Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

[The_Jackal]

Well, it's launch-day for Kingdoms of Amalur, the new fantasy RPG from Big Huge Games and 38 Studios. I've played the demo, and I've got my copy from Amazon. With creative directors like Ken Rolston and Todd McFarlane and Ken Rolston, this one seems to promise good things.

Did you try the demo? Do you have the game? What class will you play? Questions, comments, arguments, all are welcome! Let the Reckoning begin!

[houlio]

Well, it's launch-day for Kingdoms of Amalur, the new fantasy RPG from Big Huge Games and 38 Studios. I've played the demo, and I've got my copy from Amazon. With creative directors like Ken Rolston and Todd McFarlane and Ken Rolston, this one seems to promise good things.

Did you try the demo? Do you have the game? What class will you play? Questions, comments, arguments, all are welcome! Let the Reckoning begin!

I tried the demo and was fairly happy at what I found. It reminds of the original Fable in a good way.

Unfortunately, I can't quite justify dropping the $60 right now, so I'll probably wait for a little while.

[nhbdy]

I'm curious and would like more info before I drop money I could save for ME3 on it. Plus I did read some reviews, some said it was the next great game title in the history of ever, others said it was repetitive and shallow (sans the combat which got high marks all around). After being disappointed on the last two game I hyped on (skyrim and fable 3) for various reasons I have taken a more jaded approach on games, so any opinions you can offer on the game would be awesome.

[Ogremindes]

I played the demo and will be getting the full game within a couple of weeks. Very much looking forward to it, after playing the demo the full game was all l wanted to play for a while.

[Weezer]

For those of you wanting a bit more information, there is a live streaming event where a bunch of gaming personalities are streaming their play throughs of the game, I think this kind of thing gives a better feel for the game than any review could do.
http://twitch.tv/team/reckoning


As for myself, I enjoyed the demo, but not enough to buy it at full price. I'm planning on watching the steam sales and grabbing it when it's price has been drastically cut. From what I've gathered the story isn't its strong suite (it was written by Salvatore after all), apparently it's generic fantasy drivel with pretty 1-D characters, however the combat looks awesome, and that's all I will be buying it for.

[nhbdy]

For those of you wanting a bit more information, there is a live streaming event where a bunch of gaming personalities are streaming their play throughs of the game, I think this kind of thing gives a better feel for the game than any review could do.
http://twitch.tv/team/reckoning


As for myself, I enjoyed the demo, but not enough to buy it at full price. I'm planning on watching the steam sales and grabbing it when it's price has been drastically cut. From what I've gathered the story isn't its strong suite (it was written by Salvatore after all), apparently it's generic fantasy drivel with pretty 1-D characters, however the combat looks awesome, and that's all I will be buying it for.

not a salvatore fan then? because I thought that was a selling point for the game...

[Wings of Peace]

Playing the game atm. High quality overall though the camera controls are dodgey. If you liked Fable and like me are a Fable sequel denier then consider this the sequel Fable never got. I've been doing a mage run and so far have been enjoying it immensely. Combat is fun and while the casual encounters won't be terribly hard there will be times when the number of enemies forces you to constantly stay moving. Will post more as I play.

[Weezer]

not a salvatore fan then? because I thought that was a selling point for the game...

For some, maybe, but the emerging criticism of the story is unsurprising based on my experience with his writing, because it's essentially the same complaints I have with all but one or two (which so happened to be the first he wrote) of his books. He tends to write formulaic plots set in generic fantasy worlds filled with one dimensional characters. And this is pretty much exactly the description I've read of the plot of the game in a few places. I've yet to read a positive review of the story, all the positive stuff seems to be about the gameplay.

Also, a word of warning, the inventory system is probably the worst I've ever seen. I had hoped they would change it from the beta, but apparently the haven't.

[warty goblin]

I'm curious and would like more info before I drop money I could save for ME3 on it. Plus I did read some reviews, some said it was the next great game title in the history of ever, others said it was repetitive and shallow (sans the combat which got high marks all around). After being disappointed on the last two game I hyped on (skyrim and fable 3) for various reasons I have taken a more jaded approach on games, so any opinions you can offer on the game would be awesome.

I played the demo and am probably an hour and a half into the actual game. As somebody who found Skyrim tremendously disappointing (~6 hours of playtime before I uninstalled due to a fervent desire to never play anything that tedious again) I'm pretty happy with KoAR.

The quests do seem sort of shallow go-here do this, but it's an open worldish RPG, but they're no worse than any other of the subgenre in that regard. It's lots of smaller bits of content instead of fewer, bigger chunks. Whether or not it's your thing is of course dependent on your taste, but I haven't found it more or less shallow than its brethren.

The story seems like the usual fantasy nonsense about being Mr. SpecialPants, but for some reason this bothers me less than usual. Maybe because I get the impression the game knows it's fantasy nonsense and isn't so horrendously serious about it all. Also the writing is what I'd consider good for this sort of thing, which is to say I haven't noticed it being bad. The voice-acting has so far been uniformly high quality.

It's also easy to avoid all but the bare minimum of tiresome exposition. The main dialog options tell you what you need to know, and everything extra is plainly marked as being such.

Graphically it's not cutting edge, but it works for me. There's something about the lighting that really captures the fantasy, and there's a lot of nice little environmental touches.

The combat is awesome, and feels like there's a good bit of depth to it. Stealth is fun, and I'm having an easier time with it than in the demo. Archery doesn't seem that satisfying, but hitting dudes with swords is solidly enjoyable, so I'm happy. I haven't messed around with the crafting yet, and probably won't much.

Also it's worth noting that the leveling system feels like it was made by actual thinking human beings, instead of the usual mindless bastardization of D&D and Diablo. Non-combat skill choices using a separate pool of points, imagine!

Finally it seems to be rock-solid stable. I've had a couple animation oddities while sneak attacking dudes, but nothing that broke the game or anything, just a few seconds of slight weirdness.

[Wings of Peace]

My only real criticism is that I feel like hybriding is a waste of time. Now, let me explain first because this isn't as damning as it sounds. Hybriding from what I've read in the stats given on each hybrid card has some nice perks. However, because you're splitting your skills between two trees you won't have the level of immediate power a focused character would. This might change late game or if I realize I've been a fool and discover some awesome combination, but right now I've never found a moment where investing in a second tree felt beneficial.

[warty goblin]

My only real criticism is that I feel like hybriding is a waste of time. Now, let me explain first because this isn't as damning as it sounds. Hybriding from what I've read in the stats given on each hybrid card has some nice perks. However, because you're splitting your skills between two trees you won't have the level of immediate power a focused character would. This might change late game or if I realize I've been a fool and discover some awesome combination, but right now I've never found a moment where investing in a second tree felt beneficial.
Very early game I've had some success using daggers to set up a hammer strike. Since the hammer is so slow I find a few hits of the daggers to set up a stun works nicely.

[Zevox]

I'm curious and would like more info before I drop money I could save for ME3 on it. Plus I did read some reviews, some said it was the next great game title in the history of ever, others said it was repetitive and shallow (sans the combat which got high marks all around). After being disappointed on the last two game I hyped on (skyrim and fable 3) for various reasons I have taken a more jaded approach on games, so any opinions you can offer on the game would be awesome.
I've only played the demo, but judging by that, I'd wager that the latter of those two descriptions is more likely to be accurate. My impression is that it's a cross between three things: Devil May Cry-lite combat, Bioware-style character creation and storytelling, and open-world/sandbox-style world design. While I like two of those - particularly the combat - I can easily see the last of the three resulting in repetition and shallow quests (and honestly Bioware-style storytelling done with less talent than Bioware has could easily be problematic as well; me and two others have kind of been having a discussion related to that in the ME3 thread today). Certainly the side-quests I did during the demo seemed to qualify.

Which is part of why I'm not picking it up on release day personally. While the concept of an RPG with combat inspired by DMC excited me at first, I was left too apprehensive about what I saw once I left the opening dungeon. (Of course the bigger reason is that I have too many games coming out between the end of this month and the beginning of April that I'm buying day 1 anyway, so right now nothing less than a must-have could get added to my intended purchases until I've completed those games.)

For what it's worth, to answer a question in the first post, when I do eventually get (or perhaps rent) the game, my first character will be a mage. Because I pretty much always do mages first in RPGs where I get to customize my class, and those chakrams look like they'll make for a fun weapon to use on top of the spellcasting.

Zevox

[Wings of Peace]

... and those chakrams look like they'll make for a fun weapon to use on top of the spellcasting.
Zevox

They are. :smallsmile:

[Triscuitable]

I feel my $60 are better spent on a series I know I will enjoy more.

Mass Effect 3.

Besides, the demo was fun, but an early build. I found it stale once the timer set in, so I left it on for 45 minutes until I got the Heavy Weapon for Mass Effect 3.

[factotum]

Also, a word of warning, the inventory system is probably the worst I've ever seen. I had hoped they would change it from the beta, but apparently the haven't.

I've not played KoA, but the only way I can imagine its inventory system being worse than Skyrim's is if it makes your computer explode when you pick anything up... :smallamused:

[Craft (Cheese)]

The inventory system is pretty much exactly the same as the one in Dragon Age, except, as far as I know, without the ability to get extra backpacks and that it's much easier to keep stuff you don't want to have to give up forever, for those who like to "collect" all the unique quest rewards in the game like I do. If you've played that game you know what to expect.

As for the story... Seriously, if you play a video game and expect there to be a decent story, you're delusional. It's not even surprising that bringing in a professional novelist (though I've never actually read any of Salvatore's stuff) just makes things worse: Games are just a completely different format with completely different requirements to form an effective narrative. Trying to make traditional storytelling techniques fit into a game is just trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

[Androgeus]

I've not played KoA, but the only way I can imagine its inventory system being worse than Skyrim's is if it makes your computer explode when you pick anything up... :smallamused:

It could be ME1's inventory.

[Weezer]

I've not played KoA, but the only way I can imagine its inventory system being worse than Skyrim's is if it makes your computer explode when you pick anything up... :smallamused:

Somehow, it's worse. There is no way to see an overall list of your items and it takes an absurd amount of clicks to change what you have equipped (something like 6 think). And yeah, I would call it worse than skyrim.

[warty goblin]

Somehow, it's worse. There is no way to see an overall list of your items and it takes an absurd amount of clicks to change what you have equipped (something like 6 think). And yeah, I would call it worse than skyrim.

I find it less bad than Skyrim's. I'm playing on a controller, so for me it takes like three buttons to get to any particular category. It's still cumbersome, but I find it a lot less inventory-centric than Skyrim, which is to say I can often go a considerable period of time without needing to open the thing.

Overall my impression is that it sticks pretty closely to the third person Euro action RPG, particularly as exemplified by Divinity II. The combat is definitely different, but the wide-open leveling system, lack of companions and degree of open-endedness make it feel very much like Divinity II: God of War edition.

This is entirely a good thing, I got a lot of joy out of Div II.

[Dublock]

As for the story... Seriously, if you play a video game and expect there to be a decent story, you're delusional.

I love some of the stories in some video games, even excluding additional material. I loved the story from Tales of Symphonia, I loved the story from the first Star Craft game before I even saw any of the books, and I can add more. A lot of video games don't have good story, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Then there are games like Halo, in the game horrible story, books have a great deal to them though.


Back on topic, I played the demo on the pc, and I enjoyed it but man the default control scheme is outdated by a few years on the pc. I didn't try out if I can change some of the annoying aspects. Also there should be more shortcuts to various things on the pc that I did not see.

[nhbdy]

I love some of the stories in some video games, even excluding additional material. I loved the story from Tales of Symphonia, I loved the story from the first Star Craft game before I even saw any of the books, and I can add more. A lot of video games don't have good story, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Then there are games like Halo, in the game horrible story, books have a great deal to them though.


Back on topic, I played the demo on the pc, and I enjoyed it but man the default control scheme is outdated by a few years on the pc. I didn't try out if I can change some of the annoying aspects. Also there should be more shortcuts to various things on the pc that I did not see.

Seconded on the enjoying the story in multiple games, the fact that the story got many complaints on this one is one of the major reasons I'm not getting it as it currently stands, games like ME1&2, DA:O, KOTOR, and Starcraft (as you mentioned) all kept me motivated to play mainly due to the story of the game, if a game has a lackluster story and repetitive gameplay I tend to get bored (looking at you skyrim, a couple of questlines I really enjoyed, but as a whole it wasn't there), thanks for the opinions so far, and I'll keep my eye on it, but as it stands it doesn't look like my kind of game.

[Zevox]

As for the story... Seriously, if you play a video game and expect there to be a decent story, you're delusional.
I suppose I just imagined games like Persona 3 and 4, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Vesperia, Radiant Historia, Catherine, the Mass Effect series, the Dragon Age series, and who knows how many others, then? Heck, the Phoenix Wright games are almost nothing but story, and yet look at how popular those are.

Zevox

[Morty]

The demo was... interesting. The combat system is far too over-the-top for me, though, so I'll give the full game a pass.

[Wings of Peace]

I'll echo that inventory is pretty weirdly organized. I don't see why armor/accessories/primary weapon/secondary weapon each needed their own tabs.

More important though, I think that when selling items it should just -automatically- bring up the compare mini-screen or at least display the items stats by themselves. A good menu minimizes how much I have to do not increases.

Still having fun though so that's nice.

[warty goblin]

Seconded on the enjoying the story in multiple games, the fact that the story got many complaints on this one is one of the major reasons I'm not getting it as it currently stands, games like ME1&2, DA:O, KOTOR, and Starcraft (as you mentioned) all kept me motivated to play mainly due to the story of the game, if a game has a lackluster story and repetitive gameplay I tend to get bored (looking at you skyrim, a couple of questlines I really enjoyed, but as a whole it wasn't there), thanks for the opinions so far, and I'll keep my eye on it, but as it stands it doesn't look like my kind of game.

My breakdown is always something like this: if I were to make a list of the stories I thought best, it would start with a lot of books, drift into a mix of books, movies and TV, sprinkled with the occasional bit of music, and only after passing through all of that would I start to hit games.

This isn't saying I can't enjoy a story in a game, it's saying that game stories are not as good as other forms. There's a short but non-empty list of games whose stories I genuinely did enjoy and even occasionally find emotionally involving and worthwhile. But there is no game I'd rank ahead of a good novel or film.

[Luzahn]

I was under the impression that Salvatore didn't write the story, but rather designed the world.

[The_Jackal]

Well, I installed and played the game for a bit last night, here's my feedback thus far:

Hybrid penalty: Definitely there, but this is really not suprising. Two mediocre attacks are easily trumped by one good attack, because you can only use your attacks one at a time. It's disappointing, because I'd think that some game designer might have thought out that problem by now. So, yes, we've gotten hybrid a'la cart charcter design, but it's something you CAN do, but also something you SHOULD NOT do, if your aim is to be effective. To be fair, it's no worse than Skyrim, and an incremental improvement over class-derived systems like Baldur's Gate, WoW, etc.

Story: Who cares? Games are art, but they're not literature. The narrative is there to serve the gameplay, not vice-versa. If the gameplay isn't fun, the best story in the world won't make your game good, and if the gameplay IS fun, then the trite story isn't going to stop you from enjoying it. Could it be better? Probably. But that's not where I want game developers spending their time.

Inventory system: Yeah, it sucks, but that's the problem when you're writing for a platform that can't use a mouse. One day, maybe Sony and Microsoft will just admit they're making ghetto-computers and put USB and mouse/keyboard drivers.

Combat: I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Yes, it's Skyrim meets God of War, but I've always maintained that RPGs need to get their arcade on, and this is a step in the right direction. Just a few quibbles tho:

1) I can fire a spell from stealth and get a sneak attack, but not a bow. Whut? The bow is a finesse weapon!

2) Using a two handed weapons should make blocking with a shield impossible. I'd like to see a weapon-parry with the two handed sword, and simply make it not possible to block while wielding a bow, daggers, fey-blades, chakram, etc.

3) It really seems like speed easily beats power in this game. Maybe higher in the Might Tree the two hander gets some more oomph to compensate for its glacial windup, but currently it feels positively feeble. By comparison, my dagger-wielding finesse rogue had no problems winding up every battle more or less unscathed, with proper use of the dodge button.

[Zevox]

Story: Who cares? Games are art, but they're not literature.
Oh, you're entirely wrong there, they absolutely are literature. Literally anything written is literature, video games included.

And honestly, to what little degree I've ever cared to ponder the whole games-as-art thing, all the potential that I see for games to be considered art is in their writing. Persona 3 and 4 and Tales of the Abyss and Vesperia are the only games so far that have prompted me to contemplate and break down their stories, themes, and characters in the way I did with novels in my college English courses, but the fact that a few have done that well is the one thing I can think of that seems relevant to the concept of games being "art" to me.

Zevox

[The_Jackal]

all the potential that I see for games to be considered art is in their writing.

So all of the illustrators, animators and graphic artists working on a game aren't actually producing art? :smallsigh:

How about games that don't have a story at all, or games where the story is entirely perfunctory. Ever played Flow? Katamari Damacy? Left 4 Dead?

Look, my point is not that narrative is unimportant, but that its importance is dwarfed by actual gameplay, for a, you know, game.

[Starwulf]

So all of the illustrators, animators and graphic artists working on a game aren't actually producing art? :smallsigh:

How about games that don't have a story at all, or games where the story is entirely perfunctory. Ever played Flow? Katamari Damacy? Left 4 Dead?

Look, my point is not that narrative is unimportant, but that its importance is dwarfed by actual gameplay, for a, you know, game.

The issue with that viewpoint is that some games(namely RPGs) have everything centered around the story, including gameplay. One thing I've learned, is never make a blanket statement about things, because there are always going to be exceptions(and in the case of gaming, there are more then just a "few" exceptions, again, RPGs as a Genre in general are based around Storyline more then anything else) to that statement.

[Tome]

Games are art, far as I'm concerned. If those prats I knew from art college get to spend five minutes slapping an orange circle on a canvas and call it fine art (No kidding, some folks pulled stuff like that. They got away with it too.), I bloody well get to call all the time I spent illustrating/animating/coding/etc art. There are plenty of games out there that are visual feasts, with lavish and detailed visuals, where the visuals are the main draw. There are also games with wonderful storytelling that can compete handily with most novels for the skill behind their writing - even if not every story, or writer, works well in an interactive format. I can say from experience that writing for an interactive format requires a pretty different approach. But the great thing about games as a medium, from my perspective as an artist, is that like film, you get to throw all of these elements, and more, in together in the same work - and they're interactive too. I'll leave it there to avoid going off on a full blown rant. :smallannoyed:

As for Kingdoms of Amalur? No idea, I'm British, it's not out until Friday for me. From the demo though, the graphics seemed slightly interesting, but nothing particularly special. The writing was above average, but clearly not done by someone not used to writing with interactivity in mind. Still pretty good quality though. The guys doing the design work though, in particular the combat system, were definitely doing some stellar work. Kudos to them. :smallwink:

[warty goblin]

Played a few more hours this afternoon. I'm definitely liking it, it gets the sequence of short, simple quests feeling down just right, so you're always finishing one and starting another. The combat continues to grow on me, it's quite marvelous to have an RPG where a (sometimes not so) little part of me sighs every time I see another group of enemies.

Although I could stand to fight something besides spiders now. Damn things have totally burned through my health potions.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I suppose I just imagined games like Persona 3 and 4, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Vesperia, Radiant Historia, Catherine, the Mass Effect series, the Dragon Age series, and who knows how many others, then? Heck, the Phoenix Wright games are almost nothing but story, and yet look at how popular those are.

