Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is such a lousy name

Someone tell me how mouse and keyboard controls work. Is it like Batman, where you attack the enemy in the center of your screen, or like Space Marine, where you attack the enemy in front of your character? If it’s the latter, then I suppose the gamepad will be fine as long as there’s no aiming (like there was in Space Marine). I’m just curious.

Played the demo on the 360. I got through the tutorial phase of the game. At the end, it said I had 45 minutes to explore, but pausing the game or being in conversations would not count against that 45 minutes. Considering it took about 45 minutes to get to this point in the demo, I was not ready to do anything yet, but luckily when you start the demo again, it lets you skip to this point.

Impressions:

Visuals: It reminds me of Warcraft 3 visually. I hate that look, but I can tolerate it. I held off on Darksiders for a long time because I got the same vibe from the look and feel of that game, but in the end I enjoyed the gameplay so much, I ignored the look.

Voice Acting: Pretty decent.

Combat: It reminds me a little of Fable 2’s combat, but it doesn’t seem as elegant yet. But I’m still early in the game, so we’ll see.

Overall, I’m kind of curious about the game now, despite the horrible name and the visuals. It could be a good game. Sort of a Fable game set in an open world perhaps? It doesn’t have the incredible visuals or charm of Fable 2 though, that I can already tell. Some of the combinations of combat moves in the trailer/movie they play when you quit the demo seemed very interesting though. Using magic and melee and archery in quick combination seems to have a lot of potential.

The demo is up on steam too, now.

First impressions - looked like it was going to be a weakish console port. First quest starts in darkness. Hit escape - Brought up inventory etc… which would not go away. Had to quit and gave up at that point.

Rocked the demo on 360. I personally like the look, but I had some issue with the controls when in dialogue of all things - I never felt that my button presses were registering correctly. To talk.

I like the combat and it feels heavily influenced by Fable, which I like. The skill trees look pretty interesting.

I want this game to have co-op so bad.

Haha I was under the same impression. Actually it’s a bug with Radeon cards. You have to disable post processing or force AA in the catalyst control center. I tried playing the game but for some strange reason the developers decided we must all play with WASD or GTFO; they allow the player to rebind all the controls except for the movement keys, genius I know. So I uninstalled the demo and they lost a sale.

Yeah, I had trouble with the dialogue wheel too. It is really strange.

I like the history, the combat is fun. I find the interface another horrible port from consoles. The game seems flexible enough to play your way ( I play a archer with a staff that shot fireballs ). Its a lot of games ideas in a single game, cheesy and greatness on equal quantities.

A bit cartoony for my tastes, and the story/world is about as generic as the giant rats you fight a minute into the game. It feels alright, though, and if they’ve paired decent action combat with a truly open world, I’ll probably pick it up when it hits $15 on Steam.

Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.

You can fix the black screen issues by turning off post-processing inside the graphical options menu inside the game.

I am usually all about your second tier RPGs, but this looks kind of ancient, is so painfully overfamiliar and of course gave me a black screen until I checked here :|

I’m really being invited to smash crates? And giant rats? And stealth mode daggers? And mana potions? I think I’m zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

It feels a bit like early work from the people who went on to do the Dragon Knight stuff, before they’d got the hang of the technology and acquired the self confidence to apply some panache. I didn’t bother exploring much after the tutorial - maybe it picks up or maybe melee afficionados would get more out of it, but not for me I don’t think.

For what it’s worth, they have confirmed you can change the direction bindings in the full game. Apparently the demo code was forked a few months back and they couldn’t get all the improvements made since into the demo.

http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/showthread.php?2181-PC-controls-suck

Enjoyed the combat, and the character models a great deal. Thought the actual world rendering was very bland, and nothing in the story caught me at all.

The skill trees look promising, and the Destiny or whatever system sounds intriguing. Still on the fence, will be checking reviews.

This is starting to sound like another case where ‘no demo’ would have been better than ‘weak demo’.

it looks awesome… I want to try the demo!

I haven’t played a more glitchy game in a long time, but no matter. Unfortunately it stutters in certain scenes like a lot of games do with my videocard. So annoying.

I agree with Alistair about the “second-tier RPG” look. I feel like I just went through this with the Dungeon Siege 3 demo. I couldn’t click through the cutscenes and dialogue fast enough. I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for that right now.

Someone’s going to have to explain the combat system to me. The combos and juggling looked interesting in the gameplay videos, but I didn’t see anything cool spamming the attack button. It certainly doesn’t have the sheer joy of simply pressing the melee attack button in Space Marine. So I’ll need to hear more about the depth.

Mouse and keyboard controls are like the lesser Space Marine style, where your character attacks whatever he’s facing instead of whatever the camera is pointed at. That might be a good thing because the camera is kind of screwy. At least you will automatically attack the nearest enemy when your current target goes down. I think it also intelligently interrupts attacks. But I hate having to direct attacks with WASD (or W and mouse look). Maybe I’ll try it with a gamepad, once I hear someone tell me the combat mechanics are worth investing in.

As usual, I’ll need to find a workaround for the stutter or I’m not even going to bother.

I was stunned when I saw that the first thing I fought were Giant Rats. I hope this is a joke that fell flat and not really an indication of what they think makes for compelling RPG design. Sheesh. (It’s even followed up by giant spiders.)

I use RFDG for movement, so I have some real estate to the left to use for hotkeys. Been using this setup literally for 20 years. Not being able to rebind movement keys = no way in hell for me.

A few posts above yours someone stated that you will be able to rebind movement keys in the full game.