Platinum trophy #125
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning [PS4]

Difficulty: 4/10
Fun: 7/10
Playtime: 44hours 52mins

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a remaster of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on the PS3. Ang creative nila mag isip ng remastered title ano? kidding aside, for me this is an underrated game from the PS3 era. And yes, nostalgia is a powerful thing and this is yet another game I replayed hahaha. Sadly in terms of a remastered title, parang upscaling lang and little ang added quality of life features. As buggy parin siya like the ps3 counterpart. I even encountered a game breaking bug pero buti na lang may multiple saves ako. Other than that, ayun masaya naman. Yung sa plat video ko, nag no armor lang ako for the laughs. May armor naman ako nung nag lalaro ako

Tips for plat:
-have multiple saves! As mentioned sa review ko, buggy parin yung game
-upgrade your persuasion skill first since one of the missable trophies is tied to having 50 success persuasion attempts
-make sure you play the game at hard difficulty and dont ever change it until you complete the main story
-always look out for lorestones, for less clean up time

A complete joke of an “RPG” that encapsulates every bad design decision to come regarding the RPG genre. Awful and useless skills, nonexistent variety for builds, you’re locked into 3 classes with yet another set of useless and boring skills that don’t enhance the role playing in any meaningful manner. The over-world’s level design is needlessly convoluted, mountains blocking your way and leading you down a contrived linear path, making an already snoozefest game even more of a chore to go through, with laughably slow “running” and no mounts, you spend the vast majority of your time running from quest marker to quest marker, with those quests themselves requiring you to just meet someone, who then tells you to go to a place. And to make matters worse it has ridiculous side quest bloat, every 20 steps you take in the overworld you’ll be greeted by a side quest that has no connection (thematic or otherwise) or bearing on the main story, all of them revolve around someone being lost/dead and their friend/lover/compatriot asking you to find them/take revenge/secure their remains, every single one.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for November 2022, this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before December 6th, 2022, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

A remaster of a classic style RPG.

Kingdom of Amalur was released in 2012, three months after Skyrim, which is probably a big reason why it didn’t take off. But that also should put players in mind of what they will see here. This is a remaster of that old game that looks and plays well. There’s a heavy influence from MMOs of the time as well as some work from Todd Mcfarlane and an attempt at world-building for a franchise that well… This is the only game from that studio, so clearly it didn’t work out.

With this being a remaster, this is gameplay from over ten years ago, though there are not many RPGs done in this style anymore, so there is still a place for it. The story is well told, but it’s a generic fantasy as well. It’s more of a quantity than quality for the story, and while it came out at the same time as Skyrim, well Bethesda was already a force to be reckoned with, so realize this was always going to be a weaker quality.

Pick this up if you like fantasy RPGs. I actually own and beat the original release earning every achievement, and I’m even considered picking this up again because I enjoyed the original game and wouldn’t mind checking it out again.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/sFC7gi3ZDQc

I loved this game when I was a teenager, but playing it again nowadays was just so boring. The combat is still a lot of fun and the weapon variety is nice chakrams are still the GOAT, but the structure of the game is just too MMO-like for my taste. Still has some pretty interesting lore at least though

Also you figured this remaster would have some form of QOL improvements, but no. The load times are abhorrent because it has to load every time you enter a new area or building and makes it almost unplayable by todays standards honestly.

The story of the game takes place in a classic fantasy world. Amalur is divided into several regions. The story begins with the death of the main character, followed by his resurrection in the Well of Souls. Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning we create a hero from scratch and together with him we save the world from evil. Despite the possibility of making decisions in dialogs similar to the Mass Effect series, the story presented in the game is essentially very linear and we don't have much say.

We start the adventure with an extensive character creation screen that allows you to choose one of the four available races, Almain, Dokkalfar, Ljosalfar and Varani, as well as change their appearance. We don't choose a class at the beginning of the game, but as the game progresses you can develop your character in three skill trees. These are warrior, rogue and mage. Among the available skills, there are both ranged and melee skills, over 60 in total. In addition to these in the skill tree, you can also develop your character in crafts and social skills, such as alchemy, blacksmithing or persuasion.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning immerses players in a very open and expansive world filled with various stories created in the head of R. A. Salvatore, the creator of the Universe. In addition to the main story, Salvatore has written numerous side quest stories in the game, including guilds scattered across the various regions of Amalur, much like in The Elder Scrolls series. By completing quests, we receive experience points and gain reputation among the various factions if we wish.