Zevox

Firstly, visual novels (like Phoenix Wright) and other "games" where there's hardly any interactivity get an exception, as these don't have the fundamental problems with narrative delivery I was referring to. Here, there's no pushes and pulls involved: The story goes on pretty much regardless of the player's actions. The only thing that prevents Phoenix Wright from moving forward on its set, pre-written path is if the player gets stuck on a puzzle.

The problem comes about in interactive games where the player has almost complete control over their avatar, and the player's intentions are supposed to drive the main character's actions, but the player's motivations (and thus, actions) run against and even counter to the rails pre-coded in by the designers. This leads to situations like in Mass Effect 2, how the player is infamously railroaded into taking it up the butt from a terrorist organization whether they like it or not.

If the pushes and pulls you put in aren't done perfectly, the player's immersion into their character's role will be completely shattered, and the game will be revealed as the artificial experience that it is.

Anyway, I haven't played a few of those games you've listed, but the ones I have are all cases of amusing character interactions. While this is a good thing to have, it's not really what I meant by having a great story. What I meant was how the entire experience fits together to form a compelling narrative, which is not the same thing as having single, showstopping, but disconnected scenes. Dragon Age II is a perfect example of what I mean by this: You're literally doing things for no reason except your quest log says you have to.

And let's look at the plots from the other games on your list I've played, shall we?

Radiant Historia: It turns out the empire you're serving is actually... evil! DUN DUN DUN!!! (Yeah yeah there's the stuff at the imperial ruins but that's not until the last hour or so of the game.)

Devil Survivor: Teenage protagonist is caught up in a supernatural struggle they don't understand. (The multiple endings actually make this worse, because the entire story until the final day has to match all the endings more or less equally.)

Dragon Age: Origins: "There's an army of orcs darkspawn coming, and YOU gotta help us!" "Okay, but you have to solve our personal problems first!" (DA2 doesn't even have the first part.)

[Zevox]

So all of the illustrators, animators and graphic artists working on a game aren't actually producing art? :smallsigh:
I suppose they are. I tend to overlook that though. Very rarely do I find myself caring about a game's visuals, unless there's something unusual about them, or they're highly stylized (see El Shaddai or MadWorld, for example).


How about games that don't have a story at all, or games where the story is entirely perfunctory. Ever played Flow? Katamari Damacy? Left 4 Dead?
I have never played the three you mention (nor heard of Flow), but such games can be perfectly good. Mario is a good example: an entire huge series where the story is little more than an excuse for the gameplay. Though that is kind of the thing: the story isn't a focus in those. In an RPG, it tends to be the focus, making it rather more important.


Look, my point is not that narrative is unimportant, but that its importance is dwarfed by actual gameplay, for a, you know, game.
And yet we have games like the Ace Attorney series, which have little that could be called gameplay and stand almost entirely on their writing. Seems to me that alone demonstrates that stories can indeed be extremely important to a game.

Also, to respond to an earlier remark you made that I didn't have time to think about earlier, I can think of a game that is dragged down and made worse by its story: Final Fantasy 13. Going just by its gameplay alone, I'd have considered that a perfectly good, if far from exceptional, game. Yet its story is so poorly told, so filled with grating melodrama, and has so many unlikable and annoying characters, that it drags down the entire experience.


The problem comes about in interactive games where the player has almost complete control over their avatar, and the player's intentions are supposed to drive the main character's actions, but the player's motivations (and thus, actions) run against and even counter to the rails pre-coded in by the designers.
Oh, I agree with that. That's something which holds back games such as Bioware's from having stories as good as they could: it's very hard to write a story around a character that isn't actually a character, after all. That's quite different from claiming that no video game can have even a decent story, however.


Anyway, I haven't played a few of those games you've listed, but the ones I have are all cases of amusing character interactions. While this is a good thing to have, it's not really what I meant by having a great story. What I meant was how the entire experience fits together to form a compelling narrative, which is not the same thing as having single, showstopping, but disconnected scenes. Dragon Age II is a perfect example of what I mean by this: You're literally doing things for no reason except your quest log says you have to.
Interesting way to put it. In that regard far more do fail certainly, including all of Bioware's work. Yet not all, either. And I would say that you shouldn't discount games that consist of smaller stories that are good but not unified as a single narrative, such as Mass Effect 2 - Mordin and Jack's companion quests in particular are quite impressive pieces of writing.


Devil Survivor: Teenage protagonist is caught up in a supernatural struggle they don't understand. (The multiple endings actually make this worse, because the entire story until the final day has to match all the endings more or less equally.)
So, you give an extremely broad statement of the general setup of the game, and that is supposed to show that the story isn't good? :smallconfused:

(I'm going to spoiler this, since a discussion of Devil Survivor's story is of little if any relevance to Kingdoms of Amalur.)
That game has an excellently done story, showing the struggles that the demon invasion causes in more than just the obvious physical sense, the steady breakdown of society within the lockdown over the week's time, development of the characters based on how they react to their extreme circumstances, and an interesting mythology behind it to boot. It's not on Persona 3 and 4's level, but it's probably the best SMT story outside of those two masterpieces. And the different endings are by far the best-done of any such endings in any I've played: each presents you with a viable option for how to end the lockdown and the demon invasion, but with different results, different advantages and disadvantages after they're finished. Aside from the one actual bad ending, you could argue forever over which is the best. It's a rare case of genuine moral ambiguity in a video game, and a four-way one at that.

Also, the story up until the ending doesn't need to match all of the endings. You can fail to unlock the option to take the endings other than Yuzu's (the one bad ending I mentioned), either by getting the characters that propose them killed, by failing to track down information you need, or by rejecting the suggestions of Amane or Naoya.
Zevox

[Craft (Cheese)]

Something that's really been bothering me about this game is how all the marketing material's calling the destiny system a "class system."

It's actually not a class system at all: With a class system, you choose your class, then you're given a restricted pool of character options depending on what class is chosen. With the destiny system it's the exact opposite: You pick your powers freely out of a single, common pool of options, then you unlock destinies based on what choices you make.

It's actually better than a class system for a single-player game, as in single-player there's no need to limit characters to a single combat role in order to require cooperation between team members. Furthermore if you're unsatisfied with your current destiny, you can respec your character easily by just visiting a fateweaver: Most class systems make respec difficult if not impossible.

My core concern is the balance of hybridization: In a multiplayer game, hybrids have the benefit of being able to cover multiple roles at once (but tend to have the problem of not being evenly balanced against just getting more players running non-hybrid classes), but that benefit doesn't exist here. Furthermore due to the way the game's abilities are laid out into trees (well, lines) and the bulk of your points can be spent on upgrading powers, a "hybrid" character will have more abilities, but weaker ones. It's not clear that having 2 level 1 powers can be reasonably equivalent to 1 level 2 power. My guess is that people who shoot for Universalist will be totally crippled. Anyone who's got the game have an opinion on this?

Anyway I'll be getting this game myself on sunday. Guess it's time to just play the demo again while I wait...


There's absolutely nothing wrong with a video game working off strong characterization instead of rigorous narrative: Psychonauts, Portal, and the Mother series live off of this and we all know how great those are.

As for Devil Survivor, all those lovely scenes showing COMP users going mad with their new demonic powers and society breaking down under pressure are character interaction scenes, and not strictly plot. The plot of Devil Survivor, the bigger context that all of those smaller scenes are woven into and serve to reinforce, is the Throne of Bel stuff, which is exactly as I described it: "Teenage Hero unwittingly gets wrapped up in supernatural conflict they don't understand."

[Weezer]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a video game working off strong characterization instead of rigorous narrative: Psychonauts, Portal, and the Mother series live off of this and we all know how great those are.

As for Devil Survivor, all those lovely scenes showing COMP users going mad with their new demonic powers and society breaking down under pressure are character interaction scenes, and not strictly plot. The plot of Devil Survivor, the bigger context that all of those smaller scenes are woven into and serve to reinforce, is the Throne of Bel stuff, which is exactly as I described it: "Teenage Hero unwittingly gets wrapped up in supernatural conflict they don't understand."

The trap I think you're falling into is one of oversimplification. Any story looks ridiculous if you boil it down as much as you are boiling down these, though admittedly I haven't played them so I can't comment directly on the plots in question. Even lord of the rings looks like a bad story when you boil it down that much "A group of adventurers fights the evil sorcerer/devil in a hopeless conflict that is eventually won by destroying the source of his power". I mean, that doesn't sound much better than anything you described, despite being an excellent story.

[warty goblin]

So I'm now wanted for like six murders, after a robbery went bad. Fortunately my current bevy of quests is taking place so far out in the hinterland nobody's overly bothered by little things like killing and looting a half dozen soldiers.

They're practical people, I can respect that.

[Zevox]

My core concern is the balance of hybridization: In a multiplayer game, hybrids have the benefit of being able to cover multiple roles at once (but tend to have the problem of not being evenly balanced against just getting more players running non-hybrid classes), but that benefit doesn't exist here. Furthermore due to the way the game's abilities are laid out into trees (well, lines) and the bulk of your points can be spent on upgrading powers, a "hybrid" character will have more abilities, but weaker ones. It's not clear that having 2 level 1 powers can be reasonably equivalent to 1 level 2 power. My guess is that people who shoot for Universalist will be totally crippled. Anyone who's got the game have an opinion on this?
Sounds likely. My guess from having played the demo is that a hybrid of two paths might work, if you pick your skills in each wisely, but you could easily mess it up and end up just a half-assed version of each. I don't see trying for the "use all three" path working out well at all, unless there's some very specific combination of skills from the three that work well together.


The trap I think you're falling into is one of oversimplification. Any story looks ridiculous if you boil it down as much as you are boiling down these, though admittedly I haven't played them so I can't comment directly on the plots in question. Even lord of the rings looks like a bad story when you boil it down that much "A group of adventurers fights the evil sorcerer/devil in a hopeless conflict that is eventually won by destroying the source of his power". I mean, that doesn't sound much better than anything you described, despite being an excellent story.
I'd agree with this.
Also I think you're [Craft (Cheese)] being entirely too narrow by discounting anything not directly related to the cause of the game's plot - things like the breakdown of society within the lockdown and how it affects the people there get a lot of focus in that game, because the plot is about the demon invasion and lockdown, and the struggle over the Throne of Bel is merely a cause of that event. It needs to be resolved to finish the game, but it isn't the sole focus of the narrative at all.
Zevox

[t209]

What are the races in Amalur and what are they good at?

[The_Jackal]

http://reckoning.amalur.com/

[warty goblin]

So this just ate two hours of my evening. I'm really coming to appreciate the differences in enemy type. Unlike pretty much every other RPG I can think of, enemies don't feel like slightly differently packaged bundles of HP with an ability or two, but distinct things requiring distinct tactics.

And I'm pleased to say my warrior/rogue hybrid seems to be working pretty well. Most of my fighting is done with a longsword, but the daggers are quite handy for their chainable hold attack or juggling an enemy I hit into the air with the sword, and stealth-killing an ettin is pure 100% badassary.

[Cristo Meyers]

So this just ate two hours of my evening. I'm really coming to appreciate the differences in enemy type. Unlike pretty much every other RPG I can think of, enemies don't feel like slightly differently packaged bundles of HP with an ability or two, but distinct things requiring distinct tactics.

And I'm pleased to say my warrior/rogue hybrid seems to be working pretty well. Most of my fighting is done with a longsword, but the daggers are quite handy for their chainable hold attack or juggling an enemy I hit into the air with the sword, and stealth-killing an ettin is pure 100% badassary.

I'm playing the same hybrid and loving it. The harpoon skill synergizes really well with the Shadow Strike. Harpoon the first enemy, wail on it with the long sword, and stun anything that gets too close with Shadow Strike.

I'm about 5 or so hours in. I have a few quibbles: the shield thing still, not really liking the body type for the male characters, but those are superficial things. The only game issue I'm having is that it looks like you can join every organization you come across without exception. It's either "yes, I want to do this part of the game and join this organization" or "no, I don't want to do this part of the game."

But, the game is fun, combat is a blast, and the scenery is beautiful. I've never actually stopped to gawk at scenery in a game before. There's a cave just after you get out of tutorial-land Tower that has one of the best-looking pieces of scenery I've seen (plus there's some good gear in there, just mind the kobolds).

[Cespenar]

But, the game is fun, combat is a blast, and the scenery is beautiful. I've never actually stopped to gawk at scenery in a game before.

Off topic, but I suggest giving Trine 2 a try in that case.

[Ogremindes]

Here's the first part of a youtube first impressions... thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyJC8Ig0K8M). I haven't watched it myself as I'm avoiding spoilers while my copy comes.

[The_Jackal]

For folks looking for a reasonably amusing look at an Amalur playthrough casted before they buy, check THIS (http://blip.tv/day9tv/kingdoms-of-amalur-reckoning-w-guest-felicia-day-part-1-5941735) out. Yep, complete with wonderful Felicia Day!

Yes, the combat definitely is a lot more engaging than Skyrim (which I still love, btw). This really has the flavour of a God of War-style action game more than a traditional RPG. I'm currently messing with a pure finesse build with daggers, and while the sneak attacks are sometimes hard to bring off, they're immensely satisfying when I can land them. I'll be starting a might toon this weekend, do a bit of a Pepsi challenge.

The one thing I can see being an issue already is that while the advancement system lets you mix and match, the equipment system most definitely does not.

[Hajutze]

Got to level 34, respec-ed, tried all the builds ...
Sorcery/Might - Absurdly strong. At level 34 with Paragon Destiny, the force-shield-like ability, Hardy constitution, Stoneskin and some resistance armor literally NOTHING can damage you visibly. If you have +2 to abilities:
23 elemental resistance from Paragon
20 elemental resistance from Hardy
16 resistance to everything from the shield-like thingy
20 physical resistance from Stoneskin after you kill a monster
Total:
59 elemental resistance
36 physical resistance

Amulet - 20 elemental resistance (Total 79)
Shield - 10 elemental resistane (Total 89)
Helm - 12 Elemental resistance (Total 101)
Armor - 12 physical resitance (total 48)
Legs - 12 physical resitance (Total 60)
Gloves - 12 physical resistance (Total 72)
Boots - 12 physical resistance (Total 84)


If you manage to find Resistance rings it goes up to 100/100 ...

Damage output - not really important, they can't kill you xD

========================
========================

Pure mage - 1 word - meteor. That's pretty much it. I finished the game solely on Meteor + The upgraded Lightnin Spell. Cast Meteor, Switch to the Lightning while you cast it, Start holding the button, when the animation for meteor finished cast Lightning. Nothing survives except bosses. The downside is the lack of survivability. You still get 20% allround and you can boost the protection up to ~70/70 or so. Good nuff for a class that's suposed to die like flies.

========================
========================

Might/Finesse concentrated on Critical Damage (The effects from the armors when you craft them)
Extremely fun to play with. The daggers are ridiculously fast and with 100% chance for critical the damage output is ... quite the thing. Not to mention sneak attacks. I managed to pull out 100,000 damage on a sneak attack :smallcool:. The survivability is a 1 idea below a pure mage (20% elemental instead of 20% allround due to the lack of sorcery abilities).

If you're starting now - go with Might/Sorcery .. on the 8th level it has 15% elemental resistance from the Destiny, 12% allround from the shield and 14 (not sure) elemental from hardy that's 41 elemental and 12 physical right off the bat with no equipment. Personally my biggest problem were the mage npcs so if I start playing again I'll go with a battlemage.

[Pie Guy]

I really did like the demo, but I'm concerned about the having to sign in every time the game is booted up. Or is that just the demo? I really don't want to support more EA shenanigans.

[stips]

I really did like the demo, but I'm concerned about the having to sign in every time the game is booted up. Or is that just the demo? I really don't want to support more EA shenanigans.

It authenticates every single time for the full version too.

Level 6 sneaky dagger type, bought a house in the spider area, running around killing things. Good game :)

[Pie Guy]

It authenticates every single time for the full version too.

Well, that and the QTE's seal it. I'll pick it up on sale.

[MonarchAnarch]

I played the demo, and picked up KoA on release. I'm lvl 14 and about 10-12 hours in. Freaking loving this game.

I'm playing a finesse/mage hybrid. While I'm not sneak attacking in the 100k's..lol I'm doing right around 8k. I've got maxed detect hidden and blacksmithing so far. Going to work on sagecraft next.

I'm a set fiend when it comes to these types of games. So sad that I've completed one set, and have two more that are a piece or two shy of complete. I wish we could set items out in our house ala skyrim or SWG.

All in all I love this game. Scenery is great, and for once I like elves. Typically, I take the dwarf fortress mindset when it comes to elves, the higher than thou type. But these elves strike me different, and am intrigued by their musical overtones.

My next run through will be mainly might, with a dash of magic probably.

[Zevox]

I'm playing a finesse/mage hybrid. While I'm not sneak attacking in the 100k's..lol I'm doing right around 8k. I've got maxed detect hidden and blacksmithing so far. Going to work on sagecraft next.
Hm, how's that working for you? After a straight mage that would probably be the next character type I'd try. I was thinking that something like chakrams/daggers or chakrams/bow would work well as a weapon combo.

Zevox

[Spacewolf]

i thought this was a steam game not an orgin one and it still needs to be authenticated every time?

[Weezer]

i thought this was a steam game not an orgin one and it still needs to be authenticated every time?

The thing about steam is that it allows publishers to put any DRM they want on top of the built in steam DRM. Also it is a Origin game too, it's on both distribution platforms.

[MonarchAnarch]

Hm, how's that working for you? After a straight mage that would probably be the next character type I'd try. I was thinking that something like chakrams/daggers or chakrams/bow would work well as a weapon combo.

Zevox

Up front, I LOVE it. the sneak attacks are so so fun. While I'm balanced at 24/24 finesse/magic right now, so I'm not too far into either tree. The hybrid curse. Below are my main thoughts on my hybrid:
*Weapon choices are great - I go dagger/any mage weapon. I just don't like the faeblades..to spinny and low damage.
*Armor is an issue. Can't find a good balance between the two..but again I'm a set whore, so its hard to find one that fits the character scheme. I ended up maxing out my blacksmith as far as I can and made my own items. They all ended up blue quality.
*Don't use the bow. I have a crazy powerful one, and havent dropped a point into it. I has wierd angles and has NOT grown on me, I tried.
*Damage is g-r-r-r-r-r-r-eat! Sneak attack then fire mark the rest. Firemark is awesome. I respec'd and focused on the protection passive and the venom buff from finesse. Later I will focus on the higher end finesse items that do much higher damage when it comes to DoT's via bleeding and poison. Gonna be good.
*If you are going stealth, invest in stealth skill. I haven't invested much, but it helps chain the instant-ish kills. the higher the stealth, the less radius of detection you have. Probably my biggest character flaw so far.
*Detect Hidden will make you rich. RICH..if your willing to loot everything that a non-detect hidden toon woln't have access to. WELL worth it to a stealth char.
*I tried the summon, but just wasn't worth the points to me.

Sorry, this is all just random thoughts..no organization...my apologies.

[MonarchAnarch]

I wanted to add that I love the crafting system.

I've experimented potions, and gems, but I've invested into blacksmithing, and its fantastic. The sheer choices you get after disassembling a few quests worth of items, its great. Once you know the flow of the system, its so easy to pick what you want to make. If you don't have the items that give the stats you want? salvage more! Simple as that.

