Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-reckoning Review – Return of the Reckoning

Initially released in the year 2012, the original Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an ARPG or Action-Role Playing Game which was developed by Big Huge Games and 38 Studios, was not well received when the game first came out; fast forward 8 years later, a remastered version of the game was just released under THQ Nordic is now titled Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-reckoning.

In this review, we dive into Amalur once again to see how this game fares in this current age of time.

Welcome Back to the Faelands

To those who are unfamiliar with the original game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-reckoning tells the tale of war between the immortal beings known as Fae and the mortals. The mortals are consisted of different kinds of species such as Humans, Gnomes, and Elves.

The mortals are shunned by the Faes due to their short-life spans but the Fae themselves aren’t truly immortal though, they can die but they come back to life but in a new and different body. Gadflow, the high-key racist antagonist of the game deemed that the mortals as invaders of the Faelands and thus started the Crystal War to eradicate them.

The game begins with the character waking up from a pile of bodies. The Gnomes who are in charged of disposing bodies are surprised to see you alive and well. And as every main character in games are, you are the chosen one that the mortals have been waiting for to change the tide of the war, since as if a miracle, you’re the first ever mortal to come back to life after being killed.

Mortal (Creation &) Combat

At the start of the game, you get to try out all kinds of different weapons and classes to get an overall feel to them as well as solidifying what kind of play-style you’re more inclined to. The three classes that are available in Amalur are your typical fantasy RPG classes of Warrior, Rogue and Spellcaster.

The warrior class is your typical mixture of an offense and defense class, usually the bread and butter for players who prefer a well-balanced class, or players that are boring. The next class is the Rogue class who excel at stealthy tactics such as backstabbing people, stealing items as well as being edgy. Last but not least would be the Spellcaster class as the name suggests, cast spells at their enemies. While not only limited to long-ranged attacks, the spellcaster also has some good short range spells to use on people who call them a book-reading nerd.

One thing that’s pretty neat in Kingdoms of Amalur is the option to diversify your character by not necessarily investing all your skills into just one class for the entire game. For example, if you don’t want people to call you a dumb warrior, you can invest some skill points into spellcasting to learn some long range skills to use it on the dorks who calls you names from a distance since they think you can only hit people two feet in front of them.

The skills you acquire comes in both active and passive forms and you’re able to map up to eight skills in total to perform in quick succession as a L33T G4m3r by using button combinations for easy access.

Another great addition of Amalur would be the secondary weapon. If you do choose to master two different classes at the same time your secondary weapon can be used as your second class and you can switch between the two with a simple tap of a button. 

The combat system is pretty simple if any monkey brained player such as myself are wondering. You’re able to mash buttons (Square for primary weapon attack, Triangle secondary weapon attack). You’re also able to dodge and block attacks since each of the class comes with their own variation of a shield.

Although, one gripe I had during combat and I wished they implemented it would be a lock-on button since at some points during combat, it can get pretty hard to determine just how far an enemy is because of the camera angle.  Especially when facing off against multiple foes it would be nice to select the most dangerous foe to attack first rather than the closest enemy which your character will most likely target automatically.

Explore The Vast Regions in Faelands

The world itself is relatively vast. Even after those eight long years, it is still quite gorgeous to look at with its certain charm and aesthetic. You’re find animals, bandits, and guards across the lands. Most of the locations you visit are nature-based with vast forests.

The land is full of secrets for players to explore and find out for themselves, or just Google for the guides. Treasures chests are plentiful and filled with booty, there are also things called Lorestones which tell tales of the land, giving the game some world building and dungeons are everywhere. Most dungeons are quest-based while others are completely optional.

While the there are plenty of dungeons across the lands, Dungeon-ing can get pretty repetitive. Though a dungeon layout will be different from another but the assets and designs are just copy and pasted.

The Faelands are also full of people who need help. There are so many quests to take on if you’re aiming for the sweet sweet completionist achievement. But what makes most of these quests so frustrating is the length it can take to complete. Completing these quest became more of a chore than an enjoyment with the constant traveling since the locations of the quests are so far apart from each other. 

Craftsmanship and the Backlog

Crafting is divided to blacksmithing, creating potions, and crafting gems to armor giving them various attributes. When crafting, you can experiment and combine various crafting materials, but you can also find blueprints and recipes so you won’t have to waste rare materials on experimentation.

Unfortunately, the Inventory system is quite bad. At the start, you’ll be limited to only 70 items you can carry, but you’re able to upgrade your inventory cap by buying backpacks but they are few and very far between. And each of those item takes up an inventory slot. Weapons and armor each take up one slot. Crafting materials take up one slot which makes hoarding quite annoying. You can collect multiple of the same crafting material but that also takes up inventory space.

Potions provide buffs like health regen or resistance to element but will take up multiple slots for each one you carry.

The Verdict

There’s not much that has been done to improve the game unfortunately, in terms of gameplay and mechanics. The only improvement which was made for the game is the resolution and slight texture quality improvements which isn’t a bad thing per se, I just wish they did something to bridge the gap between the gameplay mechanics of today and 8 years ago.

But honestly, Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning is incredibly well for an eight-year-old game. A world full of secrets and quests to complete with entertaining albeit clunky at times combat, as well as the simple yet intuitive skill tree. It’s just sad not much was done to improve the long and numerous load times and any improvement to the inventory management system would have been very good.

Final Score

7/10

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