Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Kingdoms of Amalur will forever be remembered as being the only game to have been released by 38 Studios before it imploded in what is surely one of the most famous bankruptcies in the history of gaming. There are celebrity owners and creators involved, scandalously dumb decisions by the government of a U.S. state, lawsuits and recriminations everywhere. It’s destined to be one for the annals. I bought it because it was cheap, it is supposedly to be ridiculously long and most people thought it is an okay if far from great. Plus, I was really dying to know what would be the result of R.A. Salvatore writing and Todd McFarlane art direction. Now 67 hours later, I share my thoughts with you.

• They weren’t kidding when they said that this is a long game. I finished at 67 hours only because I started ignoring sidequests and even faction quests. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to buy the DLCs for this. Length itself isn’t necessarily a problem of course. I have 265 hours in Skyrim and loved every bit of it. The difference is that the content in KoA is so damned tedious and generic. I actively dreaded seeing exclamation marks over the heads of NPCs. Please, please, no more quests I prayed. It pained the RPG completionist in me to skip so many faction quests but I would never have been able to remain sane otherwise.

• The blandness is painfully obvious from the get go. I mean my wife is no gamer but even she could glance at the screen and go, “Huh, World of Warcraft clone.” You can see it in the low-poly models, the colors and shapes of the human taverns, the stiff animations of the faces, even the gnomes who literally the first people you meet in the game. It’s not just WOW either. It basically reaches for the most generic tropes in every fantasy game either. The first enemies you fight are giant rats, the first pieces of weapons and armor you pick up are rusty, you can smash crates for cash. It’s hard to get away from the impression that they’re not really trying, you know. I fail to see how this art style has anything whatsoever to do with Todd McFarlane.
• The writing is pure crap too. There are some interesting ideas, about how the fae are immortals who repeat the same Tellings over and over again and Fateweaving, but none of it really goes anywhere. I can’t think of a single memorable NPC in this entire game. The vast majority of the quests are completely forgettable too. It doesn’t help that there is a ton of dialogue in the game, voiced by mediocre voice actors, which contains lots of repeated information. There’s so much infodump going on that you just stop caring. Really they should just have kept this as a pure action RPG with minimal plot and dialogue and lots of fighting.

• That said, the combat mechanics turn out to be surprisingly fun. It may not be terribly deep, but there is a nice flow to combat that is very pleasant to play. You can seamlessly switch between two weapons, there are combos and special attacks to unlock. You can dodge or throw up a shield to block attacks. There are even cool stuff that you wouldn’t expect to see in most action RPGs like parrying with a shield and creeping up on enemies to perform stealth kills. The mix of enemies is decent too. Wolves will surround you and charge your flank. Sprites are fragile but can launch magical attacks from range that some melee fighters may have trouble with. There are enemies that can heal and ones that can carry shields. You need to vary your tactics to comfortably deal with all of the different enemy types.
• Unfortunately even at the highest difficulty setting, the game is just far too easy. I believe I died a couple of times just outside of the tutorial area while I was still learning all of the mechanics but I never came close to dying for the rest of the game. I wasn’t even particularly aggressive about min-maxing character builds / destinies / equipment. I played melee and was able to keep most enemies stunlocked without too much trouble. I mostly ignored potions and only very rarely used Reckoning mode. If I’d regularly used all of the tools at my disposal, I’m pretty sure I could have sleep-walked my way through the game.
• I’m also curious why, given how much they’ve already ripped out of WOW and the Diablo games, they didn’t copy more of the stuff that helps usability and gameplay. For example, they have gem socketing for items and named rares and sets from Diablo. Why not the randomized boss modifier powers that make fighting elites in that game so challenging? They’ve copied the environments and even architectures of WOW, why not mounts? Even with the ability to fast travel, there is frightening amount of running to do in this game. Why not have banks in each city instead of the inconveniently placed stashes which I doubt many people use? I don’t think I even need to go into how awful the inventory interface here is even if it had to be designed to be used with consoles.

• Generally speaking there actually is a fair variety of environments, enemy designs etc. This game is huge! Unfortunately it’s so doled out so stingily that you get sick of it soon enough. This is especially evident in the first several areas which are all green grasslands and forests. Enemies like sprites, boggarts and giant spiders pretty much show up throughout the whole game. This causes areas to sort of blend in with one another, making it almost impossible to give each one a distinctive identity. I haven’t touched WOW in years, but if I see screenshots of the areas I visited, I still have a great chance of being able to identify them instantly.
• I do concede that there are some good ideas with regards to combat mechanics and the character advancement system. The destiny unlock system is very cool, especially since you can see the effects and prerequisites of each one from the get go and aim your build accordingly. I’ve never seen the ammunition system here used anywhere else but it works well and makes sense. There seems to be quite a fair bit of depth in its equivalent of the talent system though of course I haven’t played anywhere near enough to get to know all of the threes. I also like how the different weapons all have very different animations, attack speeds, combos and consequently are suited for different playstyles.

No single part of this game is a deal-killer and the combat is fun as a stress-free, easy-going experience but everything is so bland and so generic that it’s impossible to recommend it either. When you find yourself repeatedly thinking that it does things that games from years before has done better and dreading the sight of even quests because of how tedious they are, it’s hard to convince yourself there is any point in slogging on. It’s even harder to understand how they spent so much money on making such an underwhelming game, especially considering all of the big name talent attached to this property. Overall, while it isn’t completely without merit, it doesn’t really compare well to its competition at all so playing it would still be a waste of time.