Don't have to worry about success rate/failure as far as I can tell. Only failure I've seen is on alchemy. I loot enough potions and drink even less than I loot, so that whole system gets "Meh'd" by me. I like to say, "My **** is custom."

[Spacewolf]

The thing about steam is that it allows publishers to put any DRM they want on top of the built in steam DRM. Also it is a Origin game too, it's on both distribution platforms.

Well considering how much steam hates me even when i dont have to be online all the time i guess im going to have to give this a miss

[warty goblin]

Well considering how much steam hates me even when i dont have to be online all the time i guess im going to have to give this a miss
If you buy it from literally any source but Steam, you don't need Steam. It does come with Origin, but at least in my experience Origin's offline mode actually works.

[MonarchAnarch]

Steam offline mode works if you do this:


By creating/editing steam.cfg (in the same directory as the steam
executable) with the following lines works:


BootStrapperInhibitAll=enable ForceOfflineMode=enable

[Spacewolf]

yea i use steams offline mode whenever i can but atm thats not working and whenever i boot up steam it trys to update then closes. But didnt some just say it had to varifiy every time?

Ive also heard some negative things about origin, is it the same thing that Dragon age origins uses for its DRM?

[warty goblin]

yea i use steams offline mode whenever i can but atm thats not working and whenever i boot up steam it trys to update then closes. But didnt some just say it had to varifiy every time?

Ive also heard some negative things about origin, is it the same thing that Dragon age origins uses for its DRM?

Here's a simple way to kill two birds with one stone.

1) Go here (http://store.origin.com/store/ea/en_US/html/pbPage.play-free-games-en_US).
2) Download the Kingdoms of Amalur demo.
3) See if you like it.
4) See if you find Origin works for you.
5) If the answer to both 3 and 4 is yes, and you have $60 or so to spare, buy the game.
6) Otherwise, don't.

Seems the easiest thing to do, really.

In the actual game, I'm playing through some of the House of Ballads stuff, which is quite good. There's some cool fantasy ideas in there, but the game resists over-analyzing them and so leaves the player's imagination to fill in the details. I like that, it keeps things interesting, and just the right amount of mysterious.

Also, the amount of useless loot in this game is staggering. On the other hand I have a frost longsword that both looks reasonably cool, and is very good, so I'm happy I can actually use it for a while.

[Weezer]

Here's a simple way to kill two birds with one stone.

1) Go here (http://store.origin.com/store/ea/en_US/html/pbPage.play-free-games-en_US).
2) Download the Kingdoms of Amalur demo.
3) See if you like it.
4) See if you find Origin works for you.
5) If the answer to both 3 and 4 is yes, and you have $60 or so to spare, buy the game.
6) Otherwise, don't.

Seems the easiest thing to do, really.

In the actual game, I'm playing through some of the House of Ballads stuff, which is quite good. There's some cool fantasy ideas in there, but the game resists over-analyzing them and so leaves the player's imagination to fill in the details. I like that, it keeps things interesting, and just the right amount of mysterious.

Also, the amount of useless loot in this game is staggering. On the other hand I have a frost longsword that both looks reasonably cool, and is very good, so I'm happy I can actually use it for a while.

One thing to realize about the demo is that it has some major technical issues that have been fixed since the demo was released. It's a 4 month old build of the game after all.

[Corvus]

I picked up the demo mostly for the bonus item for ME3 - and because Claudia Black does some VA for it.

I may hold off until it goes on sale to pick up the full game (due to money and computer issues.)

While most of me enjoyed the demo there is something that I can't pinpoint that is holding me back from really loving it.

[Orzel]

I bought it.
Playing it as a finesse/sorcery dokkalfar.
Sneak-Mark of flame-dash across screen with dagger.

So much garbage loot they give me...

The combat is so fun.

[MonarchAnarch]

The "garbage" loot has its purpose. Funds upgrades/training/respecs/ and salvage for blacksmithing.

Be thankful for it. :P

I'm 18 hours in, lvl 15 or 16 now. Still haven't passed a third of the map. Not even to the desert yet. Freaking loving this game. :)

[Cristo Meyers]

The "garbage" loot has its purpose. Funds upgrades/training/respecs/ and salvage for blacksmithing.

Be thankful for it. :P

Don't forget fines, for those of us with certain moral...flexibilities.

47,000 gold for petty freaking theft.

The loot's kinda reminiscent of Diablo, in a way: somewhat randomized drops, set pieces (I look like a colour-blind ninja right now :smallbiggrin:), and lots and lots of pretty much useless junk.



I'm 18 hours in, lvl 15 or 16 now. Still haven't passed a third of the map. Not even to the desert yet. Freaking loving this game. :)

I know. One of my main concerns was that this game would be short, and while I haven't done much in the main questline there is more than enough to fill a lot of hours.

The fact that everyone seems to have the same voice (and Anders' voice to boot) is starting to get minorly annoying, however...

I finally hit my first real tragedy: found a very high power longsword, almost twice as powerful as the one I was using, then lost it failing to dispel a ward. When I re-opened the chest that I found the sword in: chakrams. :smallfrown:

[MonarchAnarch]

I was catching up on when day9 streamed with friends for 8 hours and he opened the map and made a wee bit of an orgasmic sound. Pretty accurate. You look at the map, and its like, "Yup. Gonna spend some time on this game." lol The desert part is small? But there are two rather large looking cities in it. So that's gonna be alot of quests, no doubt.

So how did you lose a sword from dispelling? When I fail, which is OFTEN, I get cursed or get smacked with a GIANT backlash that sometimes has killed me. (Freaking hate dispelling..I don't get it..need pro tips!) But as far as I know, I've never lost items? If you mean you saw the sword in it then dispelled? How? Or did you find one, then die to dispelling before saving?

So I found some sweet monkey balls faeblades..which I don't like..faeblades...and went to sneak attack.. crit! 250. wha? 250? I was doing 8K with my daggers? I was so confused. Forgot that I maxed out my daggers, and not my faeblade.

Remember kiddies! Play with the toys you invest in! lol

[Cristo Meyers]

So how did you lose a sword from dispelling? When I fail, which is OFTEN, I get cursed or get smacked with a GIANT backlash that sometimes has killed me. (Freaking hate dispelling..I don't get it..need pro tips!) But as far as I know, I've never lost items? If you mean you saw the sword in it then dispelled? How? Or did you find one, then die to dispelling before saving?


Exactly. Failed the dispel, got blowed up good, had to re-load from the last save that was before I found the sword.

I did end up finding two new swords that were better than the one I was using, but not as good as that one. It was kinda like finally ending up on Jeopardy only to walk away with a blender...

--
LadyMeyers just discovered exactly where all her gold is going now. Wait until you get to Rathir, most of the high level store items cost well over 1-200,000 gold...some over 300-400,000

[MonarchAnarch]

Exactly. Failed the dispel, got blowed up good, had to re-load from the last save that was before I found the sword.

I did end up finding two new swords that were better than the one I was using, but not as good as that one. It was kinda like finally ending up on Jeopardy only to walk away with a blender...

--
LadyMeyers just discovered exactly where all her gold is going now. Wait until you get to Rathir, most of the high level store items cost well over 1-200,000 gold...some over 300-400,000

Well LadyMeyers, thank you for the blender comment. I literally laughed out loud at work. But, only three of us here, so no worries. lol

So yeah..time to start hording even the potions and selling them apparently. I hope the rewards from the quests give more cash if that is the way the cost of things scale, good grief. But as it is, the only thing I pay for is training skills..at 15k a pop.

I'm at the end of the House of Ballads quest line, about to talk to the lady of windemere. I feel I have a big choice ahead of me. See, the thing is, I actually like the elves in this game so far. Summer and Winter. Lets just say...my house in Canneroc? more like my Village. If you get what I mean.

[Hajutze]

Max up your merchantile skill and you'll get them at 1/10 of what you see.

[Zevox]

Max up your merchantile skill and you'll get them at 1/10 of what you see.
:smalleek:

Note to self: mercantile skill is overpowered in KoA and I should put lots of points into it when I finally play the game.

Zevox

[LadyMeyers]

Well LadyMeyers, thank you for the blender comment. I literally laughed out loud at work. But, only three of us here, so no worries. lol

So yeah..time to start hording even the potions and selling them apparently. I hope the rewards from the quests give more cash if that is the way the cost of things scale, good grief. But as it is, the only thing I pay for is training skills..at 15k a pop.


Thank you for crediting me with my hubby's turn of phrase. :smallwink:

And I've found that between the loot dropped, breaking random boxes and pots around, and sagecrafting my shards into gems before selling them has allowed me to build up a healthy pile of change.

I'm sitting on about 500K, and that's after buying chakrams for 85K not more than an hour earlier. Though my next set of robe is likely to be in the realm of ... $635K, IIRC. Unless, of course, I get a set free, which is also just as likely.

And for the record, I only have about 2 points in Mercantile, maybe 3.

[warty goblin]

:smalleek:

Note to self: mercantile skill is overpowered in KoA and I should put lots of points into it when I finally play the game.

Zevox

My impression so far is that pretty much everything feels overpowered. I'm not sure how much of it actually is OP, but much of it feels a bit broken. I like that, I've long thought perfect balance the enemy of interesting singleplayer.

For instance the bit where you can stealth one-shot minibosses. I totally love doing that.

[The_Jackal]

Played a good chunk of the weekend with a Might build, went long in Blacksmithing and Find Hidden, and thus far enjoying myself immensely. As others say, the combat is just stupendous. I'm rocking a greatsword and just feel immensely badass swinging that thing around.

Earlier on I said I felt that speed beats power, but now that I've taken on the Ettins in Ettinmere, I don't know if that's going to stay true, I'll have to catch up on my rogue and try them out.

On the money front, I'm in the 'only pay for training' camp. Vendor gear is overpriced and under-good, and I don't anticipate higher levels changing that.

[MonarchAnarch]

How are you liking might? My second run will be might. Not sure if pure or with finesse for crits.

Finesse one shots ettins from sneak attack. But I'm sure might drops them in just a few gloriously bad ass hits.

[Cristo Meyers]

Played a good chunk of the weekend with a Might build, went long in Blacksmithing and Find Hidden, and thus far enjoying myself immensely. As others say, the combat is just stupendous. I'm rocking a greatsword and just feel immensely badass swinging that thing around.

Earlier on I said I felt that speed beats power, but now that I've taken on the Ettins in Ettinmere, I don't know if that's going to stay true, I'll have to catch up on my rogue and try them out.

On the money front, I'm in the 'only pay for training' camp. Vendor gear is overpriced and under-good, and I don't anticipate higher levels changing that.

Just the Brutes, Finesse and Magic don't have much trouble. Ettin Brutes are only immune to hitstun for the first few hits and you'll probably punch through that in no time flat.

Shamans/War Priests and Chieftans, however, are a different story. They've got a stronger immunity and can really mess you up if they get a hold of you, especially since they attack in groups. The Lunge skill seems to help a lot if you can get the timing down and just staying at range can too, but fighting them in general can go south really quick.

Sneak Attack killing them never gets old or stops feeling badass, though :smallamused:

[The_Jackal]

Might FEELS tremendous. I'm using the greatsword, and while my windup can be slow at times, the hits are well worth the wait. Harpoon really helps versus packs of enemies, allowing you to single out an enemy for your attention, though against large enemies it's of dubious use. The one fight that really gave me trouble was in the Theatre of Fate, there's a triple Ettin fight with a named Boss. For that, you need to stay alert to their windups and use timely blocks to avoid being crushed. I had to redo a couple times to get through that one, though it was largely because the dubious camera AI would wind up catching me in a corner in the closet-like space, where I'd proceed to get bludgeoned into a pulp.

Of course, Fateshifting makes all fights trivial, as everything dies in one to two hits. The only challenge is dropping all combatants before the timer runs down.

[Zevox]

My impression so far is that pretty much everything feels overpowered. I'm not sure how much of it actually is OP, but much of it feels a bit broken. I like that, I've long thought perfect balance the enemy of interesting singleplayer.

For instance the bit where you can stealth one-shot minibosses. I totally love doing that.
I don't know, that sounds like the kind of thing that'd be amusing the first few times, but get dull really fast. One of the best parts of a good action game for me is the challenge - that's part of why I have such a high opinion of Devil May Cry (1 and 3): they are hard, even on normal difficulty. You either learn to play well, or you die. When you're just overpowered and god-mode-ing your way through an action game, you instead get Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - fun for a little while, but it wears off relatively fast.

So, that leads me to a probably-important-for-me question: just how is the difficulty in KoA? Does it provide a good challenge consistently, or does it just wind up easy? And how do the different difficulty settings affect this? (The demo was locked on normal, but I saw there was a hard mode available too.)

Zevox

[Suedars]

I've seen a lot of people posting about Finesse and Might based characters, but how do Mages play?

[Cristo Meyers]

So, that leads me to a probably-important-for-me question: just how is the difficulty in KoA? Does it provide a good challenge consistently, or does it just wind up easy? And how do the different difficulty settings affect this? (The demo was locked on normal, but I saw there was a hard mode available too.)

Zevox

I haven't really started dominating fights unless I'm just that much more powerful than my opponents. Which admittedly can be fairly often due to having pretty high-grade equipment, but that's got more to do with a bit of sequence breaking than anything else.

Many of the critters are pretty cunning in how they attack: staying out of arm's reach (sprites), using hit and run attacks (wolves), or just being so big that the first few hits don't even phase them (jottun, ettin, anything big). They'll all attack when your back is turned, there is no mook chivalry here. Freakin' kobolds will throw bloody bombs at you...at least one boss used the arena to it's advantage.

You do have to think, stay on your toes, pick your targets. Elemental weaknesses help, but don't seem to be mandatory (on normal).

Hard, as I understand it, is more an increase in damage done by enemy attacks, sadly. And Reckoning mode is pretty much an "I win" button.

#edit: I'll put it this way, when fighting with the daggers, I almost felt like I was still playing Arkham Asylum.

[MonarchAnarch]

I hear ya Ellardin. I just went through that "fire god" area last night on my finesse/magic toon. Holy cow those guys were hard to chase down. And they hit hard. I hope to see more of that type of mob. And the other mobs in the room have ZERO qualms taking a bite out of you from the rear, as was mentioned before.

I love that about this game. Anything you fight is set to WIN. None of the 1 at a time AI. I LOVE to watch a pack of wolves fight. Beautifully designed.

As for difficulty, I've found that if you do about 4-5 side quests, you will be a bit ahead of the difficulty curve. If you do about 1-2 side quests, you'll be right on it, maybe a dash under. I did EVERY side quest (not the category below side quest) before advancing the story. I'm 24 hours in and am lvl 19.

Of course it also depends if you can find a full set early on or not, or a ton of purples that fit you. Your fate is ran by the random number generator. lol

[Chen]

I ran the FOV fix from widescreen gaming forums (can't link to it since I'm at work) but I still haven't gotten it perfected. It managed to pull the camera out a bit and its not too fishbowl like, but I figure I just need to tweak the FOV and uncorrected resolution settings.

It does make the game MUCH more playable. The camera is WAY to close to your character otherwise.

Other than that I've started off with a Finesse/Sorcery char. It just seems like sorcery is so much stronger than your regular attacks. Chakras also seem WAY better than bows. I haven't decided between daggers and feyblades, but the DLC feyblade is much better than the DLC daggers unless I've missed something on them.

[Cristo Meyers]

...I haven't decided between daggers and feyblades, but the DLC feyblade is much better than the DLC daggers unless I've missed something on them.

I've found that I deliver fatal sneak attacks far more often with daggers than feyblades and that feyblades are a bit harder to control in combat due to all of the spinning attacks.

[The_Jackal]

+Zevox
I'm playing on Hard, and I'm definitely finding challenges when fighting. Yes, you can be totally dominating when your get your timing right, but mistime a move and you can wind up being chain-stunned. That's the beauty of making the game driven by arcade mechanics: execution is the difference between victory and defeat, and it's AWESOME. After six year of WoW-clones in the fantasy space, running in playing Simon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game)) at your enemies, it's nice to have something which has a REAL skill component.

[Zevox]

+Zevox
I'm playing on Hard, and I'm definitely finding challenges when fighting. Yes, you can be totally dominating when your get your timing right, but mistime a move and you can wind up being chain-stunned. That's the beauty of making the game driven by arcade mechanics: execution is the difference between victory and defeat, and it's AWESOME. After six year of WoW-clones in the fantasy space, running in playing Simon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game)) at your enemies, it's nice to have something which has a REAL skill component.
:smallconfused: I'm a bit confused about something here - what do you mean by "arcade mechanics?"

Zevox

[The_Jackal]

What I'm talking about is a retreat from hash table lookups to determine the outcome of actions you take in combat. In a MMOG, whether you hit your target or not is based, after a basic client-side range check, on a numeric comparison and a pseudo-random number generator. In effect, it's the computer equivalent of rolling a die in a pen and paper game.

Compare that to an arcade fighter, like Street Fighter, Tekken, etc. Whether you hit or not is based entirely on whether the arc of your attack intersects with the enemy model. Which is not to say that Amalur completely discards the lookup-table model, the chance to crit is still a hash table lookup.

Another example is combinations or special moves. In a MMOG, you unlock a special move, it just becomes a button you mash at a certain time. Some are cooldown limited, others only become available in a certain circumstance, but at day's end, the button is pressed, and the hash table determines whether or not that move was successful.

Amalur's system, once again, is a lot more similar to an arcade fighting game. Yes, you still unlock moves based on level, but whether you pull off the move is based on player input. Yes, the moves aren't as complex as a Street-fighter shoryuken, or a Tekken Dragon-punch, but they still require more coordination than pressing a button.

[The_Jackal]

To be fair to MMOG designers, I understand there's a reason why they have to use hash table lookups to determine the outcome of combat in their games. With a server having to arbitrate literally hundreds of thousands of player/npc interactions per second, it's not possible for a physics engine to resolve all of those engagements in an acceptable timeframe, and the typical network/server lag involved would make the resolution of combat largely a matter of luck rather than skill. But I view that more of a reason to avoid MMOGs altogether. You wind up having to make all kinds of sacrifices (IMHO) in gameplay to accommodate what is, in practice, little more than a glorified chat server and matchmaking service.

[MonarchAnarch]

In that you actually have to connect to do damage..unlike MMO type RPG's where X skill does Y damage if in Z range. Real time fighting.

Is is bad that I'm craving getting a new toon started to do a might run, but woln't because I can't bear the thought of not playing on my current character? lol

[The_Jackal]

It's good. It's very, very good. It promises good replay value.

[Zevox]

[Snipped for length]
So, in other words, it's an actual action game combat system rather than an MMO system? Um, duh? Why would you expect it to be the latter to begin with? :smallconfused:

Zevox

[Craft (Cheese)]

Been playing this game pretty much non-stop since Sunday, here's my thoughts:

The main quest is bad. Like, really bad. The sidequests are far, far more compelling, so the situation is similar to (but not quite as bad as) Oblivion. Unlikable, bland characters, pointless fetch quests[1], and let's not forget the long, "dramatic" cutscenes that are more comedic than anything because of the complete lack of emotion and expressiveness in both the characters faces and voice acting.

[1]: The one quest where you get the spear happens for literally no reason: The magic spear that you manage to find doesn't even get used. You could have gone completely without it and nothing would have changed. The thing with Templar Octienne was similarly pointless: Cydar (or whatever he's called) already knew about Vintarinio (whatever) and how to find him. Sure those things could have made for good sidequests but they should not have been required to advance to Mel Senshir and take out the Balor there.

