Nereme138,550 (93,075)

Kingdoms of Amalur: Righteous!!!

It took me a while to get started on Kingdoms of Amalur as i had a rather sizeable backlog of games to try and clear up. I wasn't sure what to expect from the game itself as i put very little stock in reviews and my friends had barely touched the game so i had no opinion on the game whatsoever as i went in. I'm not gonna lie the game impressed me. There were so many points that i thought were just incredibly well done that it would be quite difficult to list them all. I will therefore focus on the aspects of the game that made the most impression on me.

1.) First thing i noticed in the game was the combat system. At first i was beginning to get a feeling that i would have to play what was said to be an extremely long game using a small number of basic attacks and that it would end up being a real grind. However my ignorance was shown as what it was when i started levelling up and managed to get some points put into the three trees of skills. The game has a very good skill development aspect that means that while the skills that are higher in the trees are useful they are not overpowered so that they ruin the combat for you.

2.) The combat itself is also very well executed as none of the block/avoiding abilities available are just a complete damage avoidance button. By this i mean that i have noticed in many RPG games that i've played there is quite often an ability (usually dodge) which if used often enough mean that the player can avoid almost all attacks that the enemies choose to throw at you. However the avoidance measures available to the player in KoA are on their own not quite enough to avoid all damage as the attacks of the enemies in the game vary widely and some of them seem almost specially crafted to stop the player using a single move to defeat every enemy in the game.

3.) By far the most impressive aspect of the game however for me personally was the achievement list that the game has. Most of these achievements aren't particularly creative in themselves however as i was playing through the game i noticed something which was thouroughly impressive. For the first time in any game that i have played the achievements for this game were spread out so that as a player plays through the game they get a steady stream of achievements. Either it was pure luck that caused the game to be as continuous as it was for me or someone has taken a very careful look at the time it takes to achieve each achievement and spread them out so that they continually reward the player for putting in the effort. This care to detail which caused the game to be continually enjoyable for me and meant that i was quite happy to put in the hours required to finish the game having done every side quest i could think of was a massive bonus for me.

While i always make a large point about the positives in games i do feel it necessary to point out a few aspects of the game which were a bit of a disappointment.

These mostly came from bugs in the game. There were two which really stuck in my mind as ones that caused me quite a lot of annoyance.

One was for a small sidequest in which the player attempts to figure out the hidden secret of some crystals. After a certain combination of these crystals is put together then the game is supposed to summon a boggart follower for the player. I had no end of troubles with this as first the creature didn't spawn when i had put together the correct combination and then once i had figured out that issue (with the help of the internet) the creature still didn't follow me properly. Luckily this was only a sidequest and was therefore not necessary for any achievements or game progression.

The other bug which really caused annoyance was part of one of the sidequests which had an achievement linked to it and as such could not just be ignored. I was attempting to do the Scholia Arcana quest line and at one point this required you to talk to an elf. When i went down to the area this elf was in he decided for some reason to start attacking me. As i was unsure about the quest line and the description said that this elf would be giving me some sort of test i figured it to be a test of combat skills. This was not however the case. The game had merely decided to hate me and had set this fae on me because it hated my characters face. After multiple times killing this guy and watching him rise from the grave i finally managed to get the chat prompt in before he could start beating my face around again and thus got to carry on with the quest.

Now as the game is MASSIVE!!! and i really mean that the game is really sizeable for the generation i can forgive a couple of bugs especially seeing as in the long term neither of them stopped me progressing with this game.

The game was great fun and the boss fights in it are quite spectacular. I would recommend this game to anyone who is willing to put in the time to enjoy the game properly.

Have fun

Ben