Story:
The story begins by telling you a short lore of the game, followed by a couple of gnomes carrying a covered corpse on a stretcher. They're jabbering on and for some reason want to give this corpse a name...'kay? (If you've played the game or demo, you'll know). Next, they want to take a look at this said body. Pulling back the cover, it brings you to a screen where you get to edit your character, picking between 4 races (2 types of humans, light elves and dark elves) with a good selection of hair and faces. The customization is very pleasing, selecting presets and altering them as you will.
After creating your character and naming him/her, you find that the corpse is you! You're then dumped down a chute, landing on a pile of rotting bodies. Sounds like a great start to any story right?! (Sarcasm) Waking up, getting to terms with what's going on, you're then given control of your protagonist. It's a third person RPG much like Fable, so easy to control. There is a beginning section of the game, which will give you clothes and a selection of weapons, training you with a taster of every battle choice available - Sorcery (Mage), Might (Warrior) and Finesse (Thief). After this not too lengthy stage, you will be released into the wonderful woods, bursting with colour. This is where your journey begins.
Your character, being reborn is now a fate-less. You will be the 'one' who will change the world at his/her's will, causing chaos or being a saint is completely down to what you do from here on out. This isn't like your usual Fable-esque game, but more like one of Bethesda's titles where you will choose what you will want to become as the game progresses.
It has a very good leveling system because you don't have to be a set warrior or mage, you can decide whether you want to be a mixed solution of the above, mixing and matching as you please. It has talent trees that you follow, spending points in any one of them as you level. Reckoning is never boring, if you don't like what you play as or want a change, you can talk to the main character whom you meet early on and he will change your fate, causing you to re-spec (Resetting your talent points back to 0 and starting over on the talent trees). Once you get near to the end of the game you can re-spec and go for Jack of All Trades, quite awesome because it gives you a bit of everything to play with at a good strength, being able to wear anything and use everything as a weapon.
The map is huge, with over 30 smaller areas. Running around each area discovering everything possible would probably take around an hour and a half if you wanted to finish all side-quests available. Being a completionist I spent around 30 hours getting maybe around 35% through the game trying to do everything and every quest, this was tiresome because I wanted more story. I then went for the main story full speed ahead, completing it in half a day and being so pleased with what the story left me with! The good thing is, also like Bethesda's Skyrim etc. after you finish the main story-line you can continue playing after finishing it, being able to do much more than just exploring and finishing side-quests.
Crafting:
Very reminiscent of World of Warcraft and yet again, Skyrim. You collect materials on your journey from left right and center to use with the games' crafting system which will become very helpful. You can become a blacksmith, sagecrafter or an alchemist creating everything possible to equip and help your hero. Reckoning takes the idea of gems from WoW, so when you get to a certain level of skill, you can socket created or found gems into your armor and weapons to increase your stats. This is helpful and very easy to understand.
Battles:
As said earlier on, the battles play like a Fable, but more fluid. With your weapons of choices you will be able to blast through enemies with brute force, ranged weapons or sneak up behind them with critical damage. Potions at the ready from a click on the d-pad left or right, simple.You can also roll to escape being smashed to the ground by a giants' great hammer, but spending points in the Sorcery tree will give you an ability to 'Blink' (Teleport) away from an opponent, I love it.
Things To Keep You Entertained:
Owning a house, endlessly killing, changing your appearance mid-game, making fun of gnomes, rolling, running around naked (There's an achievement in it for ya), smashing every pot in sight through the whole game (Another achievement), hunting down lorestones (Stones around the map that give you a brief history lesson and a stat boost), crafting, achievement hunting, certain fun side-quests & being amused by the pretty colours!
Conclusion & Thoughts:
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an amazing game in every way. A great story-driven RPG with stunning colours and eye-pleasing graphics. It is so easy to pick up and get used to, so addictive you'll be on for hours and feels so familiar that you'll feel badass the second you find or create an awesome weapon.
It takes all the best from every game people love, backed with incredible concept art and music to create a masterpiece. If you're a fan of any titles mentioned above, give it a go. You won't be disappointed, this game doesn't need all the fancy distractions like multiplayer. I just want more of this!
They made two DLC's for Reckoning - The Legend of Dead Kel & Teeth of Naros for 800 MS points each on the marketplace along with some useless weapon and stat bonus packs. Totally worth getting according to IGN, but because of what happened to the company as stated earlier on, there will not be any other DLC's for Reckoning. Sad times.
My Rating:
9.5/10 - The colours gave me headaches.
Before 38 Studios & Big Huge Games dissipated, the teams were working on an MMO called Project Copernicus and it looked stunning:
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