It would be more forgivable if you could just ignore the main quest completely like in Oblivion, but unfortunately you have to advance through the main quest to be allowed to access side content in Klurikon and Alabastra. Granted those regions are smaller and don't have many sidequests anyway, but that's not the point.

And the ending is... Well, it's bad. I'm not gonna bother putting up spoiler boxes to explain everything I didn't like, but I'm gonna list a few non-spoilery bullet points:


It performs the cardinal sin of amnesia plots by giving the main character a big, complicated, nonsensical backstory in a gigantic exposition dump at the very end of the story. I'm not gonna say what it is, but I can promise you that no matter what ideas you form in your head about them, you will be immensely disappointed with the cliched, plot-hole-riddled crap that the truth turns out to be.
The script very hastily attempts to establish a mutual love interest between the player character and Alyn Shir in the last ten minutes of the game, with literally zero prior development of said "romance arc." And then they have the gall to attempt to make said romance have a bittersweet ending! If you're anything like me you'll already hate her for having a vapid, shallow personality and wearing three band-aids into combat. Frankly I was insulted when the game expected me to be sad about never seeing her again! I suspect this was an attempt to rip off Morrigan's ending from Dragon Age, except that you know, had proper pacing.


My advice? There's not that much side content in Klurikon, and basically none in Alabastra. Just skip Alabastra and do the bare minimum to get into Klurikon once you're bored with the first three regions.

[Weezer]

I'm not surprised about the bad plot with a cliched ending, when you consider who the creative guy was...

[Cristo Meyers]

I'm not surprised about the bad plot with a cliched ending, when you consider who the creative guy was...

Even barring that, this is a pretty generic fantasy story played completely straight: high-level storytelling it isn't.

I'll reserve judgement until I see it, but considering for me the main strengths of this game are combat and the scenery I doubt it would change much. Not even really surprised that there's a large lack of side-quests past Alabastra. Look at the map: tell me that doesn't scream "the line to the end starts here."

[Alchemistmerlin]

I'm not surprised about the bad plot with a cliched ending, when you consider who the creative guy was...

We get it, you don't like RA Salvatore. Your point has been made. :smallsigh:

[warty goblin]

So I was cruising along, finding most fights pretty easy - not trivial, but solidly beatable if I was paying the slightest attention. Then I wandered into three different groups consisting of various boggarts and a thresh inside of ten minutes. It's good I managed to pick up on their moves after the first one, because it seriously depleted my health potion reserve.

Fortunately I had packed an egregiously large hammer.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I'm not surprised about the bad plot with a cliched ending, when you consider who the creative guy was...

Well, like I said, the side quest plots and lore are quite a bit better, even if there were a few... iffy points.

Like at the end of the Warsworn quest line when you can suddenly decide to side with the Niskaru Lord at the last second and kill off all your allies for no reason other than "for the evulz." I haven't seen "moral choices" done that badly since Fallout 3.

[The_Jackal]

So, in other words, it's an actual action game combat system rather than an MMO system? Um, duh? Why would you expect it to be the latter to begin with? :smallconfused:

Dragon Age is a single player RPG with a MMO-style hash-table system. And while Skyrim is a step in the right direction in terms of offering some player skill component, it's still somewhat staid in the maneuvers it offers the player. I might be the lone raving lunatic in the RPG world in that I actually want some challenge in my fights that can't be defeated by a spreadsheet, but I doubt it.


Well, like I said, the side quest plots and lore are quite a bit better, even if there were a few... iffy points.

Like at the end of the Warsworn quest line when you can suddenly decide to side with the Niskaru Lord at the last second and kill off all your allies for no reason other than "for the evulz." I haven't seen "moral choices" done that badly since Fallout 3.

Yeah, that does sound like it sucks. Nothing I've seen in the game thus far (I only get to play when I'm not doing other stuff like work) leads me to doubt your guys' take on the feebleness of the story, and I guess in the balance I do agree that it's really disappointing. I'm just still having too much fun whomping face with the greatsword to let it bother me. Maybe I'll feel different after I've done it for another 10 hours.

[warty goblin]

Dragon Age is a single player RPG with a MMO-style hash-table system. And while Skyrim is a step in the right direction in terms of offering some player skill component, it's still somewhat staid in the maneuvers it offers the player. I might be the lone raving lunatic in the RPG world in that I actually want some challenge in my fights that can't be defeated by a spreadsheet, but I doubt it.

Oh I definitely like not winning via spreadsheet. There's a reasonable body of Euro RPGs now which are also quite action oriented in their combat, although less flamboyantly, and perhaps not as successfully so, as Amalur. Witcher 2 and Risen spring immediately to mind.



Yeah, that does sound like it sucks. Nothing I've seen in the game thus far (I only get to play when I'm not doing other stuff like work) leads me to doubt your guys' take on the feebleness of the story, and I guess in the balance I do agree that it's really disappointing. I'm just still having too much fun whomping face with the greatsword to let it bother me. Maybe I'll feel different after I've done it for another 10 hours.
I bought the game assuming the story sucks. So far it has neither disappointed nor surprised me. Fortunately it has greatly exceeded my expectations in the awesome fantasy scenery department, and the combat has a lot more depth than the demo let on.

[Cristo Meyers]

I bought the game assuming the story sucks. So far it has neither disappointed nor surprised me. Fortunately it has greatly exceeded my expectations in the awesome fantasy scenery department, and the combat has a lot more depth than the demo let on.

Same here on the story. Hell, a game could bill a team up of Jim Butcher, J.K. Rowling, and Sergei Luyenko and I'd still be skeptical.

Personally I think there's a bit too much emphasis on story in general. I could make a list as long a my arm of games with little to no story (without strip-mining the Fighting Game genre, no less) that are still fun, good games, and this is definitely one of them.

A fun game with a lackluster story is still a fun game, a lackluster game with a good story though...

[The_Jackal]

Personally I think there's a bit too much emphasis on story in general.

Yeah, that was the point I was making earlier in the thread. I think a lot of the indifferent reception that Amalur is getting from critics (2.5/5 Xplay? Really?) is because they're flogging it on the story.

[Cristo Meyers]

Yeah, that was the point I was making earlier in the thread. I think a lot of the indifferent reception that Amalur is getting from critics (2.5/5 Xplay? Really?) is because they're flogging it on the story.

X-Play is a bad practical joke masquerading as a video game show. When your primary source of viewership is by pissing off JRPG fans and anime fans, then you have no credibility. I stopped taking them seriously over 4 years ago.

[Zevox]

Personally I think there's a bit too much emphasis on story in general. I could make a list as long a my arm of games with little to no story (without strip-mining the Fighting Game genre, no less) that are still fun, good games, and this is definitely one of them.

A fun game with a lackluster story is still a fun game, a lackluster game with a good story though...
I disagree. Just because games can be perfectly fun without much story doesn't mean that it isn't best to shoot for both great gameplay and a great story. It's not like putting effort into the story takes away from the gameplay, nor like there aren't still plenty of games getting made that do have very little focus on their stories.

But especially for RPGs, the story is an important aspect of the game, and a very valid point of criticism of it.

Zevox

[kyoryu]

To be fair to MMOG designers, I understand there's a reason why they have to use hash table lookups to determine the outcome of combat in their games. With a server having to arbitrate literally hundreds of thousands of player/npc interactions per second, it's not possible for a physics engine to resolve all of those engagements in an acceptable timeframe, and the typical network/server lag involved would make the resolution of combat largely a matter of luck rather than skill.

The lag is the bigger reason. The physics involved is less important. Another important issue is not wanting to exclude folks without high hand-eye coordination from the games.

[The_Jackal]

The lag is the bigger reason. The physics involved is less important. Another important issue is not wanting to exclude folks without high hand-eye coordination from the games.

Well, the lag is what makes using a proper physics engine impossible. As for making the game inaccessible to un-coordinated players, I don't really think that's true. When I last did raid and instance content, there was PLENTY of challenges that would give someone with impaired dexterity fits. I really doubt that Blizzard's game designers are building their games with accessibility options in mind.

I think the MMO has actually had its moment in the sun, to be honest. There will always be a section of gamers for whom it will be their style of choice, just like you still have RTS gamers, FPS gamers, Civ-likes, etc., but I don't think any game is going to sit astride the world like WoW has for the past seven years. It was a concept that worked in early titles because for the first time, it COULD be done, then Blizzard came in, and much like Apple, perfected the presentation, to create a zeitgeist title.

I'm not saying there won't be another of those in the future, but I figure it's going to be a long time before another MMO sees that kind of success. I'm ready to be wrong, of course. I know that Blizzard has been working on their new MMO, Project Titan. Should be interesting.

[kyoryu]

Well, the lag is what makes using a proper physics engine impossible. As for making the game inaccessible to un-coordinated players, I don't really think that's true.

Having been in the industry, in at least some cases it certainly is true.

[Weezer]

Well, the lag is what makes using a proper physics engine impossible. As for making the game inaccessible to un-coordinated players, I don't really think that's true. When I last did raid and instance content, there was PLENTY of challenges that would give someone with impaired dexterity fits. I really doubt that Blizzard's game designers are building their games with accessibility options in mind.


The thing is it's incredibly accessible until you get up to the higher level raids, where accessibility doesn't matter as much. WoW has almost no skill barrier to entry, which is something very necessary for an MMO to be as successful as WoW is/was.

[MonarchAnarch]

So where are you all at in the game?
Any good weapon combo's to share?


I recently just dabbled in to the desert and the plains. I've finished up the valor arena, except for a small number of the board challenges.

I've maxed out detect hidden and about to max out blacksmithing. I think sagecraft will be the next thing I work on.

My finesse magic build is really starting to take shape. But I know that on my next respect I'll be removing the protection shield. The damage orbs that spin will hit when trying to sneak kill...and is very frustrating. lol

I had written lunge off as something that isn't really needed...man was I wrong. That skill is fantastic. Even 1 point can continue the pain easily. I have half a mind to add it to my might char for the mobility and the combo chains.

[Drascin]

A fun game with a lackluster story is still a fun game, a lackluster game with a good story though...

...is basically what Planescape:Torment is :smalltongue:

[warty goblin]

I got through some of the main plot stuff last night. It's actually a bit better than I was expecting, at least so far. It's pretty much meaningless fantasy waffle to be sure, but it's not nearly as unpalatable as I was anticipating. I still don't care about it, but it's a much more forgiving apathy than I expected.

I'm also thinking of dropping the finesse side of my 2/3 strength 1/3 finesse build. Aside from sneak attacks the daggers just don't hit hard enough to justify not hauling around a hammer or greatsword instead, and, being lazy, I don't feel like swapping weapons out all the time.

[Cristo Meyers]

...is basically what Planescape:Torment is :smalltongue:

Which is a name that means very little to me. If the story couldn't save Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout, and The Witcher for me, I hold little hope that it can do the same for that one.

Actually, I disagree very little with what Zevox said. I'm well aware that the weak story is a valid point of criticism for this game and others like it (I've made said criticism twice in this thread, actually). I just find the idea that a good story can save a lackluster game dubious.

Would this game be better if the story had more polish? Certainly. Given the choice, though, I'd choose a game like this with solid and fun gameplay but a not-so-good story over one that has a good story but the gameplay leaves me bored.



I'm also thinking of dropping the finesse side of my 2/3 strength 1/3 finesse build. Aside from sneak attacks the daggers just don't hit hard enough to justify not hauling around a hammer or greatsword instead, and, being lazy, I don't feel like swapping weapons out all the time.

I run the finesse/might build and I'm finding that I really only use the finesse side of my build for the skills like smoke bomb, poison, lunge, and the like (I find lunge is really good when facing big critters). Most of my combat is done with the longsword and I only carry around daggers for backstabbing purposes. I'd say that if you're not going to actually use the finesse/might destinies you may as well just go solid might.

I have found that I tend to do better facing larger groups of weaker enemies using my daggers over using my longsword, though. Kinda like how in Arkham Asylum the more mooks you're fighting the more effective you seem to get.

[warty goblin]

Which is a name that means very little to me. If the story couldn't save Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout, and The Witcher for me, I hold little hope that it can do the same for that one.

Actually, I disagree very little with what Zevox said. I'm well aware that the weak story is a valid point of criticism for this game and others like it (I've made said criticism twice in this thread, actually). I just find the idea that a good story can save a lackluster game dubious.

Would this game be better if the story had more polish? Certainly. Given the choice, though, I'd choose a game like this with solid and fun gameplay but a not-so-good story over one that has a good story but the gameplay leaves me bored.

I'd say a game's story is pretty much like its graphics. A game can be improved by very good graphics, but a mediocre/bad game with good graphics is still only mediocre or bad. Sure you might play a bit more because it's pretty, but you'll eventually reach the same conclusion. I do allow for graphics to be so terrible they render a game substantially worse or even unplayable. I find pretty much the same to be true of a game's story.




I run the finesse/might build and I'm finding that I really only use the finesse side of my build for the skills like smoke bomb, poison, lunge, and the like (I find lunge is really good when facing big critters). Most of my combat is done with the longsword and I only carry around daggers for backstabbing purposes. I'd say that if you're not going to actually use the finesse/might destinies you may as well just go solid might.

I have found that I tend to do better facing larger groups of weaker enemies using my daggers over using my longsword, though. Kinda like how in Arkham Asylum the more mooks you're fighting the more effective you seem to get.
I almost never actually use the activated skills for either tree, mostly because I never find them that appealing in realtime RPGs. I just stab things.

[Cristo Meyers]

I'd say a game's story is pretty much like its graphics. A game can be improved by very good graphics, but a mediocre/bad game with good graphics is still only mediocre or bad. Sure you might play a bit more because it's pretty, but you'll eventually reach the same conclusion. I do allow for graphics to be so terrible they render a game substantially worse or even unplayable. I find pretty much the same to be true of a game's story.

That's pretty much the way I see it too.



I almost never actually use the activated skills for either tree, mostly because I never find them that appealing in realtime RPGs. I just stab things.

I tend to just use the ones I find particularly handy. Like Harpoon on the Might tree.

[Craft (Cheese)]

So where are you all at in the game?
Any good weapon combo's to share?


I recently just dabbled in to the desert and the plains. I've finished up the valor arena, except for a small number of the board challenges.

I've maxed out detect hidden and about to max out blacksmithing. I think sagecraft will be the next thing I work on.

My finesse magic build is really starting to take shape. But I know that on my next respect I'll be removing the protection shield. The damage orbs that spin will hit when trying to sneak kill...and is very frustrating. lol

I had written lunge off as something that isn't really needed...man was I wrong. That skill is fantastic. Even 1 point can continue the pain easily. I have half a mind to add it to my might char for the mobility and the combo chains.

I've dabbled in other weapons, but honestly I have no desire to use anything other than Chakrams, even for combos. I mean they're just so... satisfying.


As for what I've been doing, I've been experimenting with blacksmithing/sagecrafting (have both maxed out, at level 37), and the system is way more broken than I expected it to be. Not just in the way of unbalancing the game, but it also just doesn't seem to work as the game designers expected it to. A few tips for you budding blacksmithing abusers:

1. The game doesn't seem to keep track of what parts an item is made out of, it just keeps track of the items effects and then provides appropriate parts according to the enchantments of the item when it gets salvaged. This means that no, you can never, ever get that nifty +2 to Might/Sorcery/Finesse attribute you sometimes find and put it on your custom items, or most of the other cool effects. (By the way, +2 to Abilities is the only effect in the game that doesn't stack, so don't waste your time with multiples of it.) The good news about this is that you can transfer effects from one part to another: Using some Flawless Bindings, salvaging, and getting some Flawless Rivets out of it with the same effect.

2. There's no reliable way to get Flawless/Master parts. I'm at the end of the game and all that seems to increase as you gain levels with the loot drops is the material tier of the item, not the quality of the parts you can salvage. So I've got plenty of prismere and ebony parts, but still mostly get basic-level parts when I salvage stuff. Furthermore, most of the master/flawless parts I get are worthless. +12% Frost Resistance? +20% Poison Damage? Really? My dream of making a prismere weapon entirely out of flawless parts has still gone unrealized simply because I can't find enough flawless parts to use to have a complete set, including useless things.

3. There's a single god-tier item that blows all other crafting parts straight out of the water: Damaging. Improved Damaging X gives you a +14% damage bonus, which is, by the way, all damage you do. Stack it onto every item you have and you can easily start one-shotting everything in the game. You can get Improved Damaging Bindings and Grips from the armor merchant at the House of Valor (an incentive to buy that DLC I guess) and make Rivets with the craft/salvage trick I talked about above, and get Greater Damaging Bindings from the quartermaster at Camp Moonmere in Alabastra (probably the only reason to continue in the main quest) for a +19% bonus. I haven't found any Master or Flawless versions of these items yet, but you don't need them. Just with Improved (this was before I noticed you could get Greater from Camp Moonmere) I could one-shot the Final Boss with a single Meteor. You have to willingly stop yourself from using these parts if you want combat to have anything resembling fun. Who the hell actually put these parts into the game?

[The_Jackal]

You have to willingly stop yourself from using these parts if you want combat to have anything resembling fun.

A very similar complaint to Skyrim's crafting system, where you could, with proper perk investment, craft gear which would permit you to one-shot the game's end-boss. Certainly easy to workaround (just don't make über gear).

[Craft (Cheese)]

Just finished the Mage's Guild faction quest and the house of ballads faction quests.

I have to say that I liked the Mage's faction very much, it told a single story and gave me the best armor I have found in the game, but it appears that after climbing the corporate ladder, there are no side quests, and the same goes for the house of ballads. These factions left me wanting for more side quests instead of me pile-driving through the "main" portion of those factions.

The Scholia Arcana and the House of Ballads are probably the best factions in the game. The Warsworn and House of Sorrows questlines have serious narrative problems (though not as bad as the main quest's) and the House of Valor is just a series of prize fights. And the Travelers... I dunno. I barely remember anything about the travelers because I was so incredibly apathetic to it all I had to force myself through it just for 100% completion.

Anyway, it's either that the game ends eventually or you go the Skyrim route and have pointless repeatable jobs just to give the player something to do, which I'm not sure is much better. What WOULD be nice is if there were a second, smaller story you can do after you finish the quest, sorta like the Oblivion mod A Brotherhood Reborn (Renewed?). Which the community would take care of if only we were allowed to have modding tools sometime this century. Hint Hint. We still don't have modding tools for DA2 either I think: Something tells me this is EA's fault somehow.

Anyway, I've finally finished this game as much as I'm going to: All quests complete, except the repeatable tasks, and all dungeons cleared. All that's left to do is get all the unique items but the game doesn't keep track of that for you and most of them are just rare random drops you have to grind for. I'll pass. Anxiously awaiting the supposed DLC coming out alongside Mass Effect 3 next month: For all of its flaws, I really loved this game. Final time was 67:28.

[warty goblin]

I do love the stealth kills in this. I just waxed a line of three jottun - one of whom was a boss - by walking up behind them and offing them one by one.

[MonarchAnarch]

Reading this makes me sad....in that I haven't had any time to play!!!!! lol But tonight starts my weekend, so it's on like Donkey Kong once tonight hits and the wife/kid go to bed.

I agree, the stealth kills are just so tasty.

