Amalur

I played the demo, and I loved it. I have the game preloaded, and it goes live on steam at 4 am. I'll post some stuff tomorrow.~

I pirated the game the day before yesterday and I am not loving it. It feels like I'm playing an MMO but without any other people. The writing is pretty bland, there's a whole lotta fetch quests and the "zones" feel like they were ripped out of WoW or something. Even the combat isn't doing much for me because my magic destroys pretty much everything in one or two hits.

The crafting in the game is pretty good though.

The combat was my favorite part of the demo. I love that you can string magic and weapon attacks together. Combining that with charging attacks, and slotting gems for special effects makes for a pretty deep system. I've been pumped for it for a few weeks now. We'll see if it holds up, but I did like the demo a lot.

Good luck stringing together anything when everything falls over dead after one spell, man.

Thanks! :*

I like the way the story is going, and the combat feels incredibly dynamic.  I'm playing the game on Hard, and aside from some of system issues that I've been dealing with, it's very fun.

Aside from quests, which seem to come standard in just about every western rpg, I don't get the mmo feel at all.  Though I suppose anything 'high fantasy' is going to be called WoW nowadays.

The combat is pretty simplistic even when the game decides to be challenging, so I don't think I'd call it incredibly dynamic. There aren't a lot of different monsters in the game either, so I think that really limits how dynamic it can be. I think the combat is fine, but it's nothing special.

I'm not sure what else is required for it to feel like an MMO other than its level design and quests/writing. Kingdoms of Amalur was conceived as an MMO by 38 Studios, but they made that project into Reckoning when they acquired Big Huge Games. All the areas in the game are locked in zones, like you'd find in an MMO. Each area has its little theme, a few dungeons and a town. The town will give you quests to point you in the direction of all these dungeons. Once you're done, you'll have a quest that will point you to a black part of the map to lead you into a new area.

All the sidequests (not including the faction quests) are simple fetch quests or "go clear the dungeon (normally to see if a person is okay - there are a lot of worried relatives in this game) and return." I wouldn't say quests like these come standard in every Western RPG, either. The main story of the game has been fine so far at least, with hints that it might become less linear soon.

Anyway, the game's aesthetic or style of fantasy doesn't really have anything to do with why it feels like an MMO.

The fetching and stuff is similar to every other PC RPG, not just WoW. That doesn't matter to me. I expect it. What I love about the game so far is the combat, and the freedom of choice when it comes to your character creation. Starting as a nearly blank slate, and being able to change as you go is wonderful. Not only is having a choice always a good thing, but having every decision be valid is key. I started as a rogue, because I wanted the lockpick boost, but I was starting to worry about that choice after I exited the starting area. After I gained a few levels, and learned how the game worked, I loved being an assassin. You can't spam backstabs, but if you're good, you can get key stealth kills to start a battle.

I don't know what you were talking about when you said that the combat was easy, chewey. I've had quite a few awesome battles. I do have a skill that can drain an enemy's hp pretty quickly, but the mana cost is high enough that I can't spam it. That's fine. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Options are never a bad thing. I also don't understand how you can say that the combat isn't dynamic, but compare it to WoW.

In short, the game's fun lies totally in the combat and lootage. The story is negligible so far. In fact, I've skipped a lot of quest dialogue.

Oh, and it wasn't designed as an MMO, but they've already said that they'll make an Amalur MMO if Reckoning is successful.

The combat is pretty simplistic even when the game decides to be challenging, so I don't think I'd call it incredibly dynamic.

[cont...]

Dynamic doesn't mean Difficult, nor does it mean Street Fighter combos.

Zones aren't specific to MMO's either, I could call to mind several singleplayer RPG's that use the same design because it simply works.

Quests have always been in RPG's they just haven't been recorded in a nice log for you to keep track of easily, but they've always been there.  Some guy says do -insert task here- and you go do it, regardless of how many there are aside from the main storyline, they've always been part of what an RPG is.

As far as the MMO goes, they were making an MMO from the beginning, then when they acquired Big Huge Games (who was working on an action game!) they took BHG's engine and action game, and set it in the same universe.  Reckoning was not going to be the MMO, that's Project Copernicus.

I have to be honest and say that I probably won't play an MMO of this. It would be awesome to have co-op, but it doesn't really interest me as an MMO.

Well, It's not going to be the Reckoning story, apparently it's going to be set a couple thousand years in the future.  Presumably the Well of Souls is far more convenient at that point.

The fetching and stuff is similar to every other PC RPG, not just WoW.

