Game Review: Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning

What is this game about?
Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning  is an open world role-playing game created by R. A. Salvatore,  Todd McFarlane, and Ken Rolston and his team at Big Huge Games. The story takes place in the world of Faeland that is engulfed in an epic war called the 'Crystal War'. This war has been on going for over 10 years, taking countless lives until one day a fallen hero awakens in the Well of Souls.

How is the gameplay?
The first few levels will be a tutorial adventure designed to teach you how to play the game. It starts off with a cinematic introduction. Afterwards you are taken to a character creation screen to determine your sex and race. There are four playable races you can select from, they are:

Playable Races

• Ljosalfar are regal, steadfast, uncompromising and proud people, who strive to preserve nature and shape it to their will that revere the principle of justice to defend Amalur against chaos and darkness.
• Varani are human clans not as culturally refined as the Almain, and are often seen as traders. mercenaries and wanderers that brought commerce and a degree of civilization to the wilds of the Faelands.
• Dokkalfar are charismatic, intelligent, seductive and respected as sophisticated students of magic and diplomacy, yet they are the ultimate manipulators, controlling the actions of others from the shadows.
• Almain are noble, honorable and brave humans who embody the ideal of Order in all things and are proud of their long and illustrious military tradition.

Playing as a female or a male does not grant additional bonuses. Selecting a specific race will, granting racial bonuses to compliment your skill set and gameplay style mentioned below:

Racial Bonuses:

• Ljosalfar - Racial Bonuses: Alchemy +1, Sagecraft +1, Dispelling +2
• Varani  - Racial Bonuses: Lockpicking +2, Detect Hidden +1, Mercantile +1
• Dokkalfar - Racial Bonuses: Sagecraft +1, Stealth +2, Persuasion +1
• Almain - Racial Bonuses: Alchemy +1, Blacksmithing +2, Persuasion +1

After you have completed your selection you will need to choose a patron. Patron bonuses will be granted depending on what you select. You are given six patron options to choose from, they are:

Patron Bonuses:
Ethene - Goddess of Wisdom and Art.

• Patron Bonuses: +10% Mana

Aryllia - Goddess of Love and Beauty.

• Patron Bonuses: +5% Health, +1% Chance to Critical Hit

Belen - God of Death.

• Patron Bonuses: +1% Chance to Critical Hit, +8% Critical Hit Damage

Lyria - Goddess of Fate, Magic and Luck.

• Patron Bonuses: +5% Mana, +5% Mana Regen per Sec

Lupoku - God of Mischief, Patron of Brewing.

• Patron Bonuses: +6% Poison Damage, +6% Poison Resistance

Beholden to no god, your self sufficiency yields its own rewards.

• Patron Bonuses: +1% Experience Bonus

Next you will begin customizing the look of your character. The game allows you to change the face, hair, and accessories with a few slide bar options for each setting. Once done. you will enter a short cinematic, then enter the name of your character. You will then enter a final cinematic and begin your tutorial adventure. At this point the tutorial adventure will educate you on how to interact with the world, to equipping your character using your inventory, to using your skills and abilities in combat and looting items. Moving your character is pretty straightforward, just move the left analog stick in the direction you wish to move. On screen you should see a radar map to the top right. an HP and Mana bar to left. Hitting select will open your map. Hitting start will open your Inventory and character info.

Destinies:
At some point in the tutorial adventure you will unlock your 'Destinies'. This is when you define what type of class your character will be. In the beginning you will only be able to select a Tier 0 card, called:

• Fateless card - Newly resurrected, your Fate is blank, formless, and ready to be forged into the shape of your choosing.