I'm lvl 21 and still using a 46 damage set of named daggers. So sad. I have max blacksmithing but don't have any good blades to craft with. Any tips as to where I can find some? I have not made it to adessa or the warsworn city in the top right of the first continent. Working on plains/desert missions, just hopping back and forth.

Edit: Oh and how in the world do you get into the Tomb of Fly....sh's area? I see like 5 enterances for the dungeon, cannot find a way to any of them! This is in the upper right section of the desert. thanks!

[Craft (Cheese)]

Reading this makes me sad....in that I haven't had any time to play!!!!! lol But tonight starts my weekend, so it's on like Donkey Kong once tonight hits and the wife/kid go to bed.

I agree, the stealth kills are just so tasty.

I'm lvl 21 and still using a 46 damage set of named daggers. So sad. I have max blacksmithing but don't have any good blades to craft with. Any tips as to where I can find some? I have not made it to adessa or the warsworn city in the top right of the first continent. Working on plains/desert missions, just hopping back and forth.

At this point you should be finding Azurite. Unfortunately merchants don't really sell base parts (except very rarely and even then only of the bottom two material tiers), so you'll have to wait for an Azurite dagger to drop somewhere (or if you're really desperate, buy one), then salvage it. What parts you get from salvaging are random, so just save/load until you get the Small Azurite Blades or whatever else you want. It's tedious, yes, but totally worth it if you're frustrated with your low damage output and want to make better stuff.

To give you an example of what you should be making (and deliberately omitting broken options) I loaded up the game and made some daggers for you with some spare parts I had around:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10999090/amalur/azuritedaggers.png

The parts I used here are Small Azurite Blades, Flawless Flamed Hilt, Flawless Sustaining Rivets, Master Restoring Bindings, and a Gem of Incineration. If you don't have these parts aside from the Azurite Blades, don't worry: You can make them yourself with the craft-with-gem + salvaging trick I talked about in my post above, as long as your sagecrafting skill is at least 6 (so you can use pristine shards to make the best gems). You can do even better if you take out the effort to get flawless restoring/sustaining bindings, which I didn't. Also, feel free to give yourself whatever boosts you like. I personally prefer fire damage, but some prefer adding bleeding or piercing. Experiment and find whatever you like best. Really, the parts you use in crafting are way more important to your damage output than the base material tier. For reference, here's those same daggers made with prismere (highest tier material):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10999090/amalur/prismeredaggers.png

EDIT: I just realized I hadn't actually explained the sagecrafting trick! My bad. Lemme explain it:

1. Craft a gem you want to turn into a blacksmithing part. Let's go with a Gem of Incineration here (Pristine Magic Shard + Pristine Fire Shard).

2. Craft a weapon which uses the part you want to transfer the gem effect onto, and use basic parts for the rest. Let's say, we want to make a hilt, so we'll craft an item that uses a hilt like, say, a greatsword. Craft your greatsword with a Crude Hilt, Simple Bindings, Simple Grip, and your Gem of Incineration.

3. Now, save your game, and salvage the greatsword you just made. Hopefully, you'll get a Flawless Flamed Hilt out of it. If not, just reload. Please note that not all gem effects are obtainable as blacksmithing parts (you can't get a hilt that adds bleeding damage, for instance), and not all blacksmithing parts are available as gems (you want +fire damage on a gem? You're out of luck, unless the Gem of Magic Resonance counts). Also note that not all gems are usable with all items: You can't put weapon gems into chakrams or scepters during crafting, for instance, so it's impossible to make flawless handles this way.



Edit: Oh and how in the world do you get into the Tomb of Fly....sh's area? I see like 5 enterances for the dungeon, cannot find a way to any of them! This is in the upper right section of the desert. thanks!

Yeah, I had the same problem. Don't listen to the minimap, the quest marker links you to an exit, not the entrance. You enter the Tomb of Fyragnos from here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10999090/amalur/wherestheentrance.png) (linked due to image size). It's at the bottom of the canyon, on the western end.

By the way, there's another confusing portion you're in for that I'll be helpful and explain to you, but it might be considered a spoiler:

In the rogue girl's quest, you're just told to "poison the cistern." What you actually have to do is wait for the rogue to poison one of the infinitely respawning enemies with her bow, then blast that body over the edge of the platform somehow. I spent nearly 10 minutes killing guys over and over before I figured that out <.<

[warty goblin]

I'm beginning to think the attack from dodge for the greatsword may be the most insane thing ever. An area of effect attack that interrupts most enemies, takes only slightly longer than a standard attack with a longsword, and comes at the end of rapid movement? Why yes I will sign that dotted line thank you very much.

I was popping various sorts of cultist by dodge-rolling in close, ground-stabbing them, doing a basic two-hitter with the longsword to knock them into the air, then juggling their increasingly dead asses all over the place with the greatsword again. The best part? The greatsword has a wide enough swing it effectively protects against anybody coming in from the sides. Wizards went from hard to walk in the park.

[Dralnu]

I picked up the game two days ago. Currently level 4.

I'll echo everyone else's complaint that the storyline isn't at all compelling, at least at the start.

Gameplay.. It's pretty easy, even on Hard. It's fun to hack up things. Not as fun as God of War, but still better than most RPGs.

I really dislike how the ability trees were set up. I think any hybrid builds are traps. There's just too much benefit to sticking to one tree. The only tree that looks decent for mixing is Might, because there's a nice dip with Harpoon and there's cross-class synergy to be had with stun effects and Concussive Force. That's about all the synergy I could find though. The hybrid destinies are better, but not enough by themselves to tempt me. I'm hoping that later in the game new ability trees open up or something. Hope I'm wrong about crappy hybrid options.

[Cristo Meyers]

So, finished, finally. Clocked almost 60 hours (for myself and LadyMeyers). That's...a lot, especially for us. Easily the most time I've spent on one playthrough of a game ever.

The ending wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it wasn't what I would call good either. It's not Deus Ex: HR bad, but they could have done a lot more to wrap up what happened after the final battle. We've got multiple characters and several plot points that just didn't get any closure.

My guess is that not knowing what happens to them is kinda the point, since Fate has unraveled and all and the future is now a great unknown, but still. Some closure with Agarth, the Fae, and other events that happened in game would've been nice. Alyn is really the only character that got any closure at all, and it only amounted to "don't tell anyone about Tirnoch or I'll come for you."

I will say that by the end of the final stretch I was so sick of fighting Murghen/Banshaen, Sprites, and (^(#$*&#($@& trolls that I definitely want to play something else for a while. I'll come back to it, definitely, just not right now (which is what usually happens). Though having a 4-5 game backlog doesn't help...

Final impressions: very good, but missing the strong story needed to make it a really great game.

[warty goblin]

I picked up the game two days ago. Currently level 4.

I'll echo everyone else's complaint that the storyline isn't at all compelling, at least at the start.

Gameplay.. It's pretty easy, even on Hard. It's fun to hack up things. Not as fun as God of War, but still better than most RPGs.

I really dislike how the ability trees were set up. I think any hybrid builds are traps. There's just too much benefit to sticking to one tree. The only tree that looks decent for mixing is Might, because there's a nice dip with Harpoon and there's cross-class synergy to be had with stun effects and Concussive Force. That's about all the synergy I could find though. The hybrid destinies are better, but not enough by themselves to tempt me. I'm hoping that later in the game new ability trees open up or something. Hope I'm wrong about crappy hybrid options.

I'm level...something now, around 18 I think, and have been playing a hybrid of might and finesse since the beginning. I can't say I've ever felt underpowered, gimped, or otherwise incapable. Daggers don't do as much damage as my longswords and greatswords, but in quite a few situations the extra speed more than compensates - not in terms of absolute damage output, but for avoiding stun-locks which later on becomes very important. Even the longsword, the fastest of the might weapons, has a reasonable wind-up time, which can mean a thresh + boggarts can bring a lot of hurt without me having the ability to interrupt them. Also sneak attacks are extremely handy on occasion, and can turn a hard fight into a funny little moment of unseen murdering. If the daggers had an attack from block I'd use them pretty much constantly, but as it is I often switch them out for a greatsword during larger battles in the overworld. My armor is pretty much all warrior side, although I'll occasionally swap in a particularly nice bit of rogue gear.

Now maybe I'm not as absolutely powerful as I could be if I was pure might, but I'm doing just fine and having a better time because of the finesse splash. That's what matters, isn't it?

[Cristo Meyers]

...

Now maybe I'm not as absolutely powerful as I could be if I was pure might, but I'm doing just fine and having a better time because of the finesse splash. That's what matters, isn't it?

I actually did the opposite and went for the finesse side of the might/finesse build and have pretty much the same results. My armor was always rogue armor, rather than warrior. Never felt underpowered or gimped, though I rarely used daggers in combat. By the endgame I was reliably doing critical hits (usually for over 1000 damage) every third hit or so on critters that were constantly losing health from both bleeding and poison and many times they couldn't lay a hand on me in return. Even before that I was pretty regularly doing criticals.

The big monsters were a bit of a hassle, having limited immunity to hitstun and all, but I get the feeling that's a constant across classes...

[warty goblin]

I actually did the opposite and went for the finesse side of the might/finesse build and have pretty much the same results. My armor was always rogue armor, rather than warrior. Never felt underpowered or gimped, though I rarely used daggers in combat. By the endgame I was reliably doing critical hits (usually for over 1000 damage) every third hit or so on critters that were constantly losing health from both bleeding and poison and many times they couldn't lay a hand on me in return. Even before that I was pretty regularly doing criticals.

The big monsters were a bit of a hassle, having limited immunity to hitstun and all, but I get the feeling that's a constant across classes...

Yeah, even with a hammer the bigger monsters suck up a few whacks before they start taking damage and reacting. The thing is, it's damn hard to get those whacks in with the hammer, it's just too slow. Even with the greatsword it's hard without soaking up a lot of hits. I almost always soften up a troll, jutton or ettin with the longsword or daggers, then use a heavier weapon to kill it.

[Kesnit]

I really dislike how the ability trees were set up. I think any hybrid builds are traps. There's just too much benefit to sticking to one tree. The only tree that looks decent for mixing is Might, because there's a nice dip with Harpoon and there's cross-class synergy to be had with stun effects and Concussive Force. That's about all the synergy I could find though. The hybrid destinies are better, but not enough by themselves to tempt me. I'm hoping that later in the game new ability trees open up or something. Hope I'm wrong about crappy hybrid options.

I'm playing both a Finesse/Sorc hybrid and a 3-way hybrid (on Hard) and am not seeing any major issues. My Finesse/Sorc uses Finesse weapons (and Rogue armor) and augments with spells (the magic shield is great). My 3-way uses swords and Might armor, bows, and again augments with spells.

That said, neither is very far into the game (Finesse / Sorc is in his teens, 3-way us LVL 8). Maybe both will get worse as I go along.

[Cristo Meyers]

That said, neither is very far into the game (Finesse / Sorc is in his teens, 3-way us LVL 8). Maybe both will get worse as I go along.

LadyMeyers played finesse/magic the whole way through and I can say this: by the end she was cleaning out rooms faster than the Terminator.

This was, admittedly, on casual, those chakrams combined with the finesse sustained abilities and magic? Brutal. No shortage of power there.

[LadyMeyers]

LadyMeyers played finesse/magic the whole way through and I can say this: by the end she was cleaning out rooms faster than the Terminator.

This was, admittedly, on casual, those chakrams combined with the finesse sustained abilities and magic? Brutal. No shortage of power there.

This was mostly due to a combination of stealth and tempest, however...

but he's right, it was effective and powerful... it certainly mitigated the tedium of sprites and murghan too.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I really dislike how the ability trees were set up. I think any hybrid builds are traps. There's just too much benefit to sticking to one tree. The only tree that looks decent for mixing is Might, because there's a nice dip with Harpoon and there's cross-class synergy to be had with stun effects and Concussive Force. That's about all the synergy I could find though. The hybrid destinies are better, but not enough by themselves to tempt me. I'm hoping that later in the game new ability trees open up or something. Hope I'm wrong about crappy hybrid options.

Lemme give my thoughts on this: In the endgame, hybrid builds are almost as viable as pure builds. You're only blocked off from taking the 70-tier abilities at level 40, and while they're powerful, the 50-tier abilities are also pretty frickin powerful. You can get a little more effectiveness with the 70-tier powers, but it's like choosing between a regular nuke and a slightly larger nuke. It's simply unnecessary: Go with whatever you think sounds cool.

That said, I played pure-sorcery all the way up to level 40 and didn't try respecing into the other trees until then, so I can't say much about hybrids at early and mid-level: I imagine it may be a problem that you get powerful abilities later than pure classes do.


My guess is that not knowing what happens to them is kinda the point, since Fate has unraveled and all and the future is now a great unknown, but still. Some closure with Agarth, the Fae, and other events that happened in game would've been nice. Alyn is really the only character that got any closure at all, and it only amounted to "don't tell anyone about Tirnoch or I'll come for you."

Agarth's story, for all intents and purposes, was wrapped up at Dellach. He just keeps following you around because... he didn't have anything better to do, I suppose.

[Dralnu]

Difficulty isn't my issue though. I think the game is really easy even on Hard mode (hoping that will change!). I would've liked to see certain things, like the protection shield in sorcery, available at level 1 instead of being forced between an electricity spell or sorcery weapons for your first few points. Or the rogue ability that increases your crit chance with a handful of weapons, it would've been cooler if it just let you do it with all of them. And perhaps actual hybrid abilities, the equivalent of the 40 / 50 / 70 tier abilities, for each type of combination. Harpoon as a bottom-tier Might ability gave me hope for fun combinations but then I was quickly disappointed.

Meh, I guess I'm being too nitpicky though. I'm currently 8 and enjoying pure sorcerer so far. Later down the line I may respec and try out Might/Sorcery, maxing out the electricity line for stun effects and taking chakram-related abilities while taking everything else stun related (including Concussive Force) from Might.

[Cristo Meyers]

Agarth's story, for all intents and purposes, was wrapped up at Dellach. He just keeps following you around because... he didn't have anything better to do, I suppose.

Well, true, but still I'd have rather had at least something that tells me what he's going to actually do now that he's not dead like he was Fated to be fighting that Ettin. Just like I'd like to know what happens with the Warsworn or the remaining Fae in the House of Ballads or the Ashmore (?) survivors.

I mean, yeah, I get the fact that now they can write their own stories, but the ending just kinda left everything hanging.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I'll echo everyone else's complaint that the storyline isn't at all compelling, at least at the start.

I actually thought the beginning was the best part of the main quest. Well, the least bad part. It only goes downhill from here.


And perhaps actual hybrid abilities, the equivalent of the 40 / 50 / 70 tier abilities, for each type of combination.

This.

This this this this this! You don't so much play a hybrid character so much as you play two characters in the same body. Would it be so much to ask for shadowcasters/champions to get nifty utility spells?


Well, true, but still I'd have rather had at least something that tells me what he's going to actually do now that he's not dead like he was Fated to be fighting that Ettin. Just like I'd like to know what happens with the Warsworn or the remaining Fae in the House of Ballads or the Ashmore (?) survivors.

I mean, yeah, I get the fact that now they can write their own stories, but the ending just kinda left everything hanging.

I don't feel like there was anything "left hanging" so much as plot threads weren't established at all. You solve the little mini-plots and everything else is sorta just there. There's the obvious "end of the fae" thing but that was left pretty vague in the first place. Only thing that comes to mind is whether the previous Archsage of the Scholia ever gets freed.

Now, you might be thinking of the massive plot holes in the ending which don't get explained, which is another matter entirely. Who exactly are these apparently superpowered dark elves who are the keepers of "Tirnoch's ancient secret", and why the hell would I even have cared? What was all that stuff about "ha ha ha you wanted to become my servant and got yourself killed on purpose somehow?" How the hell did your body get from Bhaile all the way to Allestar Glade? Did the Tuatha just deliver it?

And then there's the whole matter of Alyn Shir, but honestly never having to see her again was the most satisfying part of the ending. "I'll come for you if you ever talk about Tirnoch!" Hah! I'd really, really love to see her try. Two words, bitch: "Reckoning. Meteor."

[LadyMeyers]

You don't so much play a hybrid character so much as you play two characters in the same body. Would it be so much to ask for shadowcasters/champions to get nifty utility spells?

Technically, you are creating your own nifty abilities when you hybrid. I went through the game as a Shadowcaster, and was using things of both trees, interchangeably. Shadow flare followed swiftly by ice made for several exploding enemies. While it's not one ability doing both, it wasn't the same as two characters sharing the glory.




Now, you might be thinking of the massive plot holes in the ending which don't get explained, which is another matter entirely. Who exactly are these apparently superpowered dark elves who are the keepers of "Tirnoch's ancient secret", and why the hell would I even have cared? What was all that stuff about "ha ha ha you wanted to become my servant and got yourself killed on purpose somehow?" How the hell did your body get from Bhaile all the way to Allestar Glade? Did the Tuatha just deliver it?


Alyn does kind of explain you these people are. Granted, she usually started talking and explaining in the middle of fighting Tuatha, but it was there. It's a secret society that swore long ago to keep her from the world. That's not that strange... cliche, but not strange. And you should care because you were a member of said society before you died. You infiltrated Alabastra under the pretense of being Ventrinio's 'assistant' and tried to stop Tirnoch even though you were Fated to fail. So even your first death wasn't exactly unexpected.

As for your body, the Well of Souls doesn't just put your soul back in your old body... it regrows your body. Your old body's probably still lying somewhere in Bhaile, decaying. Your new body is what you spend the game in.

[Pronounceable]

This is an ensnaring game. I've never played WoW but I'm sure if I'd had, it'd surely be something like this. Setting is bland but polished, story is servicable, art style is great, gameplay is easy but addictive, COLORS and LIGHTS EVERYWHERE!

Full magic is hilariously powerful. Especially combined with stealth skill. Sneak attack Meteor on two random hapless bogarts never gets old. Even big bad trolls fall to an endless ice and lightning spam from range. Meteor+Lightning Blast clears almost everything instantly. OTOH, enemies are just as crazy. Ettin warpriests vaporize me with one shot of their blast, one wrongly timed evade against a barbed root spamming thresh is certain death, taking the full brunt of a nishkaru's claw claw bite routine is almost death, even kobolds can take off half healthbar with a couple of spear pokes when I think I'm now too powerful to worry about a pesky kobold. Despite all that, if I wasn't gimping myself on purpose by not using any consumable except one health potion per encounter it'd be far too easy. And that's completely disregarding the awesome instant win button.

Only time I was actually challenged was against the Maid of Windemere when I didn't have full fate bar. That was when I discovered the ultimate "mage tactic": corners. There's a small room to your right when battle starts that you can run into. Then all those enemies have to come in a big bunch and be vaporized.

It's all good fun. This game is awesome so far and screw anyone who says otherwise. Though I'm just getting into desert areas now and sadly enemies are gray on account of having cleared absolutely everything in forests and plains before coming here. The final part of the game, presumably the Tuatha lands to the east also worries me somewhat. I keep hearing it's a big awful grind ala KotoR2 "end". Hopefully it's just usual internet whining and it's simply the normal game getting boring after 50 hours.

In less sunny news, the button mashing aspect of the "fatelities" is dumb poo. No one's ever liked quick time events, and no one ever will. Why do they do stupid crap like this? At least ripping someone's fate off and then shaping it into a weapon to clobber or impale them is conceptually awesome.

Something that's completely made of stupid is the armor sets. You never get a full set before they're completely outclassed by random drops (if ever), except the damn House of Ballads set you get in one go.