But the main focus of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning's main focus is on combat, which is very arcade with Quick Time Events that often make the game closer to the hack and slash genre. Winning battles is therefore determined not only by the skills gained through character development, but also by the player's skill and the appropriate use of items, such as bombs or spells.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a single player game. It also includes new story-based DLC packs: The Legend of Dead Kel, Teeth of Naros and Fatesworn. The enhanced version Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, its graphical style takes influence from the Fable series, Divinity II: Ego Draconis and games in the Forgotten Realms universe, slightly improving on the original's graphic design. Resolution and texture quality have been increased and the game runs at +60 FPS on eighth generation consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for greater smoothness. The game offers over 100 hours of gameplay in the story campaign with all side content.

One of the most definitive RPG experiences I've ever had, whilst also bringing something to the table wholly original that sets it apart from most.

What I instantly noticed straight off the bat was this game's resemblance to the Darksiders games, very loosely. The dungeon crawler approach reminded me so much of this and compelled to want to go back to Darksiders in the near future. I came for the gameplay, that I had seen in a YouTube video, and didn't expect much outside the realm of that but I was surprised to learn that this is a pretty solid game in almost every aspect. An intriguing narrative, addictive gameplay and a world that keeps you wanting more with arguably one of the best player insert RPG protagonists.

To say that the gameplay is good is a gross understatement. While it's skill and build system isn't as complex and intricate as others in the RPG genre, it still holds pretty well on it's own. You will find that you will experiment with various weapons, all which are pretty solid on their own, but eventually you find the combination that fits your playstyle which definitely does vary based on what skill tree/weapons you might invest in more than others, which I really enjoyed having the freedom of choosing. It's very true to the nature of it's narrative, essentially forging your own destiny, and it does a great job and making you feel like you really do have that freedom, even if it could be a bit of an illusion (I'm not sure whether this game has multiple endings or not, would be a shame if it really doesn't.) The combat is great, I love being able to mash up combos, making it super satisfying. Once you reach higher levels, you become an unstoppable force, which makes you want to engage with enemies even more because of how satisfying decimating Tuatha canon-fodder can feel. However, there were some instances where I felt as if the combat was a little rough around the edges at times. Very rarely, the camera will be your worst enemy, because you can't really move it around too much in encounters. There will be some environments that are a little bit of a tight squeeze and your view will be obstructed either by objects or the world itself. There were very few bugs that I came across personally, mostly just things in the real-time cutscenes with NPCs, where my character would be off-camera and it'd look like the NPC was schizophrenic, or even the camera being too zoomed into an NPC. I'm not sure if it's intentional, but some of the pre-rendered cutscenes were also missing SFX. Maybe it's like that in the original game, too, I wouldn't know, but it was a little bit jarring and mildly ruined big moments.

As for the open world, and it's lore, it is very intriguing. I'm glad the world isn't largely huge, either, because you will be running everywhere. There are no mounts. But this isn't an issue, there are tons of fast travel points and honestly, being able to take in the sights as you do is very therapeutic and freeing. The lore itself reminded me SO much of Tolkien, certain plot points actually felt like they were directly ripped from The Lord of the Rings, even the way the world was laid out. Rathir felt like Minas Tirith and Mel Senshir, Minas Morgul. Alabastra itself was basically Mordor, and the surrounding Klurikon being the Dead Marshes. Is this a bad thing? No, it actually made me resonate with the world more and I really appreciated the parallels, even if they weren't intentional.

Obviously, though, the narrative itself wasn't nearly as captivating as anything Tolkien has written. But, it was still pretty decent. I think what motivated me to get it finished was anything to do with fate/destiny, the themes of forging your own story instead of playing to the rules laid out by someone or something else resonated with me personally and the ending definitely held some words to live by. A very common theme explored in media, but done in a very different and unique way, I felt. Even outside of the main storyline quests, there are still some pretty interesting narratives to get yourself caught up in. The side quests and faction quests are just as interesting themselves and I feel like I'll probably spends hours more in this world just to get the most out of it. It is a very forgiving open world that doesn't make the task of doing something like that feel as daunting as most other open world RPGs would. Skyrim will always be in it's own league, of course, but I feel like this game is severely overlooked by many because of that.

If you're into this genre, this is a must-play. It's a great game overall, despite it's minor flaws.

I dabbled with this game back at its Xbox 360 launch but only committed to a few hours and then bounced for other games. I was intrigued by the release of a remaster in 2020, though. Ended up dumping 175 hours into this and, needless to say, I am a big fan. Essentially, they created a single player MMORPG and it was a nice callback to my WoW days without having to pay $15 a month. It has a large map with tons of quests and if that sounds good to you then it is an easy recommend. Too bad some of the original game's bugs were ported over as well, so beware of some that can bork your game completely.

