First Impressions: Kingdoms of Amalur

I've been interested in this game for a while due to some of the people working on. Produce by Ken Rolston who was lead designer on The Elder Scrolls 3 & 4, written by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore and with Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, working on the artwork. Probably not names that are widely known but they are to me and the idea of a fantasy role-playing game created by those three has a lot of appeal. The game is not going to be released until February 10th however a demo has recently become available on Steam or Origin. As they're both published by EA, there is a cross promotion where if you play the demo you get a bonus item in Mass Effect 3. I'll definitely be getting Mass Effect 3 and I was already interested in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning so I figured I should give it a go and see what it's all about.


To start with it felt a bit strange. The controls seemed a little off. Like Skyrim there were a few things which were different from what you'd generally expect and it took some getting used to. It felt like the camera was moving much to fast as well. The opening and tutorial through you right in and I wasn't enjoying it as much as I would have hoped. I later realized that the control problems, particularly with the menu, stemmed from the usual problem. They've been designed with Xbox and PlayStation controllers in mind and keyboard/mouse was only a secondary consideration.


I did eventually get used to the controls. Also once I was out of the tutorial area and in to the open world things did feel a lot better. It definitely looks great in the high fantasy everything glows kind of way and the performance was good too. There were one of two odd glitches and freezes but nothing game breaking and I've seen much much worse. It's looking quite polished. The levelling system seems like it might be a interesting and a bit different from the norm but there wasn't really time in the demo to fully explore it. I'm still interested in the game but slightly less than I was before. I will still be keeping an eye on it but I don't think I will be considering it a release day purchase anymore. I'll probably wait a few months and grab it in a sale at some point.