There's a whole bunch of stupid quest items cluttering inventory crappiness going on, the foremost of which is the goddamn House of Ballads set. Almost a quarter of my bag is being wasted because of stupid unremovable quest items such as letters and journals.

Another made of stupid point is trainers. How's doing it by such a byzantine mess making the game more fun?

But by far the greatest fault is the full voice acting. Why the **** would they insist on voicing every damn line in the game? Listening to the same 3 guys' trying to sound like 1200 different people is awful. Doubly so because I normally like those guys when they've not been reduced to the VA equivalent of memorizing logarithmic tables. As much as it makes me happy to think that Cam Clarke, the guy who did Loghain in Dragon Age and the guy who did Master Li in Jade Empire got a truckload of $$$ for this crap, I don't want to hear them over and over and over in slightly different pitches and accents for eternity. And if they didn't actually get a truckload of $$$ for this crap, then **** gaming industry.

Overall, this game is great and should be played. I might even play the inevitable MMO if they manage to keep this gameplay and put some actual clothes on the elf girl.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Alyn does kind of explain you these people are. Granted, she usually started talking and explaining in the middle of fighting Tuatha, but it was there. It's a secret society that swore long ago to keep her from the world. That's not that strange... cliche, but not strange. And you should care because you were a member of said society before you died. You infiltrated Alabastra under the pretense of being Ventrinio's 'assistant' and tried to stop Tirnoch even though you were Fated to fail. So even your first death wasn't exactly unexpected.

As for your body, the Well of Souls doesn't just put your soul back in your old body... it regrows your body. Your old body's probably still lying somewhere in Bhaile, decaying. Your new body is what you spend the game in.

I know all of that: My real concern is that it has zero relevance or connection the game world aside from Shir's explanation. If she had decided to keep quiet (or if I had been allowed to just kill her half-naked ass in the beginning like I wanted to) I would have never had any idea that such a thing existed. The entire thing doesn't feel like an organic part of the world at all, more like something the developers came up with at the last minute because they wanted to give an explanation dump that was unneeded and, really, unwanted. I would have been a lot more interested by my character if they stayed an amnesiac with no clues of their past forever.

As for the well of souls... this only makes sense if the well can create a body from a soul alone. While that's a possibility, it was never explained to be such and I was under the impression that bodies were being shipped to Allestar so that copies could be made.



The final part of the game, presumably the Tuatha lands to the east also worries me somewhat. I keep hearing it's a big awful grind ala KotoR2 "end". Hopefully it's just usual internet whining and it's simply the normal game getting boring after 50 hours.

I dunno about KOTOR2, but Alabastra isn't a true region to explore so much as it is a hallway you walk down for a while. A few caves off to the side, but that's it. Don't expect it to be Dalentarth or the Plains of Erathell all over again in terms of content.


In less sunny news, the button mashing aspect of the "fatelities" is dumb poo. No one's ever liked quick time events, and no one ever will.

In their defense, the button-mashing only determines how much bonus XP you get. You can completely ignore it and it'll still kill the enemy, you just won't get bonus XP.


Another made of stupid point is trainers. How's doing it by such a byzantine mess making the game more fun?

I agree. A few things that could fix them:

1. Have a message after you use a trainer saying "You can only train with each trainer one time." It makes sense given the cap on each skill is only 10 points, but it still confused the hell out of me: I thought you were supposed to do something to make the train button reappear.

2. After you've trained with someone, don't make them appear on the map as a trainer anymore! Seriously, this was a pretty big problem when trying to hunt down all the skill trainers to max out everything.

3. Remove the maximum cap on how high your skill can be before you can use the trainer: It accomplishes nothing but forcing us to respec for no reason. That sort of thing makes sense in Skyrim but not here.


But by far the greatest fault is the full voice acting. Why the **** would they insist on voicing every damn line in the game? Listening to the same 3 guys' trying to sound like 1200 different people is awful. Doubly so because I normally like those guys when they've not been reduced to the VA equivalent of memorizing logarithmic tables. As much as it makes me happy to think that Cam Clarke, the guy who did Loghain in Dragon Age and the guy who did Master Li in Jade Empire got a truckload of $$$ for this crap, I don't want to hear them over and over and over in slightly different pitches and accents for eternity. And if they didn't actually get a truckload of $$$ for this crap, then **** gaming industry.

Because if a game doesn't have full VA, it's given mean names like "backward" and "unimmersive." I don't agree with this view the gaming community has but if I was a developer I would have done the same thing. Not like you can get away very long with ignoring what gamers want.


Overall, this game is great and should be played. I might even play the inevitable MMO if they manage to keep this gameplay and put some actual clothes on the elf girl.

Unfortunately, Copernicus is shaping up to be a generic WoW clone in terms of its gameplay from what I can tell.

[Dralnu]

Wow, I didn't know how darn strong sorcery was, at least at level 10. I just swapped from pure sorcery to pure finesse and things got way more difficult. Ambush kills feel so good though.

Question for those that completed the quests at Canneroc:
When The Widow offers you the choice to kill everyone at Canneroc, what happens if you take that offer? I declined and killed her instead. No sweet loot, just gold. I kinda wish I killed everyone instead. :smallannoyed:

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Just played the demo for this to get promo stuff for Mass Effect 3, and I find it quite interesting. Maybe I'll give it a go once I've acquired more cash and time. :smallsmile:

[Cristo Meyers]

Wow, I didn't know how darn strong sorcery was, at least at level 10. I just swapped from pure sorcery to pure finesse and things got way more difficult. Ambush kills feel so good though.

Question for those that completed the quests at Canneroc:
When The Widow offers you the choice to kill everyone at Canneroc, what happens if you take that offer? I declined and killed her instead. No sweet loot, just gold. I kinda wish I killed everyone instead. :smallannoyed:

It doesn't change much. Canneroc just ends up empty.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Question for those that completed the quests at Canneroc:
When The Widow offers you the choice to kill everyone at Canneroc, what happens if you take that offer? I declined and killed her instead. No sweet loot, just gold. I kinda wish I killed everyone instead. :smallannoyed:

You don't get anything for wiping out Canneroc either, except now there's no convenient services right next door to your stash. You didn't get any good stuff off the Widow's body though? I remember getting two purples off of her.

[MonarchAnarch]

You don't get anything for wiping out Canneroc either, except now there's no convenient services right next door to your stash. You didn't get any good stuff off the Widow's body though? I remember getting two purples off of her.
Loving this game. :)

I choose give the village to the spiders, and in return I got myself a town. The forge is there, my house is fully upgraded, everything I need. Sadly I did not get anything else for my loyalty. I tried to go back to the Widow and take her out as well, nothing there for me. At least there were alot of civilians to loot money from and some egg sacks to open around town. My other toon killed her and got nothing wonderful...

[Dralnu]

You don't get anything for wiping out Canneroc either, except now there's no convenient services right next door to your stash. You didn't get any good stuff off the Widow's body though? I remember getting two purples off of her.
Filler text!
I got some random herb off her, that's all.

[Giggling Ghast]

As much as it makes me happy to think that Cam Clarke, the guy who did Loghain in Dragon Age and the guy who did Master Li in Jade Empire got a truckload of $$$ for this crap, I don't want to hear them over and over and over in slightly different pitches and accents for eternity.

I just wanna note that Barry Dennen voiced Uldred and Master Li. Simon Templeman voiced Loghain.

*Goes back to lurking*

[GloatingSwine]

Whilst I hear that the main story is bobbins, I do like the fact that all of the faction stories I've seen so far have actually referenced and revolved around the fact that I am Captain Special, and the events of the main quest do appear to be impacting the world.

I never found that in, for instance, Skyrim, where the faction quests didn't care how dragonborn I was, and the companions, big ol' warrior types, were all too busy licking their balls to worry about all these dragons wandering around waiting for a big ol' warrior to slay them.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Whilst I hear that the main story is bobbins, I do like the fact that all of the faction stories I've seen so far have actually referenced and revolved around the fact that I am Captain Special, and the events of the main quest do appear to be impacting the world.

I never found that in, for instance, Skyrim, where the faction quests didn't care how dragonborn I was, and the companions, big ol' warrior types, were all too busy licking their balls to worry about all these dragons wandering around waiting for a big ol' warrior to slay them.

Actually, the companions do wander around the game world slaying giants and bandits and, on occasion, dragons. It's just that they don't talk about these giant-slaying parties that you're not invited to. KOAR actually has a much worse blindness problem in that:

Even after you break the seige of Mel Senshir and push the Tuatha back, everyone in Dalentarth/Plains of Erathell/Detyre still acts like Mel Senshir is still under seige from the Tuatha, as if that whole quest sequence never happened.

Furthermore, after you finish the main quest and "end the war" the war actually keeps going as strong as ever: The same numbers of Tuatha are still infesting Klurikon/Alabastra as before, and there's exactly the same number of soldiers still being conscripted and deployed to the exact same locations. Finishing the main quest basically accomplishes absolutely nothing.

[Cheesegear]

So, I just got to the end of the Codex of Destiny where you walk around Dennarc (?)...The place in Ettinmere with the Fateweaver. And...

After you kill the Ettin Mage thing...boss, the Fateweaver has a cry about how you just 'altered fate', and now he wont have children or go on to kill all the people he was meant to kill and how that will play out in the long run. By using the I WIN button, I changed fate.

But, the reasons he lists for why my 'changing fate' is bad, all are going to happen anyway. I KILLED HIM. He wasn't going to have any more kids and he wasn't going to kill any more people. Whether or not I pressed 'X' shouldn't make any difference.

I know I'm not very far into the story, but it made no sense.

[Drascin]

So, I just got to the end of the Codex of Destiny where you walk around Dennarc (?)...The place in Ettinmere with the Fateweaver. And...

After you kill the Ettin Mage thing...boss, the Fateweaver has a cry about how you just 'altered fate', and now he wont have children or go on to kill all the people he was meant to kill and how that will play out in the long run. By using the I WIN button, I changed fate.

But, the reasons he lists for why my 'changing fate' is bad, all are going to happen anyway. I KILLED HIM. He wasn't going to have any more kids and he wasn't going to kill any more people. Whether or not I pressed 'X' shouldn't make any difference.

I know I'm not very far into the story, but it made no sense.

I think he doesn't really mean the pressing X thing. I think he means the fact you killed him at all. He was supposed to survive that encounter and go on to eat Agarth in a stew, and keep on living until his eventual fate. Then you, who are out of fate, come, and kill him. Now nothing of that will happen.

It seems to me that the meaning is that pressing X is less a mode that makes you out of fate (which you always are) and more a mode that actively weaponizes it, letting you beat people over the head with it.

[Cheesegear]

I think he doesn't really mean the pressing X thing. I think he means the fact you killed him at all. He was supposed to survive that encounter and go on to eat Agarth in a stew, and keep on living until his eventual fate. Then you, who are out of fate, come, and kill him. Now nothing of that will happen.

Well, that makes slightly more sense. I think I missed the part where [Protagonist] (is there a community/fan name for it yet?) is outside Fate entirely.

Faters gonna Fate.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The canon name for Reckoning's protagonist is "The Fateless One."

[Ogremindes]

I've also seen "Unraveller".

[TedEBearNC]

New DLC with a new area, quests, weapons, etc was announced this morning for March 20th.

http://reckoning.amalur.com/r/dlc/dead-kel

[Dragor]

Oh, Reckoning. I love you, but why don't you let me have whole sets of things? And let my cool, unique looking Purples maintain usefulness for more than five minutes? :smallfrown:

[warty goblin]

Oh, Reckoning. I love you, but why don't you let me have whole sets of things? And let my cool, unique looking Purples maintain usefulness for more than five minutes? :smallfrown:

That hasn't really been my experience, at least for the purples. I bet around a third at least of my playtime so far was spent with exactly the same purple sword and daggers. Sets are so far mostly useless, but I don't really care that much.

[Ogremindes]

Oh, Reckoning. I love you, but why don't you let me have whole sets of things? And let my cool, unique looking Purples maintain usefulness for more than five minutes? :smallfrown:

I don't know if it's true of all sets, but at least most yellows I've found weren't random but placed in the world.

[Cristo Meyers]

That hasn't really been my experience, at least for the purples. I bet around a third at least of my playtime so far was spent with exactly the same purple sword and daggers. Sets are so far mostly useless, but I don't really care that much.

At least half of the purples I found were either worse than what I had or significantly worse than what I had. That's assuming that they were even a weapon I was using (I found enough greatswords to reliably equip the entire Warsworn...) I'm thinking there's a lot of luck of the draw in there.


I don't know if it's true of all sets, but at least most yellows I've found weren't random but placed in the world.

I think that where you find the purples and yellows is set, but not what. I found a purple longsword in a chest, died and had to reload from a spot before I found the sword, and found chakrams instead.

[Dralnu]

At least half of the purples I found were either worse than what I had or significantly worse than what I had. That's assuming that they were even a weapon I was using (I found enough greatswords to reliably equip the entire Warsworn...) I'm thinking there's a lot of luck of the draw in there.

Yeah, rarity is less important in this game than the norm. I think rarity mostly concerns rare types of bonuses that the item grants. I never see stuff like +1 to finesse or -10% mana costs on greens, but I do see them on blues, and purples generally have more than one rare ability on them.

I also noticed this when crafting. I have max blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. When I crafted my baller greatsword, putting in a lifeleech gem resulted in it being blue, while putting in flat bonus physical damage resulted in green. They were both top-tier gems though.



I think that where you find the purples and yellows is set, but not what. I found a purple longsword in a chest, died and had to reload from a spot before I found the sword, and found chakrams instead.

This isn't the case for me. I redid a certain boss fight a couple times. First time I got a purple warhammer off the body, the second time I got a herb, and then third time I got a herb and a green longsword. It seems entirely random. The level of the container seems to dictate the level of the loot though.



Also, fun thing I just noticed... I'm pretty sure that the "+1 to finesse / sorcery / might" item bonuses can actually raise your ability bonuses beyond max rank. For example, Concussive Force 5/5 says +60% damage vs. stunned enemies, but with my +1 might armor it says 6/5 and 70% damage instead. Same holds for all my other maxed abilities with numerical bonuses.

[Dragor]

From my experience, sets are unique to the general area you're in (places like the Plains of Erethell will give you certain sets, the desert will give you different sets, etc.). Obviously you get some sets as part of quests, but when it comes to looting sets you're entirely at the mercy of luck, which annoys me.

Luckily, though, I've been pretty impressed with the armour aesthetic in Reckoning. Nearly all the pieces of armour look cool and they tend to mesh pretty well with each other. And thanks to the ease of respeccing, I can pretty much respec to whatever awesome weapon I loot and not change my build significantly at all. :smallbiggrin:

I'm currently in Klurikon and just started the House of Sorrows, and my entertainment by the plot is wearing thin. I don't like skipping conversations, missing options and the like, but I just can't bring myself to actually care about anything that is happening or any of the characters (except maybe Agarth, because he's consistently quite funny). The thing with Reckoning is that I find the concepts of the game interesting, but I think they're just executed poorly.

I also sincerely hope that the next game isn't the MMO they've been talking about, because seriously, with a lot of improvement this could rank up there in terms of RPGs.

[Craft (Cheese)]

It's impossible to address these questions with much certainty without mod tools to pick the game apart and see what the formulas are. Though to be honest I'd be surprised if there was anything more sophisticated than naive dice rolls (which is why bosses can drop just a single alchemy reagent). Bottom line, purples and golds only matter if you like the way the model looks. Mastercrafted equipment is always much, much better.

Anyway, Legend of Dead Kel sounds cool, but the advert fails to mention the one critical piece of information: How many zones are in Gallow's End? It'd better be more than one! Are there any towns to visit to get sidequests other than the DLC's main quest chain? Doubtful, considering where the place is, but you never know. Also, why do I have the sinking feeling that Captain Giligan (that's what I'm calling him) is going to be Taibreah all over again?

[GloatingSwine]

Oh, Reckoning. I love you, but why don't you let me have whole sets of things? And let my cool, unique looking Purples maintain usefulness for more than five minutes? :smallfrown:

This is the nature of setted equipment. It is designed to taunt you. By the time you find all or most of a given set it will no longer be level appropriate anyway. It was ever thus.

[GloatingSwine]

Anyway, Legend of Dead Kel sounds cool, but the advert fails to mention the one critical piece of information: How many zones are in Gallow's End? It'd better be more than one! Are there any towns to visit to get sidequests other than the DLC's main quest chain? Doubtful, considering where the place is, but you never know. Also, why do I have the sinking feeling that Captain Giligan (that's what I'm calling him) is going to be Taibreah all over again?


As i hear it, equivalent to 15% of the current world.

[Cristo Meyers]

I'm currently in Klurikon and just started the House of Sorrows, and my entertainment by the plot is wearing thin. I don't like skipping conversations, missing options and the like, but I just can't bring myself to actually care about anything that is happening or any of the characters (except maybe Agarth, because he's consistently quite funny). The thing with Reckoning is that I find the concepts of the game interesting, but I think they're just executed poorly.


Yeah, the Sorrows was kinda the last gasp for whatever story there was. Luckily, by the time you've finished that story you're pretty much ready to start the end sequence in Alabastra.

[Calemyr]

I'm torn. I am tempted to get this game, partly because I like RPGs where the action feels like it has some heft to it, and partly because the demo was pretty good (which I played to get the armor and weapon for ME3). I can afford the game, but I'm still just hedging because I hear so much negative about it.

It's been out for a month, now. I understand it has its quirks (odd system organization being the major one I've heard about), but is the game fun? Does it have a good story or does the gameplay get more enjoyable? Is there anything personal about it for the main character or is the main character simply weird and the game suggests you just roll with that? Are there any friendship/romance storylines in it beyond our asymetric swordsman/seer? Is it, in a nutshell, a story worth hearing?

[Ogremindes]

I'm torn. I am tempted to get this game, partly because I like RPGs where the action feels like it has some heft to it, and partly because the demo was pretty good (which I played to get the armor and weapon for ME3). I can afford the game, but I'm still just hedging because I hear so much negative about it.

It's been out for a month, now. I understand it has its quirks (odd system organization being the major one I've heard about), but is the game fun? Does it have a good story or does the gameplay get more enjoyable? Is there anything personal about it for the main character or is the main character simply weird and the game suggests you just roll with that? Are there any friendship/romance storylines in it beyond our asymetric swordsman/seer? Is it, in a nutshell, a story worth hearing?

I think the combat is fun. The story doesn't seem that interesting, but there are some pretty cool side mission stories. There does seem to be a personal stake in the main story, but I haven't gotten far enough to see much of that (I got choice paralysis when I reached the first place that could be described as a 'city').

[Pronounceable]

Amalur is literally for kicking ass and taking names. There's the obligatory fantasy plot of world saveage with lots of stupid fedex side quests and the occasional cool faction quest, but it's all about pwning dudes with increasingly shinier particles while watching numbers increase. And an elf chick clad entirely in belts, if you care for such things.

At the start of the game you're some resurrected schmuck. At the end of the game, you're:
[insert name here] the Fateless One, the [redactedforspoiler] of the House of Ballads, Firstsworn of Warsworn, the Somethingiforgot of Travellers, the [redactedforspoiler] of Scholia Arcana, the Champion of the House of Valor, the Whatever of the House of Sorrows, the Conqueror of the House of Vengeance, the Siegebreaker, the Hero of Mel Senshir, the Commander of Dokkalfar Armies, the Proud Owner of a Large Amount of Real Estate, the SPOILERALERT of SPOILER, also known as the Saviour of the World. (Plus whatever lofty noble titles you bribed ambassadors of various nations to get for.)