I think far too many Quests in this game are either "go here, kill x monsters" or "go here fetch x item" all while following someone in a dungeon. One standout quest in the game is the bell, book, and candle quest. You're approached by an elf that asks you to help him break a curse of the undead attacking him because he's part of the legendary family that governed that area ages ago. It's believable because this quest takes place in the 4th or 5th large area of the open world so I've been fighting these undead throughout the entire game. So you follow him into a castle to do a ritual. As you progress you start to notice that he's lying about some details. The undead isn't only attacking him and he slips up and tells you he wants to raise an army of undead if you pass a persuasion check. By the end, you meet his ancestor that started the curse and he says that the elf is a liar, and he wants to use the undead for an army while the ancestor wants to break the curse. The elf says he wants to use the army to protect the area.

You're now left with two choices, side with the ancestor, kill the elf, and break the curse. Side with the elf, kill the ancestor, and allow him to raise an army of the undead. Morally, both guys have done wrong, ancestor cursed his family while the elf is a liar, there's also no guarantee that the elf can truly control all of these undead.

My problem with this is that you have choices but few consequences outside of killing one of them, and never seeing the other for the rest of the game. The undead still spawns throughout the game if you side with the ancestor, and you'll never see the army or hear about them from anyone else in the world.

The game still has a good amount of reactivity. I was in the underground part of Rathir and I started combat with one of the citizens, and the rest of the citizens fled in fear because they were not fighters. If this was the surface, the guards and the rest of the citizenry would've attacked me back.

One thing they should've done is had recipes for the shards in sagecrafting as they do for alchemy. I can't remember all the shard combos to make the gems without testing all of them. A big oversight on their part.

There are a few other technical issues. One quest had to do with a dwarf in a cave, I suppose the dwarf was supposed to die but he doesn't and I can still talk to him but he won't move. The other dwarves outside all believe he died though.
There is stuttering every time you walk through the long hallways between zones and the loading times are terrible on the PS4 Pro.

Fae blades & daggers stealth kills: The game forces me out of crouch after the kill. It also doesn't have an animation for some of the kills which is weird. I don't like the context-sensitive assassinations because it is so easy to press the button and it instead counts as a regular attack because the button prompt didn't come on the screen. If a monster is moving while you press the assassination button, the attack doesn't hit the enemy and instead, you're forced out of stealth and exposed. WTF? You also can't assassinate enemies that are sitting in a chair.


Missing Keys is another quest that would've probably been decent if the game had some proper faction system that remembered choices. I did this quest after completing the traveler's faction questline. In doing so, their primary camp is raided by the gnome authorities, and their leader is imprisoned, but our PC is named a legend of the camp and the entire traveler's faction. The quest giver did not even know who I am, she mentions visiting the sun camp but is completely unaware that it is raided and destroyed by the gnome authority. She also comments on me being a poor fit for the travelers if I ever try joining because I gave her the stolen documents for free which are funny because she's completely oblivious to the fact that I am a member of the travelers. At least the game acknowledged the fact that I stole the document and read it before ever attempting the quest. However, it is funny that an elf downstairs is completely aware of what happened to the sun camp.

It's far too easy to be OP. Exploring and finding Lorestones and completing main and faction quests give the player permanent stat bonuses. By the end of the game, I had 50 permanent stat bonuses. On top of the OP random gear, I found that it was far too easy to 2 or 3-shot bosses and barely take any damage as the archmage, the most OP destiny in the game.

No real point in using money since NPC shops are instanced and will spawn items the first time you ever speak to them and will never update items to be better than that afterward. So I ended up with 8 million gold that I no longer used for anything else because I just sold gear and didn't need to create new equipment because randomized gear was good enough.

By mid-game pure damage matters more than everything else. All armor in the game has a meager stat investment necessary to wear them. For example, to max any of the three ability trees in the game: might, finesse, and sorcery, you need about 115 points. However, to wear the best armor in the game, you only need 35 points in any tree. Since most builds in the game involve finesse or might, it means your player character will already have enough stat investment to wear just about any armor for your specific build by the very early game. Finesse aka the rogue build is just as tough as the might build because finesse gear generally has about 70% of the armor rating of might armor. You will never be threatened by enemy attacks due to how ridiculously tough most builds will be in this game, and that's before you even bother socketing gems in rare armor or building your own gear.

On the flip side, the archmage build is the most powerful in the game. You can generally one-shot most groups of enemies and bosses with the meteor or tempest spells. These are the only two abilities in the entire game that are actually powerful, however, things become boring once these two spells are constantly spammed. There isn't even a cooldown for tempest once you've got upgraded it past its limit.