These 'Destinies Cards' are classes that grant your character additional bonuses, which are structured from Tier 0 to Tier 6. How you unlock new Destinies are determined by the number of skill points in three different abilities, they are:

Abilities

• Might - Master the brutality of melee combat and heavy arms to crush your enemies and deflect their blows. Spend Ability points here to channel your inner rage, gaining access to earth-shaking spells, defensive bonuses, and unparalleled skill with swords and hammers.
• Finesse - Explore the fine arts of subtlety and precision with Finesse Abilities. Stab, slice, trap, poison, and bleed your foes with blades, bombs, and traps. Slip into the shadows to strike your enemies from afar, or dart among them with acrobatic quickness.
• Sorcery - Devote your studies to Sorcery to fully embrace the magic awakening in Amalur. Smite your foes with devastating elemental spells, heal yourself with restorative spells, and summon other-worldly creatures. Wield sceptres, staves, and deadly chakrams as conduits for your arcane power.

Tip: I highly recommend looking at the 'Desitinies' page by hitting the start button, and selecting 'Desitinies' to review the requirements of some of the classes and bonuses they provide. This will help to plan your character growth for these additional bonuses will greatly help in your adventure and play style.

Once you complete your tutorial adventure you will enter the world of Faeland. At this point you are free to explore the world. Pay attention to the color of  the names of your encounters to determine if you are capable of defeating. Usually when you see an orange colored enemy, they will provide you a great challenge, so be cautious. The game also provides skills that you can invest points into, which you earn one point per level and invest up to 10 points to Master a skill.  Here is a list of skills available in the game:

• Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Detect Hidden, Dispelling, Locking picking, Mercantile, Persuasion, Sagecraft, and Stealth.

Some of these skills influence the skill level of a craft, like Blacksmithing, Sagecraft and Alchemy. These are the primary three crafts in which the player can make items.

Tip: I recommend investing in 'Detect Hidden' for it will reveal hidden treasures and doors early on. A point in 'Mercantile' for extra gold when selling items, and one or two points in 'Lockingpicking' for I found I could still open the hardest locks without higher skills. Just make sure you have plenty of lockpicks. The game provides a ton of loot, so you will not have enough inventory to carry everything. I recommend checking the Inn in the City of Gorhart to buy a backpack upgrade to extend your inventory space. Keep an eye out for more backpack upgrades as you adventure. To obtain a more permanent solution to your inventory problems, make your way to  the City of Canneroc and complete quests there until you earn your own place. This will greatly help your inventory problems early on.

What makes this game different from other games?
One of the best features that separates this game from other games is the freedom to choose what abilities you want. You want to use a rogue ability, then use a spell ability, then attack with a weapon ability, you can, for you won't be restricted. The other special feature is the free form combat movement, for the control scheme (Xbox 360) allows you to quickly initiate attacks. Hold down the right trigger to pull down the spell wheel to hit an enemy with an ice barrage, then hit Y or X to attack with the mapped weapon you selected, then block an incoming attack by hitting left trigger, then rolling out of the way by hitting B all in one battle. This brings a unique combat experience not many games can provide.

Why should I be interested in playing this game?
If you enjoy role playing games that provide free form combat movement, endless ways of mixing and matching skills from different ability sets. Along with a rich lore, lavishing open world environments and interesting monster encounters. Then do not pass up this game for it provides an epic dungeon crawler, hack and slash experience. Check it out!

 

 

I give Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning 5/5 (5 - Truly epic adventure not to miss!)

Game Review 'Dark Souls'

What is this game about?
'Dark Souls' is a spiritual successor to Demon Souls, but doesn't require you to play the first game. Like its predecessor it's about survival and strategy. Its a massive action RPG world designed for adventure and exploration. Offering a number of classes to begin your journey. You set the pace in building your character and adventure. Approach aggressively, strategically or be cautious, but expect to die for this game will challenge your mind, make you pull your hair out, or throw your controller across the room. For the monsters you encounter will provide challenges that will make a reaper quit his job for dying abundantly. Patients, observation, strategy and dying is the key for dying will unveil the map of what areas to avoid or show what is waiting around the corner. Observation will display items that could help your journey, or see patterns to help defeat monsters. Patients will help you spot situations and traps to avoid, and strategy through learning will help you plan your next move allowing you reap great rewards as you explore, defeat monsters and level up.