It's lots of fun but not worth more than half its current price I'd say.

[factotum]

It's lots of fun but not worth more than half its current price I'd say.

Haven't got the game myself, but you say it's lots of fun, and from what I hear it's also extremely long...isn't 50+ hours having lots of fun worth full price to you?

[Divayth Fyr]

Haven't got the game myself, but you say it's lots of fun, and from what I hear it's also extremely long...isn't 50+ hours having lots of fun worth full price to you?
The question is: does the fun last for those 50+ hours? If the ass kicking is the only thing worth mentioning in the game, for many the fun will end faster - and then it's not worth the full price.

[ArlEammon]

I bought it. Does anyone know why the vision is so blurry with the camera every time I move? And why my character is Soooo slow? Where do I go to fix this bug?

[Craft (Cheese)]

I bought it. Does anyone know why the vision is so blurry with the camera every time I move? And why my character is Soooo slow? Where do I go to fix this bug?

You're playing the PC version, right? Go into your graphics settings and turn off postprocessing. Except for the blur when the camera's moving everything will look exactly the same, and you'll get a huge speed increase. If it's still not fast enough then turn off/down everything else until you get a nice balance between performance and appearance. Lowering your screen resolution also helps a ton with this.


By the way, there's actually two final titles for the Travelers, which one you get depends on

Whether you frame the Heirophant or not.

Same for the Warsworn if you

Side with the Niskaru lord and kill all the Warsworn leaders

The "choice" in both cases is pretty much "sensible option" vs. "raving lunatic option." As morality choices in games usually are.




As for the game, I think it has plenty to offer aside from just killing things. All the zones (except those in Alabastra) and cities are unique and have their own flavor: Even just within Dalentarth compare Yolvan to Ettinmere to Haxhi. Heck, even a few of the smaller towns have enough to make them memorable. If you're anything like me and love to see new art and environments, you can spend 20 hours alone just going everywhere to see all the zones. Lore junkies will also absolutely adore Apotyre.

And where questing is concerned, I know enough about the difficulties of good quest design that it doesn't really bother me: The secret to making a memorable quest is the context applied to the player's actions. Don't tell me you don't remember the quest where you get to watch the Jottuns squash the Kobold tribe at the end. I can forgive the lack of good context in the less-detailed quests and try to supply it myself through my imagination. It's a poor substitute, but it works for me.

[ArlEammon]

THank you Kraft.:)

[warty goblin]

I'm torn. I am tempted to get this game, partly because I like RPGs where the action feels like it has some heft to it, and partly because the demo was pretty good (which I played to get the armor and weapon for ME3). I can afford the game, but I'm still just hedging because I hear so much negative about it.

It's been out for a month, now. I understand it has its quirks (odd system organization being the major one I've heard about), but is the game fun? Does it have a good story or does the gameplay get more enjoyable? Is there anything personal about it for the main character or is the main character simply weird and the game suggests you just roll with that? Are there any friendship/romance storylines in it beyond our asymetric swordsman/seer? Is it, in a nutshell, a story worth hearing?

Kingdoms of Amalur is, I think, really the natural evolution of a Diablo or Sacred style RPG. It's very much combat and loot focused, but adapts the combat into a more interesting action style. The story basically exists to propel you from location to location.

[warty goblin]

I'm torn. I am tempted to get this game, partly because I like RPGs where the action feels like it has some heft to it, and partly because the demo was pretty good (which I played to get the armor and weapon for ME3). I can afford the game, but I'm still just hedging because I hear so much negative about it.

It's been out for a month, now. I understand it has its quirks (odd system organization being the major one I've heard about), but is the game fun? Does it have a good story or does the gameplay get more enjoyable? Is there anything personal about it for the main character or is the main character simply weird and the game suggests you just roll with that? Are there any friendship/romance storylines in it beyond our asymetric swordsman/seer? Is it, in a nutshell, a story worth hearing?

I'm probably between 20 and 30 hours into Amalurr, and I think the game is probably best conceptualized as a Diablo or Sacred style loot-centric grinder crossed with a third person brawler and the trappings of a post Mass Effect RPG. This means you get a lot of fun combat, the endless quest for better equipment, and some mostly pointless conversation wheels, all in a large and pretty fantasy world. The story isn't so much a gripping narrative as a device to propel you from one major geographical region to the next, where you can start on a new reem of sidequests. The Witcher 2 it really isn't, but if you liked Sacred, this game is pure joy.

[Cristo Meyers]

The question is: does the fun last for those 50+ hours? If the ass kicking is the only thing worth mentioning in the game, for many the fun will end faster - and then it's not worth the full price.

I can agree with this. I liked this game, but it suffered the same issue I had with, oddly enough, Fallout: New Vegas. After about 40 hours I just kinda wanted to move on to something else so I started the end sequence.

If you're still having doubts, Calemyr, I would say hold off until the game goes on sale. It's fun, as others have said, but I think someone that's one the fence might be better served by waiting until there's a price drop.

[factotum]

Maybe I'm not picky enough, but in a world where full-price games often have less than 10 hours of content, getting 40 hours out of one doesn't seem such a bad deal... :smallwink:

[MonarchAnarch]

I am 40 hours in, lvl 25 or so - knocking on the door of alabastra. I've gotten to a point with Mass Effect 3 in the mail, I want to get done with this game. I've skipped all of the non mandetory quests in klurikon and about half of the quests outside of rathir and adessa, and skipped the citise all together. I do plan on going back after a ME3 run through to get 100% on this game, as I do highly enjoy it...but I've broken the game for me. I was doing finesse/magic then respect'd to full magic. I have full blacksmith, adn up to epic gems.

I had 14% damage on each item, mana regen, fire damage (went all fire spells first) - Just wasn't fun after a while walking into a room, casting meteor once, loot, repeat. So I went back to finesse with a tab of magic, and my enjoyment has increased again. :P

I think they needed an event like the monster fight at mel shenshir somewhere in the plains/desert areas. Maybe I just missed it, but there needed to be something between the left half of the main contentant and the right, some event that made you want to go to the plains or to the desert. I found myself bouncing back and forth just for a change of scenery..both of which are still beautiful. lol

[Knight13]

I think I've been playing too much KoA. I woke up this morning, tried to open my minimap and was confused when I couldn't, spent several minutes searching my room for hidden loot in a half-asleep daze and then tried to throw chakrams at my roommate because I thought he was a bandit.

Also, dispelling is way too hard. I've never managed to dispel any ward above Easy. Seriously, I've started just quicksaving and trying the auto-attempt and quickloading until I succeed. And I'm usually quite good at these unlocking minigames.

[MonarchAnarch]

I agree, dispelling can go jump off a cliff.

My first playthrough is sitting at the door to alabastre, have not gotten any father. How much is left in the game? I've been jumping between EQ private server, ME3 online, ME2 (my finished save screwed up when I had to redo my windows..only had an older save..having to replay), and the new Dwarf Fortress release. When I'm not with wife/kid.

Just need to know about how many hours are left if I ignore all non essential stuff.

[Drascin]

I think I've been playing too much KoA. I woke up this morning, tried to open my minimap and was confused when I couldn't, spent several minutes searching my room for hidden loot in a half-asleep daze and then tried to throw chakrams at my roommate because I thought he was a bandit.

Also, dispelling is way too hard. I've never managed to dispel any ward above Easy. Seriously, I've started just quicksaving and trying the auto-attempt and quickloading until I succeed. And I'm usually quite good at these unlocking minigames.

I had trouble at first, but a few hours in I had caught the rythm and never failed a dispelling attempt again. You have to click a split second before the seal, not after.

Okay, so hours of rythm games make me not the best person to ask whether it is easy, but still :smalltongue:.

[Suedars]

I had trouble at first, but a few hours in I had caught the rythm and never failed a dispelling attempt again. You have to click a split second before the seal, not after.

Okay, so hours of rythm games make me not the best person to ask whether it is easy, but still :smalltongue:.

I've got the rhythm down and can easily get Very Easy and Easy wards, but anything average or above is just way too many seals to hit, especially with the "bomb" ones mixed in. Of course, this is with 0 Dispelling skill, but I don't have any problems picking hard locks with 0 Lockpicking.

[Knight13]

Precisely. I can do Very Easy and Easy wards fine, but Average and up have too many seals to hit them all before they regenerate.

[warty goblin]

Precisely. I can do Very Easy and Easy wards fine, but Average and up have too many seals to hit them all before they regenerate.

Really? I've got like two-three ranks in Dispel, and most of 'em are no problem. I usually fail the first time, but the second seems to be easier.

[Cristo Meyers]

I agree, dispelling can go jump off a cliff.

My first playthrough is sitting at the door to alabastre, have not gotten any father. How much is left in the game? I've been jumping between EQ private server, ME3 online, ME2 (my finished save screwed up when I had to redo my windows..only had an older save..having to replay), and the new Dwarf Fortress release. When I'm not with wife/kid.

Just need to know about how many hours are left if I ignore all non essential stuff.

Wives do have a habit of infringing on gaming time, don't they? :smallwink:
(Especially when it's them taking up the computer...)

Door to Alabastra meaning Gadflow's fortress or just entering the final area?

Just about to enter Gadflow's fortress: probably 2 hours

The entirety of Alabastra: closer to 4 if you just try and rush through.

[MonarchAnarch]

Looks like 4 hours it is. May respect to magic for utter destruction, may shave off some time.

[Knight13]

Does the game have a level cap?

[MonarchAnarch]

I think the cap is 45.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The cap is 40, though you get the top-tier destinies at level 36.

Doesn't the new DLC come out today?

[Knight13]

Ah, okay. So you can't max out all skills. Not that you really need to max out lockpicking and dispelling.

[Tome]

Ah, okay. So you can't max out all skills. Not that you really need to max out lockpicking and dispelling.

You can, actually. You just need to use the skill books and trainers.

[JediSoth]

Does the full PC version of the game let you remap movement to the arrow keys? I'm left-handed and tried playing the demo, but WASD just didn't work for me. It was awkward and physically uncomfortable to shift things around to an arrangement where I could use WASD for movement while still mousing with my left hand.

From what I saw, it looked interesting, but if I have to rearrange my desk and re-learn how to mouse, I can't imagine ANY game being worth that.

[warty goblin]

Does the full PC version of the game let you remap movement to the arrow keys? I'm left-handed and tried playing the demo, but WASD just didn't work for me. It was awkward and physically uncomfortable to shift things around to an arrangement where I could use WASD for movement while still mousing with my left hand.

From what I saw, it looked interesting, but if I have to rearrange my desk and re-learn how to mouse, I can't imagine ANY game being worth that.

I'll check when I get home, but I would recommend seriously considering getting an XBox 360 controller in either case. Due to a strange and apparently entirely unique software bug I need to use the arrow keys for everything as well, and the number of games that a controller makes playable has entirely justified its cost in my eyes.

Plus, Amalur is probably just plain more fun with a controller anyways. I honestly never tried it with a keyboard.

[Knight13]

You can, actually. You just need to use the skill books and trainers.

Oh right, I forgot about skill books. There's a total of 90 skill ranks in the game (9 skills, 10 ranks per skill), you get 4 ranks for free from racial bonuses, and there's 4 trainers for each skill. Plus 40 ranks from leveling adds up to 80 ranks. I guess the skill books make up the remaining 10 ranks?

By the way, if you get a skill too high for a trainer to train you, can you get their training anyway by respeccing at a fateweaver?

[Divayth Fyr]

By the way, if you get a skill too high for a trainer to train you, can you get their training anyway by respeccing at a fateweaver?
Yes - that's the main use of fateweavers ;)

[Knight13]

Yes - that's the main use of fateweavers ;)
Ah cool, thanks. I just got to Ysa and I was pissed because my skills were too high to use any of the trainers. :smalltongue:

[Craft (Cheese)]

Just got the Dead Kel DLC. Hopefully this 800 MB download is more than just textures for one dungeon. :/

[MonarchAnarch]

800MB? Thats it? Well heres to hoping that files for the island are in the main install and are just added to with the DLC.

I finally raced to the finish and beat KoA. Pretty good ending, final boss was a tad weak for my taste. After I finish out ME3 (finally got finished re-doing my save on ME2 for import after a tragic loss of my first save) I'll respect to warrior and enjoy that part of the game. I played rogue and wizard, now to do the fighter side of things on cleanup of all the quests I skipped.

All in all, a great game. Will be fun to go back through it in a year.

[Calemyr]

800MB? Thats it? Well heres to hoping that files for the island are in the main install and are just added to with the DLC.

I finally raced to the finish and beat KoA. Pretty good ending, final boss was a tad weak for my taste. After I finish out ME3 (finally got finished re-doing my save on ME2 for import after a tragic loss of my first save) I'll respect to warrior and enjoy that part of the game. I played rogue and wizard, now to do the fighter side of things on cleanup of all the quests I skipped.

All in all, a great game. Will be fun to go back through it in a year.

Go back to KoA. Nothing but pain awaits you this way.

[Craft (Cheese)]

So I've mostly finished the Dead Kel DLC now. Paced myself instead of doing the whole thing in one shot like I normally do.

Anyway, good news for everyone who shared my fears: This is no Operation Anchorage. It's a full 4-5 zones, depending on how you count them, with plenty of delicious sidequesty goodness. Almost all the dungeons are new tilesets, with only one usage of an older tileset (an Erathi ruin). The overworld itself is also full of new art assets, even new rocks and trees. Furthermore it functions perfectly fine for players who've already 100%'d the vanilla game and hit the level cap.

The real highlight of the DLC is Gravehal Keep. It's... well, let's just say I'm incredibly picky with player homes, and I've gotta say, Gravehal Keep is easily the best player home in any game I've ever seen. The only problem with it is it's in KoA instead of Skyrim. If you love player homes like I do, you will NOT be disappointed with this thing.

I only have five disappointments with this mod: Two of which concern the plot, three that do not.

- The repeatable sidequests aren't filed under "Tasks" with the rest of the repeatable quests. This is really minor but I'm horridly obsessive over making sure every last side quest in my journal is finished before putting a game I like down, so this bothers me a lot more than it probably should.

- Once you depart for Gallow's End, you're not allowed to leave until you've progressed nearly to the end of the story. This isn't a problem for people who've already done everything else, but I could definitely see this being really frustrating for a new player who didn't know what they were getting into.

- The new mage armor sucks. There's only one gold set of sorcery equipment, while there's at least 3(!) sets of might equipment that I saw, and at least two sets of finesse equipment. And the sorcery set is literally just a bunch of rags stitched together (ascetic monk mages my ass). My first gold set I managed to finish and it looks even worse than my silly-looking custom spiritweave set... *sigh*

On art:

- Dead Kel himself is... well, he's not a zombie pirate, he's just a normal human wearing a very cheap-looking halloween mask. At first I thought that was part of the story, like "Oh, I get it! It's like Scooby-Doo and some idiot's just pretending to be a Dead Kel by wearing that mask for some reason!" It's not. He's actually supposed to be a skeleton like in the artwork, he's just absolutely pathetically done.

On the ending:

- The ending was.. messy to say the least.

First of all, you're railroaded into offering yourself as a mortal vessel for Akara. The dialogue options are "I'll take the burden of being the vessel" and "Haha, Akara's power will be mine!" Granted it turns out to not be as bad as it sounds, but I still hate that the game wouldn't let me say no to having my body invaded.

Second of all, exactly what Akara is and why he/she/it resurrected Dead Kel in the first place, and why destroying Dead Kel requires destroying Akara. The whole scene's just "Hey there, I'm a giant talking tree. Now I have to die so the world can be safe from Dead Kel. Kthxbai." I think it has something to do with that other giant talking tree from way back at the beginning of the main quest, but I'm not sure.

Third, the whole thing turns out to be somewhat of a Shaggy Dog Story in the end. Akara's no longer around to protect the island from invaders, so while you're away several main characters get slaughtered offscreen by a sudden Red Legion attack, with the heavy implication that the villagers are going to receive such slaughters regularly. Yes Dead Kel is gone but I still can't help but get the feeling like everyone would have been better off if I just hadn't gotten involved. You could call it a bittersweet ending but I HATE bittersweet/downer endings in games. I don't need to buy a video game to revel the experience of being a horrible failure.

[Calemyr]

Question. I'm tempted to get KoA, if only to get the taste of ME3 out of my mouth. If convenient I want to avoid anything that leaves me beholden to Origin, because - come April 10th - I'm likely going to take great pleasure in removing that program from my computer.

So a couple questions, actually:
1) Is the game more fun on the PC (I have a game controller if it matters) or the consoles (I have access to both)? Sometimes multi-platform games are just no-brainers in this regard, like anything Bethesda must be on the PC.

2) If you get the PC version, do you need to have Origin installed and running to play the game, the way ME3 does?

[warty goblin]

Question. I'm tempted to get KoA, if only to get the taste of ME3 out of my mouth. If convenient I want to avoid anything that leaves me beholden to Origin, because - come April 10th - I'm likely going to take great pleasure in removing that program from my computer.

So a couple questions, actually:
1) Is the game more fun on the PC (I have a game controller if it matters) or the consoles (I have access to both)? Sometimes multi-platform games are just no-brainers in this regard, like anything Bethesda must be on the PC.

The interface is fine to navigate with a controller on PC, and I'd definitely suggest using one. There are a lot of things keyboard and mouse are good at, but combo timing isn't really one of them.


2) If you get the PC version, do you need to have Origin installed and running to play the game, the way ME3 does?
If you buy from anywhere but Steam, you get Origin. If you buy from Steam, you get Steam. Basically you get to choose between two virtually identical annoying things.

(Do note that the Steam version apparently won't accept DLC not purchased through Steam, and I suspect vice versa as well. Depending on whether you only buy games through Steam or not, this could make a difference.)

[Calemyr]

If you buy from anywhere but Steam, you get Origin. If you buy from Steam, you get Steam. Basically you get to choose between two virtually identical annoying things.

No chance. I respect Valve, even when I don't agree with them.

[Knight13]

Is the game more fun on the PC (I have a game controller if it matters) or the consoles (I have access to both)? Sometimes multi-platform games are just no-brainers in this regard, like anything Bethesda must be on the PC.
I'll admit to being somewhat biased on this point, since I prefer almost all types of games on PC. However, I play the PC version with a mouse and keyboard and it works just fine for me. I have no problem with combo timing and you can use the number keys to quickly switch between different spells and abilities.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I can't imagine not having access to 10 spell slots when trying to play a hybrid character.

Oh! And one more thing I wanted to say about Dead Kel: Even though there's plenty of new environments, you'll be disappointed with the new enemies. There's exactly five new enemies (Root Golem, Scav, Boggart Urchin, and Faer Gorta Shipman/Captain), the latter 3 all being simple re-skins. And root golems are pretty much identical to prismere trolls, except they can teleport. So there's really only one new enemy, the Scav, that's radically different from what you've already killed hundreds of times over. And scavs are, unfortunately, quite rare.

[MonarchAnarch]

Go back to KoA. Nothing but pain awaits you this way.

Oh I will. I got halfway through the desert and the plains quest wise and am a big ME fan, so I rushed to the end. Planned to go Might and clean up the rest of the quests after ME3. I know, I've heard how horrible the ending is ( havne't heard what the end is, just that it is terriblex10000000). So I plan to go back to KoA when I'm done. But from what my friend say, the trip to the ending is awesome. And so far? They are right. The game right now has been fantastic. I'm not far in, but what I've done? I love.