Overall, this was a long game. Took 122 hours to complete everything. I didn't play the fatesworn DLC, because I wasn't going to buy it since they recently released this remaster but wanted to charge for DLC separately. All in all, there was a lot of potential for this title to be one of those big open-world franchises. Wouldn't mind a new installment in the future.

If I had picked up the original during the height of the PS3, I would have loved it; now though, I feel like this is not quite what I am looking for in a videogame.
Leaving aside the graphical part of the game (it is a PS3 game) the character creation is actually quite fun and the lore and story very interesting. The attacks don't have a lot of weight on them (movement in general felt floaty) and the continuos equipment of new pieces of armor was not something I particularly enjoyed.
For a PS3 game it does look quite nice but unfortunately it is victim of the 2000s color palette of black, grey and brown; everything is poorly lit and not very vibrant to look at.
I feel that this would be a good game for MMO players.

DO NOT ORDER DRAGON AGE FROM SHEIN!!

In all seriousness, this was one of those "comfort food" games for me. Aside from the surprisingly robust combat system, nothing in Amalur really stands out all that much. The characters are bland, the story gets worse as it goes on, the game looks and feels like an MMO, complete with all of the hallmarks of the genre like braindead quest design, and yet...I can't really say I wasn't having fun playing it. It's more than the sum of its parts and really scratched an itch for me that hadn't been scratched in a while, and that's all I needed from it.

With the caveat I dropped this after only about 5 hours, this really didn't grab me. May have been better at the time and the combat isn't bad, but the intro area has incredibly MMO-ish design in terms of questing (linear, self-contained, minimal reactivity). New Vegas came out two years earlier and the team worked on Morrowind, so I have to assume this is either pointless filler content that isn't signposted or just the way the game works. The thing that ultimately turned me off can be explained in a small anecdote:

After hearing mention of the situation from another character, I organically find an undelivered letter informing a woman in town that her husband has perished in the war. I go to bring it to her, and while I can ask her about the same 7-8 keywords everyone else can talk about, I can't give her the letter.

heard that THQ acquired the game's IP I felt like the happiest gamer in the world. I purchased the game as soon as it was possible, but it came with a few issues in the beginning. Either way, I've finally got around to playing it. Since we can't progress with our old save file, I've had to restart the game but mainly focused on the main quest, so I could try the newest DLC as soon as I could. Although this version feels slightly buggier than the original (or was it just me?), it's still a great revisit to the game.

Looking forward to what THQ has in store for this franchise!

I’m not angry at it, just disappointed.
After 70h, playing the game in its entirety, and getting all achievements I can say my opinion about this game with no remorse. I would love to suggest this game, especially after this much time investment, but the only enjoyment I actually had in the game was because I was watching videos in the meantime, and that’s a new one for me.

Buyers Beware
The FATE Edition is not a bundle and cannot be purchased after the main game. Steam will NOT detract the cost of the base game to make you pay the difference. Currently, on sale, Fatesworn alone costs almost as much as the complete package.

Main Game

The game started as an MMO and was converted to a single-player with some obvious remnants of it.
The combat system plays with both melee and magic/abilities at the same time, and the inclusion of the Reckoning mode, which is like a rage mode from other games. The game tries to be a hack-and-slashy type of game, but even a greatsword is often not long enough making the combat frustrating. I had to use the ability to pull in enemies all the time as it was the only way I could reach the enemies 100%.
The game has an Alchemy system, and this is the first game I played where picking up an herb is a chance of taking it instead of being guaranteed. I plucked the plant, how can I not get it it’s beyond my understanding. The Alchemy skill tree can increase the chances. Thanks…for selling me a solution to a problem you made.
There is also a Gem crafting system, but I never used it as the best equipment doesn’t have Gem slots.
Lastly, there is a Blacksmithing system that it’s not useful since enemies drop the loot at your level and equipment can’t be upgraded, including epic equipment.
The game doesn't have a jump button but you can jump from some specific platforms that often don’t give the prompt to, and it’s a struggle to find where you can jump.
In my 100% completion of the game, I did around 300 quests. For a completist, this game is a nightmare as it features uncompletable quests that are forever in your quest log. The biggest problem I have with them is that it’s mostly fetch quests going from A to B. Other than teleporting to a point of interest, you must walk to all your objectives while sprinting is barely faster than running. This makes the game a solo-walking simulator more than people ever thought of Death Stranding. Not a joke, just a fact. It gets quite lonely, especially without a soundtrack, or anything to look at. Sometimes, quests will give you a follower. They fight but I swear I never saw them deal any damage, but at least it's company. I ended up summoning a skeleton fiend to have some company while going around.
The main story is nothing exciting, but it’s ok enough. You might read on websites like howlongtobeat that the main story lasts 20 hours, but truly, most will be walking in silence.
There aren't many sound effects in the game, so the thing you hear the most is your footsteps. Being originally a 2012 title sometimes instead of in-game cutscenes, there are low-quality pre-rendered videos that have these beautiful background sounds, i.e. of a battle, to then cut to the in-game cutscene where it’s completely mute of ambient sounds and you only hear the characters make noises.
The biggest disappointment for me though was the final boss as it was introduced so greatly, but you don’t even get to fight it. What you actually fight is some enemies until you charge the Reckoning ability and that damages the boss.

