User Reviews

Fantasy action RPG Kingdom of Amalur reportedly underperformed in terms of sales: it's interesting to ponder why. After all, it features a passable combat system, a huge game world, character customization with a wide set of skills, abilities and classes (called "destinies" here).

Trouble is, in the RPG market you should do something to differentiate yourself from other developers and stand out. BioWare has vivid characters and choice & consequence; Obsidian interesting quest design and a penchant for subverting usual narrative tropes; Bethesda an immersive game world with detailed locations. Even the Fable series - the closest to Amalur in terms of mechanics and general feel (including look-wise, with its bright colour palette) - has its peculiar sense of humour.

Amalur, while never incompetent, is anodyne. Characters and locations, with a couple of exceptions, just don't pop to life. Quests typically consist in running from one place to another to kill five creatures or fetch five items, the kind of menial tasks MMORPGs are usually reviled for. Without a powerful story or memorable NPCs, it all boils down to chasing yellow dots on the map to get more XP and shiny loot - a time-sinker with level progression as the only reward. You'll visit no places like Whiterun or Riften, witness no elaborate interplay between factions, meet no characters like Garrus or Morrigan (even though there is a major Claudia Black-voiced NPC). A few characters are written with some flair, but the PC's dialogues are so hysterically generic ("I accept the quest", "I won't do it", "Tell me more"), you could probably roleplay as some sort of robot.

Combat is brisk but, at least on Normal setting, it seldom requires to use elaborate combos - spamming the same attack often proves effective.

It's worth noting the downloadable content The Legend of Dead Kel was an improvement over the main campaign, with a few interesting ideas and NPCs, so if you want to bother with the game get a bundle including it.