Welcome to my review of Kingdoms of Amalur, an RPG game that launched in 2012 amidst much fanfare, but was embroiled in scandal soon after with the closure of its studio due to some unfortunate loan issues. However, the game was revived under new ownership at THQ Nordic, and I'll be exploring whether it lives up to its hype in 2023.
Despite the game's dark history, I found little that was scandalous about it. The story revolves around an Evil Lord of the fae who is creating an undying army that's slowly winning the battle due to their invulnerability cheat codes. As a player, you start the game as a dead person and get to pick from four starting races, each with their own bonuses and backstories.
The character customization is solid, and you get to pick a deity that provides you with different bonuses. The world can be a bit disorienting at first, but you get used to it quickly. The combat styles offered are diverse, and you get to experience them while dumping corpses in incinerators. I found that the game played much better on a controller than on a keyboard and mouse. The combat was fluid and active, and ranged combat was easier but felt a bit too easy. The main issues I had with combat tended to due with animation locking as well as some odd scaling of abilities making you want to put everything into one skill until it's maxed rather than test things out.
As you progress through the game, you get to see your power grow, and armor and weapons are easy to come by. As you should in any RPG worth its salt. The world is not entirely open, but the linear set paths come alive with little details like the lore stones, which have charming stories to tell. However, there are some annoyances in the game, like gear damage and a lack of auto-saves, so you need to get in the habit of saving manually.
Overall, Kingdoms of Amalur is an excellent RPG that mixes the gameplay and humor from Fable with 10,000 years of backstory for the world written by the best-selling author R.A. Salvatore, with design by renowned artist Todd McFarlane and excellent composing of Grant Kirkhope. Despite its controversial past, it's definitely worth playing, and in this video, I cover all the aspects of the game that would either make you want to play it or not, while avoiding spoilers.
This RPG is a solid 7/10 and well worth a play if you enjoy the genre.
And if you don't know @MitchManix who I name dropped in the video check him out here! Amazing RPG and MMORPG creator.
