Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a near perfect masterpiece and is a must play and own game.
Publishers: Electronics Arts
Developer: Big Huge Games & 38 Studios
Platform: Xbox 360
Rated: Mature
Released: February 7, 2010
Visuals:
The visuals for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning are quite colorful and vibrant to look at and if you like the visuals in the Fable series and even the World of Warcraft series, now I'm not completely familiar with the that series, but I am familiar with the old Real-Time-Strategy game Warcraft which I had a lot of fun with so many years a go. So the detail to this game's characters, creatures, beasts and monsters and it's lush and colorful environment's of the fantasy land of Amalur which takes you through some dark forestry areas of Amalur to nice lush and bright plains of grassy fields to even dark swampy and war torn areas and even take's you to some lush and colorful city's and villages that you will come across and all these areas all look pretty great and it is not bad to look at at all. The character's in this game are pretty cool to look at and you get to meet a great deal of character's and you even get from humans to dwarfs and even elves to a talking tree or I think it was and all the characters looked really good and some did not look all that good and at times some character's looked a little bit similar but in other cases they all will look different from time to time and every character will have different clothing, armor and facial hair or they will even have none or they will even be bald or different color hair with your standard colors and even have red, blue, green, pink and many more but most of these different hair colors can all be found on the on the elvish character's, so you get see a good variety of character's and the same can go for the countless of enemies that you will encounter throughout the game and the land of Amalur and this game was said that the art was by the legendary Spawn creator Todd McFarlane and you can really see is work in this game as it is just remarkable.
So that is all the good for the visuals and if I missed out or forgot to mention it sorry. Here is some of the bad even if you install this visually great game and their is some frame rate issues and some odd and weird freezing moments where the game still lets move around just long enough to some smoke burning from house from a burned down village and that village was invisible and as you go to another location you might run into a invisible wall and if that happens to you like it did to me then you have to restart your last save and this weird freezing moment has happen to me once that I can recall and most of the issues that I had with this game was the frame rate issues and it would happen once in a while when you would be entering a new area of Amalur but this issue minor will not hurt you from playing this game for the hours that you will be putting in to this game and if you do not install this game then these issues will happen more often and frequent then if the game is not installed. So even with that minor issue the visuals are just nice lush, colorful and beautiful to look at and I just can't some up the visuals with just one word and that is why I'll just say the visuals to this games art style is just simply lush, colorful, vibrant and beautiful to look at and it is very easy on the eyes.
Audio:
The audio of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is quite impressive and is pretty amazing from the start of the game to the end and from the voice work of all of the main non-playable-character's to most of the character's that give you most of your story and side quests and the other parts of the audio for this game that was pretty amazing was the games musical score/soundtrack to the games sound effects and with the game's audio there were some downers with some of the audio moments and I'll get to them a bit later in this portion of the review. So first things first I'll start with the voice work and the voice work for this game is and was pretty spectacular with all the main non-playable-character's that you run in to like a faithweaver by the name of Agarth and a Dwarf by the name of Fomorous Huges and a Elf that you may or may not trust by the name of Alyn Shir and many more that you will meet and a lot more non-main character's that you will meet that will ask of favors from you in the form of side quests but the voice work is pretty amazing and you will come across some very bad voice over work through out this great game, but you will come across a lot os superb voice work from all the non-main character's and the actor's and actress's that played these main character's and non-main character's were all great and I think I heard Claudia Black voicing one of the character's and even doing the games narrating.
So now the games sound effects for this game are pretty amazing to hear in this game from the moaning and groaning of all the monsters and creatures in the world of Amalur and even the sound effect's of your character's magic that you get to wield depending on what spells you equip him or her and the spell all sound pretty cool and so does the sword play when they make the nice clanging sound when to swords block one another's attack and when you make contact with your enemies neck or torso and other body parts and/or armor and the sound of your character's sword, daggers and even when using your bow and arrow and even the bow and arrow sounds great and the sound of the magic you get to wield sounds superbly done. Now the games sounds track/musical score is just pretty amazing to hear when you enter a new village, town , city or even a new area in general through out this game and some of the sound track/ musical score sounds familiar, but it is still great to hear and is perform quite magnificently well. So in short the audio for this game is done very amazingly well and it is just superb to hear.
Gameplay:
The gameplay for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is pretty great and pretty much near perfect except fo some problems I found with combat and other parts of this game's gameplay. So first thing first I'll tell you about the good and that is that this game will keep you busy for about 100 hours of game time with the story and side quests and with the main story you play as a character of a name you get to choose for you self and what ever you like to have your character's name and/or choose the default character name that is provided for you to use or just choose any name you like to and this goes for almost any thing you craft potions and gems, create items and/or forge weapons and you can keep the default name for most thing you create or you cane just give the weapon you crafted a name to what ever you would like to name it even if you want a dirty word go ahead and name the weapon what ever your dirty little mind can think of.
So back to the main point of the game and that is you are a character that was killed in battle and then revived from a device called the well of souls and now you are character that as defied fate and now you have no fate and now you have the power to change the fate of pretty much anything around the land of Amalur and that includes your self and so like I mention earlier in this portion of my review and if you do pretty much every thing that this game as to offer from the main story and side quests, faction quest and even some the favor quests I think that's what the last of quests are called and their are plenty more to do in this great game, but this game should run you with main quests, most side quests, faction quests this game will run you about 95-100 hours of game time and many more if you do everything. Now the combat and as the box may say on the back or the front that this game is the most responsive game with the control mechanics and with the combat in general and in most cases with this game's combat system and the controlling of the character in this game is quite impressive and very responsive and I guess I'll mention the little bad about the responsiveness of the combat and in some areas of this game like when the combat gets a little to hectic the combat can get a little unresponsive when taking on multiple enemies and in most cases the combat system is very responsive through out the game and is quite fun to just man handle most of the enemies and you have a lot of enemies to slice and dice and just cut your way through and most of the enemies are easy except when you get to most of the boss fights in this game where the are pretty hard to make you way through them and if you have this one meter of yours filled up and this meter is called reckoning meter and when this is filled you can go in to reckoning mode which you can take down multiple enemies and finish it off with finishing move on one of the foes and this all takes place in slow motion and if you can use this mode to take down a pesky boss if you have some trouble with the battle.
So in short for this game's gameplay is fun and very responsive with the combat system and yet their are some issues with the responsive combat system, but even with the minor issue with the combat system it is still a near perfect game and a lot of fun to play and it will keep you busy for hours and this game has a superb progression tree and looting system for you to enjoy playing this game.
Overall:
So the overall for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is that fact that this game does have some flaws with the visual, audio and gameplay it still does not take away from this games near perfect visuals, audio and gameplay with a magnificent art style, a superb sound track/musical score and voice acting and gameplay is quite excellent with hours of play and to explore and a very impressive combat system with two weapon slots to put what ever you like in them to benefit your play style. So in short for the overall point for this game is that it will keep you busy for hours with a lot to explore and the replay value is there and the great responsive combat system which you should have a lot fun with despite a minor flaw, but you will in joy this game and if you have not picked this game up you owe it to your self to play this game and if the game does not interest you then it's your loss, because it is worth the money.
9.5 out of 10