Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview

Another hands-on preview for the open-world heavy-on-the-action-RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is in, courtesy of the recent hands-on event hosted by 38 Studios. Here’s a sampling:

It begins, pretty much, with you spluttering to life on a pile of festering corpses. You have been reanimated, brought back to life by something called the Well of Souls, the potency of which is being tested by a group of gnome scholars. It has never worked before, but now here you are, reborn into a world on the brink of destruction. The Fateweavers, Amalur’s mystic soothsayers, are predicting an imminent end to the world. No mortal is fated to survive. But when you climb down from that pile of rotting flesh, you bring new hope. You are (fateless.) Your future, and the future of Amalur, is yours to decide. You may well be its saviour.

This notion of fate and its importance is more than just narrative fluff. It is built into the very core of the game, having a profound effect on your character’s creation and customisation. Where other games may make you pick a character class and force you to stick with it, Reckoning allows you to create a far more fluid combination of skills. Indeed, there’s an impressive amount of customisation available throughout. The look of your character is relatively limited you can choose from just a handful of options – but the breadth and depth of your abilities is pleasingly open. So, once you’ve chosen from the four available races and decided on a religion for your character to follow (each offering distinct stat boosts), you can concentrate on developing your skills.

These are broadly distributed across ranged weapons, magic, stealth and melee attacks; each of which is introduced in a rather slick tutorial. Charting your escape from the besieged Well of Souls facility, you have to make it to safety by employing each skill set. Once you’ve emerged into the light of the Faelands, you’ll have a decent idea of your preferred approach. Yet, individual weapons may change your desired path, something that Reckoning is uniquely suited to adapt to. I chose the brawler class, specialising in melee combat. In this way I was happy to romp through dungeons and fields, button-mashing my way through enemies in a pleasing fashion. There’s heft to the combat, a kind of satisfyingly chunky feedback to each sword swipe and stab. You can see why, in this respect, the game has been compared to God of War.