How is the gameplay?
The gameplay is simple, you move the controller in the direction you wish to move. You have an inventory system to manage your loot. You can equip and change your characters weapons and armor. Only specific NPCs are available to buy items from, but require souls as currency, which can be obtained by defeating bosses, certain monsters, and finding them from corpses of past adventures. Upon death your character will experience penalties and respawn back to the last lighted bonfire. Bonfires replenish health, magic, and special items like Estus flask, which are a limited number of vials used to return health. You can increase Estus flasks by finding upgrades during your journey. Later on bonfires can be used as a place to upgrade items. The story unfolds when your character fights through various locations. Only by defeating the area boss will your character be able to advance the story. There is also online mode that is active if connected to the Internet. This feature provides limited co-op and player versus player interaction.

What makes this game different from other games?
Dark Souls isn't a linear game where you follow a set path. This is a game about open exploration where you move or confront monsters at your own risk. Monsters are scaled to provide a challenge, and you can be assured you will die. Don't even think you can make it through the game without dying, for your first encounter will be death. Dying is what makes this game unique for death is actually encouraged. You gain a lot of insight upon your death for this is a game that will require you to think and plan your next move.

Why should I be interested in playing this game?
If you enjoy a challenge that requires a bit of planning, patients and strategy with an open world designed for exploring unique dangers, then you may enjoy this game. I would not recommend if you don't enjoy repeating things over, or don't have patients, or require a guide on what to do next for this is an open world game that does not babysit the player.

I give Dark Souls 4/5 (4 - worth experiencing)

Game Review 'Star Wars: The Old Republic 'First 10 levels'

Why should I be interested in playing this game?
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massive multi player online PC game that takes place over 3000 years before The Phantom Menace and about 300 years from the Stars Wars: Knights of the Old Republic storyline. It allows you to create and choose to side with the Republic or the Empire. It has an in depth character creation to customize your character. It has a number of races and classes to select the play style you desire like being a Jedi or Bounty Hunter. Each class has a unique storyline that can only be experienced if you play each class. It provides an all voice narrative for all your quests. It even provides the famous Bioware dialogue branching system. For new people that means it gives you a dialogue option to respond to a quest in neutral, aggressive or passive approach. Some responses can even lead you to the light or dark side and the response can impact what happens in the story. It has a companion system, allowing you to customize equipment of your followers that battle along side you. Each class has a subset of companions that will follow your character and provide unique skills to help you craft items or do crafting missions to level your crafting skills. The crating system is easy to understand but will require some research on what skills are required. It also provides player storage system and an auction house to sell or buy items, to owning and customizing your own ship and mount vehicles. No creature mounts so far.

How is the gameplay?
The first 10 levels is all about learning the game for it's your traditional newbie levels. Newbie levels end around 9-10th level, which guides you out of the newbie planet and onto the main story of your character. The game is pretty straight forward. If you ever played Word of Warcraft, Everquest or any MMO, the game has a lot of features we are accustomed to seeing in MMOs today. For new players, what this means is you accept a quest. You then go to that location and complete the quest. This could be a task to kill a number of creatures, investigate an area, to retrieving an item or confronting an enemy. You earn experience points as you kill and complete quests, adding to a character experience pool needed to level. Once you level you have trainers for each class you can learn new abilities. These abilities can be assigned to a task bar to click on when engaging in combat. Enemies drop random loot that can be sold or used to equip your character or companions. And yes you will get your first companion during the newbie levels.

What makes this game different from other games?
The voice narration for all quests presents a better story experience than other MMOs. This alone makes you character feel more part of the story and prevents players from having to read a block of text which some MMOs tend to saturate. The other difference is the famous Bioware dialogue branch system. This changes the course of you character story based on how you respond. Also seeing what the story was like before the Star Wars movies makes the game mysterious and worth exploring.

Is it worth playing?
If you love Massive Multi player Online games, the Star Wars Universe and have time to play, its definitely worth checking out. The game doesn't force you to group for it can be played solo. However, some of  the best rewards and story experience comes from the flashpoints that require groups, but you can still skip these quests to move your character forward.

I give Star Wars: The Old Republic 'First 10 levels' 4/5 (4 - worth experiencing)