Fate, a mysterious thing. Some believe in it, some do not, one thing is for certain however, it exists in this game. Kingdoms Of Amalur is a brilliant game, combining the great combat of a Hack and Slash with the deep RPG elements of game such as Skyrim it brings itself together in a way that truly surprised and entertained me.
The story itself is fairly interesting in terms of fantasy games. Your character dies at the beginning of the game and is immediately resurrected by a massive machine known as the well of souls. As a result of this you suddenly become ‘The Fateless One’, a strange entity that is capable of changing the fates of others and act outside the confines of fate. For example if somebody is destined to die at a certain point or fail at a certain task then you can change that and make them live or succeed. This ties in with the lore really well and creates a sense of importance about your character. From there you must battle the forces of evil in order to restore the balance in the land and discover what your unique powers are truly capable of. While this concept is interesting and is a welcome break from the typical fantasy setting it never truly develops into something interesting when combined with the rest of the world as it is still the typical fantasy setting with the elves and dwarves, albeit being called different names.
Yep, The Fateless One really looks like this much of a badass!
In terms of presentation the game looks beautiful. The environments are huge and varied with a slight cartoonish feel that helps to bring variety to the locations you visit. All of the characters are well fleshed out (but have absolutely hilariously bad scottish accents!) and specific things such as armor designs and enemy variation is amazingly detailed while still looking completely badass! The bright colour pallet and fantastic lighting help to make the game world seem bright and colourful, making it an absolute joy to play in. The camera however could use a bit of work with it’s strange angle, especially in combat.
But that combat, oh the combat. Easily the best feature of Kingdoms of Amalur, it acts a lot like a Hack and Slash game with combos, special abilities and super moves but also has RPG like abilities such as cooldowns on spells and traditional and non traditional weapon types to use (freaking ringblades man!). The leveling up system is rewarding and is styled in such a way that it allows you to delve into various different types of classes without punishing yourself too much. This allows variation in the combat and also allows you to help build combos. The combat itself is so fluid and flowing that it feels beautiful to play, watching as your character goes from enemy to enemy and seeing the damage you cause is a wonderful feeling. Each of the quests you undertake give fitting rewards, with there even being faction questlines and side quests aplenty! Not all the quests are great however and some of them feel very similar to and MMO in which you must collect a certain amount of things or kill a certain amount of enemies, this doesn’t detract from the gameplay too much but it doesn’t exactly encourage you to keep on playing. One of the coolest aspects of the combat is the fate meter. Essentially it works as an ultimate attack in which you build up the bar as you perform special attacks and chain combos, you can then activate your special ability which will slow down time, greatly increase your damage and once all the enemies in the area are down perform an execution for loads of bonus XP. This system works well to encourage people to put some variety into their combat and allows most battles to always look flashy and exciting!
My sword is bigger than youuuur swooorrddd
There are a few negatives however. As mentioned the story lacks the excitement and encouragement you believe it should, some missions are entertaining and fun in terms of story however they mainly act as a reasoning for you to enter the wonderful combat and not much more. The camera always seems to have a strange angle whenever you want to look at the environment which means that it does not impact you as much. The lack of a jump mechanic is very frustrating as it seems to limit the amount of freedom that you can have and finally having so many different names for simple things you will be thoroughly confused at the start of the game as to what exactly is going on, if you are not a fantasy fan then it might be too much for you.
Overall however Kingdoms Of Amalur is still a great game. In many ways it reminds me of Skyrim but having much better combat, which is always a good thing! I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game and if you can get it at a relatively cheap price I highly encourage you to play this game, perhaps it is written in your fate to play this game… or is it!?
Jinx The Game Critic (Archive) 