Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview

If you feel like there’s been a distinct lack of coverage of 38 Studios’ debut title Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lately, IGN has got you served with a preview that should serve as an appetizer for the E3 coverage. Here’s a sampling:

Simplicity and flair carry over to combat — stealth kills are awesome. There’s a different takedown for every character in the game and they’re as simple as approaching undetected. Watching a skilled thief sneak up on a giant troll and bury his blade in the monsters chest isn’t likely to get old quickly. Simple button presses unleashed basic attacks, but combining those buttons with a trigger sent out magic attacks. Standard stuff, but it looked easy to transition between moves, pull off combos and switch tactics on the fly. Simple, rewarding combat is what I want from an RPG like Reckoning. Plus, the game ran smoothly as the hero beat on foes.

Looting the bodies of the fallen also struck a chord with me. When you collect stuff, you can tell at a glance if you need it or if you have something better — you just click “compare.” There’s no menu to jump into and cycle through to try and judge a new item’s stats against your old weapon’s stats. If you don’t need it, it’s sent to your junk pile and will be sold the next time you go to a merchant. If you do need it, you can salvage the part and go on to a blacksmith to craft better weapons. You can swap in hilts, bindings, grips and gems to make your swords and daggers more powerful than ever.