Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

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Travalanche
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Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Travalanche »

I'm curious because atm I don't have internet at my house "and I probably won't for another month or two" I'm on a friends computer now btw. basically I saw some screens and a couple gameplay vids so far but have not been able to play the demo or anything. It looks a bit like a bit like I don't know... WoW graphics mixed with Fable undertones, I can't comment on the gameplay as I haven't played it. Actually now that I think about it it somehow reminds me of the game Baldurs Gate:Dark Alliance for the PS2?

Anyways is it worth buying? I heard the housing system was pretty good and it was overall pretty polished, I've basically beat Skyrim on my main character on the xbox 360 version "my PC is crap" and on my main character, a level 50-something Khajiit Barbarian have gotten every Daedric artifact, maxed all the perks I found useful for my style, collected the masks, gained all achievements, beaten all of the scripted quests I can think of.. all without the use of any guides and just random exploration. I have no idea how many hours I've logged, but I'm sure it's around I am kind of waiting until the next DLC comes out.

I have considered rerolling but after finding out the cap is level 81 I find that to be trivial as I don't care for Skyrims magic system and the only things I would maybe want to add perks in is idk.. I guess a few archery perks?

Anyways back on topic, I just want to know if KoA is any good, I used to play WoW back in like 2005 and found it to be fun but I ***HATED*** paying the monthly fee regardless of how much money I had at the time, same for xbox live too tbh. $15 is just high imo for a month of WoW but I'm the kind of guy who barely even buys games unless they are from friends or garage sales for $1-$5 and Skyrim was the last game I bought new and that was on it's release lol. Also one thing that really put me off with WoW was the constant updates adding new gear thus forcing you to raid all of the time, I literally quit after getting like the 2nd tier set because it was just totally pointless, I like a sense of progression and WoW obscured that by making gear worthless every couple months which is why I played Oblivion way more.

Oh I am sorry about mentioning the WoW word, I know people hate it. I promise I won't do it again unless it's necessary, I just think that the graphics look very similar albeit more polished.


EDIT: I was a tad tipsy while typing this so I'm sorry if the post is redundant, I am just really curious about whether this game is worth buying or not.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Abel »

It's not a bad game. The combat system is good, you got a wide variety of skills and weapons,... But it kinda feels like the game has no soul, if you know what I mean. The side quests are like "go kill 10 deer", "go fetch treasure x",... The main quest may be better but I never got really far into it.

I'd say rent it, give it a shot. I never got into the game, but who knows, you might like it!
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Oathbreaker »

If you can deal with questing in an MMO you can deal with Amalur. The low point of the game is generally the tedium of a lot of sidequests like Abel mentioned.

I personally love the combat. It's like a real-time WoW (didn't realize people hated that, but if you're familiar with it you might know what I mean by that). The talent trees start a little slow but that's true of most any game that has a talent setup like this. By the time you reach a decent level you'll probably have a blast messing around with the different abilities available. The one drawback to the number of options you have is that unlike console Dragon Age or the first Fable game, you don't have multiple ability tabs to use real-time. You'll have to decide which ones you like/use most and set the only one you have accordingly.

Story-wise, it's not exactly a hidden masterpiece of writing but it absolutely blows away most RPGs lately in my opinion. Fable 2's story was interesting then 3 kind of petered out for no reason, I wasn't particularly impressed with Fallout or Oblivion (Skyrim is arguably better or worse depending on what kind of story you're looking for) and while Mass Effect had a good thing going the second game's involvement with the overarching plot was a bit loose for my taste and anyone who knows anything about the third game's ending can agree that it might've even topped FF XIII(-2) for stupid plot move of the decade, and most recent jRPGs have crapped the bed completely.
story tl;dr - the main plot plays out more like a real story than any game I could name for better or worse depending on what you personally think of it.

I personally recommend it but by all means try to rent it first to get a feel for if you'll like it enough to validate $50-60 on it.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Iamgoofball »

When I played the demo, about every time I exited a building, about half of the ground was missing.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Oathbreaker »

Iamgoofball wrote:When I played the demo, about every time I exited a building, about half of the ground was missing.
This is in no way indicative of the actual game's technical quality. Technically speaking like this, the actual game is better than the demo in just about every way because the demo was from relatively early on in production.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by OblivionDuruza »

I did not experience the same problems with the demo, and in fact, I did not even find the large number of quests and side quests I encountered in the demo, about a dozen in a very short space of time, although I did not pursue them all, to be that tedious, but granted, I did only get to play a limited time during the demo.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Gideon Dragontongue »

Amalur has a lot of interesting lore, a decent combat system, and a immersive world, but in my opinion it's nowhere near as good as Skyrim.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Nova »

It's good, not at a Skyrim level though, a bit too easy if you ask me but the combat and the world is preety sweet.
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Re: Is Kingdoms of Amalur any good?

Post by Travalanche »

From what you guys' told me I think I'll get it but wait until it's a bit cheaper, thanks for the input everyone!
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