I do plan on finishing KoA and doing the DLC. Then will probably go back to ME3 with a different class, or continue switching ME3 multiplayer and the EQ private server I play.

[Knight13]

Go back to KoA. Nothing but pain awaits you this way.
I've been avoiding spoilers, but I've heard that, while most people hate the ending, the whole rest of ME3 is absolutely wonderful.

[Calemyr]

I know, I've heard how horrible the ending is ( havne't heard what the end is, just that it is terriblex10000000).

Let me put it this way: ME3's ending is quick, empty, and unsatisfying, yet still manages with barely a minute of dialogue and a minute of video to completely undermine every moral the trilogy ever set up. If it hadn't been a game I particularly enjoyed up until then, I would have stood up and applauded: it was the single most horrific PR trainwreck I've seen since... since... since I don't know when. And the company's response since then has been... less than helpful.

Don't get me wrong, the game is beyond awesome for the most part. Never played a better game or a more interesting story for the first 2/3s of it. Masterpiece. But if you'll take some advice from a scarred veteran, it's this: When the asari councilor asks to meet you in private, think seriously before you do so. The moment you're standing on at that second is the most glorious moment of the game. You'll never get that feeling of satisfaction back. It all goes down hill from there, very slowly at first but with an exponential acceleration that less forms a crater when it crashes and more punches a hole straight through the planet. Words do not do it justice.

Amalur, on the other hand, is a surprising delight. Unlike ME3, I always got the impression that it was supposed to be a fairly light, fun game, and that the plot existed primarily as a framework for the very well designed combat system. Haven't gotten very far in (level 13), but I've found it to be a refreshing change of pace and a lot of fun. As my brother so eloquently put it, it's what Fable would have been if it'd been developed by Blizzard.

[MonarchAnarch]

From what I understand, if you don't import a ME2 game, you miss out on interactions and dialogue from most of the cast of ME2? Is that correct? I imported, because I wanted to finish my engineer shepard's story. Any validity to that?

Project Overlord literally brought tears to my eyes in ME2, was VERY happy to see my decision to send David to Grissom play out in ME3. Was nice to see him taken care of. So far, ME3 has really lived up to bring up closure to previously open options. As far as I can tell, if the game keeps up being this awesome, I can live with with a shoddy ending. I don't need a 15 minute CGI OMG movie to make me feel good as to what I've done.

[Calemyr]

It's true that a lot of the "optimal solutions" are not assumed on a raw game. A lot of people are assumed dead and the DLC characters don't show up at all - which is a pity because both of them tilt the balance of their particular side quests heavily in Shepard's favor. I have no idea how new players would be able to get into that game - which makes their efforts to mainstream it even more painful.

Speaking of Archer, you can see him in the N7 sidequest "Ex-Cerberus Scientists". I haven't found a dialogue yet that doesn't rip him a new one, but then again I haven't been looking too hard.

But the ending... no... it's not disappointing, it's not devastating, it's STUPID. It answers all the questions you never asked (badly), fails to answer any questions you would have asked, transforms Shep into a mindless toadie, and reduces everything in the game to a single number, and only uses that number in the background, never explaining how that number mattered at all. Then it tries to justify itself with the most insane toll logic imaginable. Believe me, I refused to believe the response myself until I earned the ending personally. It really is that bad, if not worse. Still, there are some who find it tolerable (though nobody has ever called it "good" near as I can tell). It's got very moving music, so maybe that can tip the balance for some folks.

And as I said before - it doesn't maintain that level of awesome. It gets better and better until you get a call from the asari councilor. Then the main plot starts to go downhill faster and faster with every mission.

[MonarchAnarch]

Ya, as soon as I saw the Grissom Academy mission pop up, I grabbed it. Was glad to see Archer in better shape than the end of Overlord.

As for his brother, looking forward for that mission.


anyway, this is about KoA. Fantastic game, pretty fun. Around the point where you pass the giant tree and can go desert or plains, the whole do X quest in X region its a bit of the same thing over again. the characters are great..there's just no action points. Once you get to the castle across the river, there is a bit more interactivity. The story splits in two pieces, then rejoins at the castle.

I went finesse/magic, then full magic, then full finesse. Going to go full might when I fire it back up.

[Calemyr]

Yes, that is for another thread.

My Fateless One is a dokkalfar finesse/sorcery sort focusing on fey blades and chakrams. It's a surprising amount of fun, that combo. Shadowflare rips through anything big enough to catch all the daggers (makes troll hunting really easy), while the electric spell makes a great 1-on-1 move for smaller threats. Mark of Flame is probably the most fun, however: nothing like finishing off an entire opposing force at the same time.

Weapons have been fun to craft, but armors are frustrating. Can't find anything good, and since they're mix-n-match, it gets tricky because cross set pieces don't really match.

[MonarchAnarch]

blacksmithing gets better, trust me. I got to a point where I stopped wearing sets/purples due to my crafted blues just squishing everything else.

I never liked shadowflare, but glad its working well. Granted I never tried it on a troll, will keep that in mind. I think I have 2 levels until I hit 109 points to unlock the top tier finesse, will be doing that before switching to might.

[Hajutze]

Thing is .. sometimes you'll lack the things you want to put on the armor/weapon. I prefer socked items. a 4 socked weapon or armor beasts the blacksmithing, simply because you can remove the gems laters and "fix" the armor with another effect.

[Beowulf DW]

I played the demo, admittedly, only to get the ME 3 equipment. Is it really that good? Cause I kind of need something to pull me away from Mass Effect. At least for a while.

The combat seemed fun in the demo. I focused mostly on Might, but I think I'd have more fun if I went with the classic mage-knight hybrid.

I didn't get to use any crafting skills in the demo, so could someone tell me how those work?

[Tome]

I played the demo, admittedly, only to get the ME 3 equipment. Is it really that good? Cause I kind of need something to pull me away from Mass Effect. At least for a while.

The combat seemed fun in the demo. I focused mostly on Might, but I think I'd have more fun if I went with the classic mage-knight hybrid.

I didn't get to use any crafting skills in the demo, so could someone tell me how those work?

It's pretty good. Not amazingly fantastic awesome-right-up-until-the-last-ten-minutes like ME3, but still pretty good.

And crafting is pretty simple. You disassemble equipment you find to get parts, then you reassemble those parts to make even better equipment. If you know how to do it properly you can break the game though.

[Knight13]

To elaborate, there are three types of crafting. Alchemy, blacksmithing and sagecrafting. Potions, gear and gems for socketing, respectively. For alchemy, you gather reagents from around the areas, a bit like WoW, except that you gather them instantaneously, they're everywhere and they respawn. For blacksmithing and sagecrafting, you find components on monsters and in chests and stuff and you can break down other gear. The higher your crafting skill, the more components/higher quality components you can use, resulting in stronger potions/gear/gems.

I mostly only use alchemy for health potions and sagecrafting for money, but blacksmithing pretty quickly outstrips random gear you find, especially since you can customize your stuff.

[Beowulf DW]

I see. I kind of figured that crafting could break the game. It always does. Just look at The Elder Scrolls (especially Skyrim), and the artificer in D&D. And Tony Stark of course.

[Calemyr]

I played the demo, admittedly, only to get the ME 3 equipment. Is it really that good? Cause I kind of need something to pull me away from Mass Effect. At least for a while.

The combat seemed fun in the demo. I focused mostly on Might, but I think I'd have more fun if I went with the classic mage-knight hybrid.

I didn't get to use any crafting skills in the demo, so could someone tell me how those work?

This was exactly my situation and outcome. I decided I needed a breather from ME3, give them time to fix that abomination at the end and stop getting so worked up about it. I'm not doing a great job about that, but Amalur is really helping me do so.

It has very good foundational writing, but the actual in-game writing isn't as good for half the faction arcs and the main quest. It's still not bad, however, and I find I don't care - this game doesn't need masterpiece level writing. It's like Diablo - the in-game plot is merely an excuse to structure the gameplay.

So, yeah, speaking as someone who was in your shoes only a few days ago, I can say that outcome is plausible. The gameplay is a lot fun, and the plot is pretty generic but neither bad nor crucial. I will warn you, though - the "bonus pack" DLCs are not worth it. They're powerful enough to get you through the first 10 levels easy, but they don't improve with level as a lot of people suggest. The Legend of Dead Kel DLC, however, is supposed to be pretty good, though I'm putting it off until I hit level 40 (to get the best loot possible from there) so I can't say for sure.

[Beowulf DW]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll wait a little while, though. Maybe get a used copy. Damn college tuition sapping all my gaming money.

[Calemyr]

An option, but one warning - like many EA games, Amalur has an online pass dealie - you get it for free with a new game but only one code per package. It's part of their war against the used games market. It's not all that much, just some DLC stuff at the moment, but it's like the old Cerberus Network gambit from ME2 - it could be something more if they chose to make it such.

[Beowulf DW]

Ugh, I hate that. You could buy into the Cerberus network for about 800 microsoft points, though. If EA does the same thing now, it still might be less expensive.

[Craft (Cheese)]

To elaborate, there are three types of crafting. Alchemy, blacksmithing and sagecrafting. Potions, gear and gems for socketing, respectively. For alchemy, you gather reagents from around the areas, a bit like WoW, except that you gather them instantaneously, they're everywhere and they respawn. For blacksmithing and sagecrafting, you find components on monsters and in chests and stuff and you can break down other gear. The higher your crafting skill, the more components/higher quality components you can use, resulting in stronger potions/gear/gems.

I mostly only use alchemy for health potions and sagecrafting for money, but blacksmithing pretty quickly outstrips random gear you find, especially since you can customize your stuff.

Don't underestimate Alchemy: Due to the way health potions work, a single master healing potion can easily double how long you can last in a fight before dying. Furthermore, the damage-boosters can be absolutely insane: Master Magic Amplification gives a +75% boost to all magical damage. The stuff like Master Lightning Storm that only affects a certain damage type provides even bigger boosts. Even if blacksmithing/sagecrafting flat-out did not exist, you could still absolutely trivialize the hardest difficulty with alchemy alone, albiet with a bit more micro-managing of your character's actions.


Thing is .. sometimes you'll lack the things you want to put on the armor/weapon. I prefer socked items. a 4 socked weapon or armor beasts the blacksmithing, simply because you can remove the gems laters and "fix" the armor with another effect.

There are pretty good arguments against that, actually, assuming we're talking solely about munchkiny goodness:

1. Every effect that's available on gems (except epic gems) is also available in blacksmithing parts. The reverse is not true: There are plenty of effects that are blacksmithing parts-only. This includes the almighty +damage%, which is so nuts it obsoletes literally every other effect in the entire game.

2. Crafting an item with a gem inside of it (once you have enough points in blacksmithing to be able to do that), then salvaging the item has a chance of spawning a blacksmithing part with the same effect, so there's a guaranteed source of flawless parts for any effect available through gems. The only real benefit to using re-socketing instead of just forging a new piece of equipment is that it costs fewer pristine shards, which the game practically gives out like it's halloween candy.

3. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but as far as I can tell there's only ever one weapon/armor socket available on a socketed piece of equipment: The rest are utility sockets, which are far less useful. With blacksmithing you can place two weapon gems effects into a single weapon (like, say, a prismere greatsword with both a flawless flaming handle AND a gem of incineration, both of which give +30 fire damage per hit + some burning damage which doesn't matter). Socketed equipment is far more limited in what it can do.

4. Finally, once you get the Dead Kel DLC...

And you fully upgrade Gravehal Keep, you get an ambassador who can be sent out on diplomatic missions. Send her out on a trade mission to Emberdeep for 10,000 gold, and she'll come back with a dozen flawless parts. I've done this about 20 times and I'm pretty sure every flawless part in the game is available through her this way. Once you get to level 40 you'll be earning half a million gold from each loot haul you bring back from a dungeon, easily, so 10,000 gold for a dozen otherwise extremely rare flawless parts is absolutely nuts.


That said, abusing blacksmithing will make combat no longer fun, so maybe it probably is a better idea to just stick to socketing gems...

[MonarchAnarch]

Yes, blacksmithing indeed will make combat no longer fun. This is why I was shortly full magic spec'd. As I've mentioned earlier in this thread before, I walked into the room, cast meteor ONCE, then moved on. having +damage 14% on all but one piece of gear gets kind of silly, especially with magic. I've played around with the great sword and hammer some and from what I can tell, Finesse fighting is the most fun. Positioning for traps and the gambit bombs, good fun.
Now smashing with the hammer? To use Day9's words, "SO Gratifying".

[Hajutze]

For the utility gems I usually go for +20% damage at day and +20% at night. Which is +10% damage per gem.

[Knight13]

Quick question: I've finished Dalentharth, should I go to Erathell or Detyre next? Is one of them lower level than the other? I have quests pointing me to both regions, so I'm not sure.

[MonarchAnarch]

Ya, this is where I lost interest in the game. I would suggest desert just to get it out of the way. The plains are alot more fun and prettier to look at..but that is just me. I'm a completionist, so I'll be going back and redoing everything I skipped after doing half of the desert and half of the plains quests..then just bolting for the end of the game.

[JediSoth]

Well, phooey. I tried the Demo again and it either doesn't support my gamepad (it's a Saitek P880) or doesn't have gamepad support at all. I hear the full version does, but I've been reading conflicting reports whether it supports the XBox 360 controller only or all controllers.

They're making it really difficult for me to buy this game.

[Beowulf DW]

Well, got the game and it's pretty fun.

I think I'm going for the pure warrior build, now that I've seen stuff like Harpoon and that earthquake thing that they can do.

Any advice on what I should focus on with this kind of build? I'm sticking to longswords and hammers if that helps.

[warty goblin]

Hammers are aren't worth it IMHO. The greatest risk in melee combat is getting stun-locked, and hammers so slow its very easy for this to happen to you. I've had much better luck with the greatsword as the big, hard hitting weapon, the damage decrease is generally small, but the bump from Very Slow to Slow speed* makes a world of difference.

Also the attacks from block and dodge are better for the greatsword. The block attack allows for a fairly high damage strike combined with rapid forwards movement, useful for getting out of sticky situations and escaping from getting mobbed. The late-tree dodge move essentially turns you into a grenade. Combine with the elemental damage boosted weapon you'll almost certainly swinging at that point, and it's pure, if slightly hard to aim, carnage. IIRC the hammer doesn't even get a dodge attack, and the block attack is kinda wimpy and hard to land.

*The game says greatswords are the slowest, but every one I've come across is listed as Slow while all the hammers are Very Slow.

[Beowulf DW]

Thanks. When I get the opportunity, I'll reallocate the points I put into hammers to the great swords. I did realize the shortcomings of the hammer, so I tried to compensate by using the longsword when enemies had the jump on me, and using the hammer when I clearly had the initiative.

Just a couple more things:
-How useful is Harpoon?
-are the defensive skills any good (i.e. Skillful Defense, Adrenalin Surge and Hardy Constitution)?

[Tome]

Thanks. When I get the opportunity, I'll reallocate the points I put into hammers to the great swords. I did realize the shortcomings of the hammer, so I tried to compensate by using the longsword when enemies had the jump on me, and using the hammer when I clearly had the initiative.

Just a couple more things:
-How useful is Harpoon?
-are the defensive skills any good (i.e. Skillful Defense, Adrenalin Surge and Hardy Constitution)?

Adrenaline Surge is the one that makes you immune to stagger, if I recall correctly?

It is good. Very, very good. Max it out as soon as possible. That and Harpoon are basically the only Might abilities I use on my Might/Sorcery build.

Harpoon itself is wonderful, but I've never felt the need for more than a single point in it. That said, the single point harpoon does some amazing things.

[warty goblin]

Thanks. When I get the opportunity, I'll reallocate the points I put into hammers to the great swords. I did realize the shortcomings of the hammer, so I tried to compensate by using the longsword when enemies had the jump on me, and using the hammer when I clearly had the initiative.

Just a couple more things:
-How useful is Harpoon?
-are the defensive skills any good (i.e. Skillful Defense, Adrenalin Surge and Hardy Constitution)?

Harpoon is handy, but not critical. Can't say about the defense skills, the game is easy enough without making myself immune to the one thing that can slow me down.

Actually I can't really say I've found any of the triggered abilities particularly necessary. I seem to do fine with just the weapon combos.

[Cheesegear]

So here's a question. Got some +% damage gear, that only works at night/day. Is there a way to make it night or day? A la Fallout 3 where you can just wait for a couple of hours until it's the time you want.

[Craft (Cheese)]

So here's a question. Got some +% damage gear, that only works at night/day. Is there a way to make it night or day? A la Fallout 3 where you can just wait for a couple of hours until it's the time you want.

You can only change the time of day by sleeping. It's really the only reason to sleep outside of roleplay and/or causing things to reset so you can grind, but you have to be near a bed to do it. That, and aside from the "+damage at night" enchantments there's only one other thing in the entire game that's time-of-day dependent (a quest event).

[Cheesegear]

there's only one other thing in the entire game that's time-of-day dependent (a quest event).

The one in Ysa? I think it was already night when I started the quest so I just did it. So I wasn't particularly bothered by it.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The one in Ysa? I think it was already night when I started the quest so I just did it. So I wasn't particularly bothered by it.

Okay, correction: Two quest events. I forgot about that one in Ysa. The other one is where you have to catch a thief who's stealing from a charity box at night.

[Craft (Cheese)]

So I just got the Teeth of Naros DLC. This release actually kinda caught me by surprise: I didn't expect the second DLC so soon! Anyway, first impressions:

- With (most) of the art, the team's outdone themselves again: This time we get treated to a lovely prehistoric-ish landscape, complete with dinosaurs! Oh, and the great big floating city that you can always see in the distance.

- A new damage type, Primal. I hope this is available in crafting materials because I just *love* the particle effect. Apparently dealing primal damage makes enemies more vulnerable to magic (like how Bleeding makes enemies take more damage from physical), but I haven't noticed any big differences yet.

- The area seems... kinda small though. Rather than the zone design used everywhere else in the game, Naros uses a more open, Skyrim-esque style. Furthermore, the very first quest takes you from one end of the new world to the other, and you can walk the distance within about 30 seconds.

- I was really impressed with the great big floating city of Idylla... until I actually saw the place and discovered it was disappointingly a very unoriginal ripoff of ancient Athens. When the Jottun settlements have more interesting architecture to look at, there's a serious problem.

- This DLC seems to LOVE cutscenes. As in, taking control away from the player to give big, sweeping camera views of the area you've just entered. The vanilla game had these, but they were far less common: I've been playing less than an hour and there's already been four of them. Allow me to say, I hate this design decision. What, are they afraid that their designs are so uninteresting I won't look at things unless they take away control of the camera?

- As much as I hated Captain Brattigan from Dead Kel, I was friggin ecstatic to see all the annoying NPCs who follow you into Naros get killed off. Only to be replaced with ANOTHER annoying NPC following you around as soon as you're inside.

- So far, there's been... some serious narrative problems. So far, I am the Beckoned, brought by Esytharingenericfantasyname/That-spooky-disembodied-voice to "complete" the Kolossae by gathering the parts of this sacred wreath, or something. I have no idea what my character's role in the story's events are, what I'm doing to solve the conflict, or even what the story's central conflict *is.* The other storylines in the game aren't *great* by any means, but at least they give you a villain and say "go kill this." Naros doesn't even give you that much to start with.