like in other RPG/Adventure games such as Oblivion, you can also do a number of things within the game’s many towns. You can talk, steal from, or even fight townsfolk and this affects the way your character is perceived by the public. Based upon your non-combat skills, you’ll also have more success depending upon the areas of expertise that you’ve specialized in.
For instance, at one time I tried to steal something from a chest within a house. There was a success rate linked to the item that told me the likelihood of getting caught for doing so. After stealing the item, I wasn’t successful and a guard came to me notifying me that I had done something wrong. Here, I had the choice to either fight the guard, pay a fine, or go to jail. I chose to go to jail and after skipping to a new scene, I appeared in jail without any of my equipment. I don’t know what my other options were at this time, but I decided to pick the lock on the door and attempt to escape a winding dungeon all to which ended up in my character’s demise at the hands of guards.
There are a number of ways I could have better prepared for my fight with the law. First, if I had allocated more skill points into stealth, I might have stolen the treasure successfully without detection from the NPCs close by. Had I put more skill points into persuasion, might I possibly have been able to persuade the guard otherwise or to lower the fine to a reasonable amount? Finally, stealth might have come in handy during my escape as I perished when trying to reach a nearby chest that held my belongings.
Items
As for items, the depth of different items is another impressive feature of the game. There are several different categories of items, ranging from alchemy items, raw materials, equipment, useable items, random items, and junk. As you explore the world, you can pick up anything from loot to random items such as papers from desks or relics. Depending upon the item, you can do a number of things. For instance, a relic might want to be kept to be sold to a specific buyer who might find it valuable. Or, you can put the relic in trash and either throw out all your trash or sell it for a cheap price.
Unwanted equipment can also be used in a number of different ways. The first and most obvious use is to just sell the item for cash. Or, if you’re into crafting, you can see if the item can be combined with a number or raw materials to create a powerful upgrade. And, to add to your crafting arsenal, you can also break unwanted equipment to harvest different raw materials to be used for future crafting. Thus, for instance, I could have two different swords, destroy one to receive a hilt, and then combine the remaining sword with it and another raw material to create a more powerful sword (this isn’t an actual recipe but it’s just an example). I found out just how powerful crafting can be early on as a set of daggers I created were the strongest set I would use for the next 5 hours of the gameplay, surpassing many that I found along the way.
Equipment can also fall into several different familiar categories of items. First there are magic items that have a few different additional attributes compared to the regular items. Uniques are dispersed throughout the game featuring specific looks and much stronger bonuses to the conventional weapon. Socketed items are another type that allow you to socket orbs into the items to increase the magical abilities of the items. Finally, there are also powerful sets that increase the bonuses you receive depending upon the amount of items within the set.
To limit the equipment you can wear at any time in the game, rather than limit according to specific stats of a character (such as strength or dexterity), the game instead limits your characters based on the amount of skill points allocated into specific skill trees. Thus, a mage-oriented item might require you to have X-number of skill points allocated into sorcery skills for you to be able to wear the specific item. I found this style of limitation also limited the overall amount of complication when character building (which was refreshing), allowing you to focus strictly on the types of skills you train in rather than specific stats when considering future equipment acquisitions.
Crafting is another deep portion of the gameplay and there are three different types of crafting: alchemy, blacksmithing, and sagecraft. Alchemy allows you to create recipes and use the different ingredients you find from plants and such throughout your adventure. These recipes are used for creating consumable items that will help along the way. Blacksmithing is the creation of equipment using preexisting equipment and raw materials. Finally, sagecraft allows you to create orbs to place inside your socketed items.
Overall Gameplay Impressions
After having spent 5-6 hours of gameplay with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I can confidently say that I am excited about this game. Granted, I’m not one who has played a lot of open-world RPGs for fear of expending far too much of my time (my addictive personality already has had me playing certain games so much that my back-log of games waiting to be played is at an all-time high). What I can say aboutReckoning is that it not only has captured my interests in its expansiveness in all forms (size of the world, level of customization) but that its ability to be a true RPG while retaining strong action elements that hold up to my standards of action gaming is extremely enticing.
There is no doubt that the team of developers is capable of creating a strong adventure that can rival its competitors and the amount of dedication to create something they would play and enjoy is something that many game developers might lack. The backing of EA is an important name brand that should help in spreading the game’s popularity while the small-developer feel of 38 Studios and its partnership status ensures that the game will be polished to death before it’s released. Assuming they can continue to push unique content throughout the entirety of gamers’ experiences as well flesh out an inspired world as detailed as the 5-6 hours I played, this team should have a treat for gamers when their baby hits shelves this coming February.