This isn't true at all. It is similar to MMORPGs though.

I don't know what you were talking about when you said that the combat was easy, chewey. I've had quite a few awesome battles. I do have a skill that can drain an enemy's hp pretty quickly, but the mana cost is high enough that I can't spam it. That's fine. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Options are never a bad thing.

Difficulty is beginning to ramp at the 12 hour mark on Hard but it's still very uneven. Enemies in the world are incredibly easy. Enemies in dungeons are more difficult because they do a lot more damage to me and there's more of them, but still only take 2 hits to kill for the most part. 

I also don't understand how you can say that the combat isn't dynamic, but compare it to WoW.

I never compared the combat to WoW's.

Dynamic doesn't mean Difficult, nor does it mean Street Fighter combos.

I said it was simplistic - which it is. It mostly revolves around one button and it's very mashy. And, like I said, there aren't a lot of different monsters in the game so it isn't like you're changing your tactics very often to defeat new enemies. In fact, the only enemy I've really had to do anything different to kill are Trolls because they resist my magic. Even bosses have been pretty basic so far and I must have killed six or so.

Zones aren't specific to MMO's either, I could call to mind several singleplayer RPG's that use the same design because it simply works.

Quests have always been in RPG's they just haven't been recorded in a nice log for you to keep track of easily, but they've always been there.  Some guy says do -insert task here- and you go do it, regardless of how many there are aside from the main storyline, they've always been part of what an RPG is.

Uh, okay? I'm not saying sidequests or logs are unique to this game. I'm saying all the sidequests in the game are bland MMO-level fetch quests. I also said this isn't really normal for western RPGs. This isn't how they are in New Vegas, Divinity 2, Risen, Witcher 2 or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for example. Those are all RPGs I've played in last 2 years or so and they all had better sidequests than this.

Out of those, Divinity 2 is the only one with similarly styled "zones" and that game feels a lot like an MMO too.

As far as the MMO goes, they were making an MMO from the beginning, then when they acquired Big Huge Games (who was working on an action game!) they took BHG's engine and action game, and set it in the same universe.  Reckoning was not going to be the MMO, that's Project Copernicus.

I'm aware of the story. I'm aware the Kingdoms of Amalur MMO is still being developed. The two projects they were working on were very much mixed together though, which has been what they've said all along. It wasn't as simple as just calling BHG's game Amalur and charging the art style.

To address the world being so easy: apparently it has a limited scaling to it, each zone has level ranges, and when you enter them for the first time it sets them.

I haven't even seen six bosses yet. 
If you just mean enemies with special names, that doesn't make them a boss, just a named mob.

As far as just slapping Amalur onto BHG's game, what they did was take the engine and then design Reckoning with it in mind afaik.  The stories are connected because they're all in the same 10,000 years of lore Salvatore wrote, but other than that they were never the same game like a lot of people are implying.

Yeah, I've heard about the scaling stuff. Most enemies in the world are still yellow for me though and they've been much easier than yellow-named dungeon enemies.

Those named enemies are meant to be bosses, though. Just because they're simplistic and all pretty easy, that doesn't mean they aren't intended to be bosses at the end of a questline.

I'm going to stand by my original statement of fetching being a staple of PC RPGs. I think some games are starting to get away from it now, but even three of the games you mentioned had fetch quests. You are right though, in that these don't feel like quests so much as excuses to grind. I think that there's a class of RPGs that makes the quests their own reward. Just experiencing the events of a quest being the reason that drives you to complete it. New Vegas was a great example of this. Amalur definitely does not fit into this category yet, but I'm playing this game for a different reason that I would play a Fallout or a Deus Ex. I'm playing this more like a Diablo than a Planescape.

I guess my impressions can be summed up by saying that the combat is the best part of the game. As a whole, its good, but not excellent. Keep in mind that I generally don't give a shit about fantasy stories/lore. They're all pretty much the same to me, and usually they're pretty boring.

IMO the game is pretty much just doing what Fable tried to do, but doing it a lot better.

This game has some of the most boring quests I've played in an RPG lately. I find myself skipping most if not all dialogue that isn't the main quest. Game is average at best, when I hit the desert area I was shocked at how much it looked just like the desert area from Eden Eternal except less detailed. Still, the game is alright. Combat is easy but satisfying but I can see it getting real dull real quick.

I'm not really finding it any better or worse story wise than most of the games that came out within the past few years.  It's difficult to get away from the "go here kill this" fare for sidequests it seems (most games feature quite a lot of this lately), but I'm finding the Faction and Main questlines to be relatively interesting.