Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview

AusGamers offers a new one-page preview for 38 Studios and Big Huge Games’ Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, based on a 15-minute presentation at this year’s E3. Sampling ahead:

There are also six joinable factions available to you, and each has its own major quest-line, alongside the game’s main narrative quest. Outside of this there are still 100s of side-quests available to you as well, meaning this is no light RPG, and we’re expected to be able to play it in the 100+ hours realm.

There’s also a very robust looting system with 100s of different item drops. There are affixed items alongside hand-crafted unique epic pieces, though coupled with an equally robust crafting system, almost everything you find can be broken down (via Blacksmithing) and reconstructed as you see fit, giving you ample opportunity to truly customise your game and the way you play. You can also enchant items through the game’s Sage-Crafting component which sees you creating various gems to infuse with weapons and armour from found or collected crystal shards throughout the game-world. There’s also an alchemy system to craft various potions from obvious flora and fauna scattered about Amalur, all going towards filling out the obligatory hardcore RPG blue-print these guys have clearly followed.

However, that isn’t to say everything here is formulaic. In fact, far from it. It’s in the game’s combat Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning distances itself from everyone else, borrowing more heavily from action and fighting games while still maintaining many core RPG components. The team are so confident of the combat system they’ve made, they constantly reiterate they believe it’s the best in the genre. And it looks the part too. Brief pauses between each connection allow the player to (stack) their next attack, and you can juggle enemies to truly deal a lot of damage.

There isn’t a class system in the game per se, either, instead you manifest a pseudo class through (Destinies). These are offered up to you after the game gauges how you’ve been playing and (unlocks) appropriate options for you to choose from. An example given was the (Slayer) destiny, which is something of a hybrid between a classic Rogue and Warrior class and allowed for the requisite attacks and abilities of both of those classes combined into one. So Destinies are essentially a dynamic character class that allow you to alter your path throughout the game based on how you play, serving up the most dynamic combat, skills and abilities system seen in an RPG yet.