Re-Reckoning? More like Re-Release.

Re-Reckoning presents itself as a remaster, but the real remaster work seems to be the texture upscale, which looks like it was done with Photoshop’s Preserve Details 2.0. It looks like just an upscale, and if the detail was not there to begin with, it just looks blurry. The in-game HUD has a scaling option between too big and too small while the rest doesn’t scale. I’m not a fan of the new HUD because whatever they did, now you can see color-bending in most things, especially the health bar of enemies.
This new version comes with its own new and improved bugs and crashes. I had lost 9h of progress because the game would not read my profile and I saved it thanks to some tinkering that included reinstalling the game, creating new profiles, and using save managers. I suggest checking the Nexus for tools like the F2 Console as that saved me from many bugs the Remaster did not fix and from new ones that are just for the remaster, like a quest that requires 6 items for completion but the game only has 5 in it.

DLCs

Dead Kel

It starts with this in-game cutscene of your character stranded on a beach, and as it stands up the devs decided to use every sound the character could make in the perfect silence of the in-game cutscene. You’ll see your character do the impossible as you moan, cough, and lament all at the same time.
The DLC itself is a very linear story but has a very small map that at the end of the DLC story gets re-used with side missions that make you backtrack all of it just to make the DLC last longer.
There is also a new Faction where you become the Lord of a keep in the DLC, but these missions are repeatable so they never go away. You also get the chance to adopt pets like wolves, rats, bears, etc. Finally, I can stop summoning that skeleton for some livelier company. Except pets can only stay at home and give the player a permanent buff, which makes them collectibles. Being the Lord you’ll be asked to do some more fetch quests from your subjects. Last but not least, a random woman you got as part of an alliance will force you to marry her to complete the quest. Although the quest does not complete, instead, it just stays in your quest log saying “Quest completed”. The game never featured romances except for some jokes during the story, but now I can get married to a random NPC that is a woman regardless of your sex.
Once in the DLC map, you can only leave by talking to the ship captain, who is a woman. I never hinted at anything, but in the dialogue where I asked her to bring me back, she hints at the fact that we had intercourse. So 10m after getting married I cheated on my wife.

Teeth of Naros

This DLC story is not too bad but the map is really small. In the DLC, for the first time Contract Boards refill, without notice. A quest you get from an NPC asks you to find some treasures in the DLC and bring them, except the items are NOT in the DLC[amalur.fandom.com].
The maps are very vertical and hard to navigate, especially the sewers. You can’t climb ladders, just like in Skyrim they only teleport you to the other side, but in this DLC they decided to use them everywhere inside the map. The developers must have decided to showcase the limits of the game engine. It’s confusing for my skeletal friend too as he was always stuck at all the ladders.
The DLC adds a new type of damage in this DLC: Beast damage.
Good thing you read about it here cause it’ll be the only time you ever think about it.
Again, in this DLC often you’ll be asked to go to the same maps for small fetch quests, which I think is just diluting more what it offers.

Conclusion

I started this game with the mindset of WANTING to play it, fooled by the God-of-War-y combat. Sadly, the more I went on with it the more I realized that what seemed beautiful in the demo was just smoke and mirrors. I enjoyed that in all that brain-dead fighting and walking around I could watch something, but I cannot suggest a game because it was fun to do something else in the meantime.
I wanted to give it a negative review and a 6 when I was around half the main game, but the rest of it lowered it to a: 3/10.
Strongly not suggested.

Not to get all political, but I’m down with using the Kingdoms of Amalur-equivalent of FF7’s Meteor to wipe Webwood off the face of the planet

It’s not even a difficulty thing I’m just the #1 spider hater on the internet

I hate the way that they walk, the way that they stalk, the way that they leap, the way that they sneak