It's an average game. Everything about the game is just average. It can entertain you for a while if you give it a chance, but it takes way too long to explore and finish the whole game. The game is made too long to be interesting. With a shorter and smaller experience and a good deeper story, it could have been a more memorable game. They tried to make too big a game and didn't work on the details enough. Too much empty and poorly thought out content to fill the game. There were too many changes of ideas during the development of this game and you can feel it while playing. It had potential and good ideas, but they were only on paper. They couldn't reflect that in the game.

There are some movies and TV shows that I'm convinced only really "hit" if you watch them at a certain age. It is my firm belief that if you haven't watched Star Trek, Mean Girls, or The Breakfast Club before the age of 18, you will never understand or enjoy these things (at least, I did not)*. Similarly, I think some games are appreciated more if they come at a certain time in your life.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is one of those games. This game would have been really cool if I had played it when I was 10-12 (it was not out in the mid-00s, and there was no way the graphic violence would have gotten past my Mom's one-woman censorship board). It would probably be pretty cool if I was in college and played it while listening to lectures or something. However, as a grown man, this game feels very basic and boring.
First offender is the combat. The combat is in real time, and feels close to Dragon's Dogma or Scarlet Nexus, if you are familiar with those games. The combat in Amalur has the twin drawbacks of being barebones and stiff. There is only one basic attack (no light/heavy attacks or parries), a dodge that feels awkward to use, a range attack that quickly runs out of ammo and seems quite pointless, and a set of spells that can be customized. The spells are kind of cool, but they, can't really be chained into combos,. There is also a Super Saiyan mode that can be built up by filling up your rage/devil triggers/whatever; instead of making you superpowered for a small amount of time (like DmC) or giving you access to a massive attack that can curbstomp multiple enemies at once (like Blades of Time), it gives you the change to attack one enemy with a super special attack that gives you extra EXP. Combat in this game has no depth and feels like a repetitive chore; the lack of a parry, a decent dodge, or any combos beyond your basic "tap X" sequence is keenly felt. The swift, exciting, and somewhat open-ended combat of Devil May Cry has spoiled me, I suppose.
It is true that there are some combos that you can unlock in the game, but I didn't find the ones that I unlocked useful. Additionally, you also have to use perk points to unlock them only for specific weapons. Realize that the hammer sucks and want to use a greatsword? Too bad, you've put all of your points into the hammer. It is true that you can respec later on, but this kind of game would have benefitted from a Skyrim-style system where you level up weapons ability based on using the weapon.
The story is your usual high-fantasy bafflegarble; it's not great, but I'm usually fairly lenient on bad stories as long as they aren't shoved in your face by "cinematic" cutscenes. The dialogue choices tend to be pointless and apparently you can use persuasion skills to steamroll past everything. I highly dislike dialogue choices in games where they do not make a difference or make very little difference; developers and writers need to have confidence in the story that they are telling.
The "open world" is a series of poorly-disguised corridors with the occasional boring dungeon. The game feels less open than an N64 Zelda, and even the map clearly shows the corridors. Thus, there's no real exploration in the game; not that there is any real point to the exploration anyway. I found nothing about the enemy designs, world, or other art to be at all interesting. The semi-cartoony art style clashed with the occasional graphic violence of the game. Every NPC has a thousand dialogue keywords that you can choose from, and none of them are interesting. The loot system was not engaging or addicting; there was no way to easily compare stats for new items vs equipped items, and given the fact that combat felt like a chore, I didn't really feel excited to upgrade my gear. I am barely interested in smithing, crafting, alchemy etc. in most games, and in any case Skyrim did all of these better than Amalur.
Everything about this game just felt like busywork. I could probably forgive one or more mediocre elements of this game if they combined to create an immersive and interesting whole, but Amalur just feels like Fantasy Game: The Game. Everything in the game feels very much like a video game element. I don't know if this makes sense, but it describes the sense I felt while playing it. It was the opposite of Skyrim, a game that, while it contains clunky and repetitive elements, really feels like living in a fantasy world. Amalur feels like playing a fantasy game (quite appropriately, since it was originally intended to be an MMO) and nothing about it grabbed me. In my earlier years I may have been able to ignore its many flaws, but at this point in my life, with so much experience gaming and so many superior choices available, I can't justify playing this game.

KoA is like a lower-budget Elder Scrolls game but with combat that's actually exciting. There are quite a few different weapons to choose from with unique movesets as well as spells. I've not played another game that really makes you feel like a battle mage as much as this one does. Cast a few spells til you're out of mana, jump in with your sword until it comes back, retreat, and fire off more magic. It's a very exciting and addicting combat system with lots of mobility and powerful attack options. You of course have your standard things like some enemies being weak or resistant to magic or physical damage, forcing you to change up your tactics.
The problem that I had with this game is that the fighting was too fun so I fought nearly everything I came across and was supremely overleveled by about halfway through the game.

Again, it's relatively low budget so there is a bit of clunk and some things that aren't perfect, but that just means it's even more disappointing that there was no sequel that could have improved upon this one's flaws.

The story concept was interesting but, to be honest, I didn't pay much attention to it. Haven't gotten around to it but I'll definitely pick up the remake at some point.

This is literally my favourite game of all time, everything about it is amazing! The story (which is written by R.A. Salvatore), the world-building, the visuals, the soundtrack, the voice acting, the mechanics, the weapons and armour, the enemies, the entire design... Everything is just perfect! It's still stupid how this game didn't sell well back there and led the developers to bankrupt, this is an extremely underrated gem that deserved more love and sequels. I am happy that THQ Nordic bought this IP to revive this awesome franchise, they finally made a remastered version, with an upcoming DLC, and hopefully, we'll see more of this game! From the MMORPG project to possible sequels!

Alyn Shir is such a waifu tho 😳

Kingdoms of Amalur is a Western open world RPG, often thought of as a 3rd person Skyrim. It has most of the features you would expect from this type of game. An open world map. A huge number of side quests. Character creation, skills and leveling. Alchemy, blacksmithing and opening locks.You pick between 3 character types, the classic Fighter/Mage/Thief typesets, each one having different special abilities and able to use different equipment. You can also do a combination of the 3 if you want. The combat is quite fun, you combine your attacks with your special abilities and can parry and dodge too. It's nothing special and gets fairly repetitive after a while, but you have the option to change classes at any point in the game by use of a fateweaver and this helps keep it fresh. On the face of it, KOA seems like a fairly standard RPG for this gen, but there are two things I think it does really well. Firstly, the dialogue in the game is really nice. All quest givers have something interesting to say to you and a lot of the time they will even accompany you or provide some form of voiced twist, even in the smallest of side-quests. They also separate the most menial of fetch quests into a separate group called tasks. Secondly, the map is excellent. For a start, it's bright and beautiful with a great variety of environments and enemies. The connections between each area really flows well too, which gives you a nice feeling of continuity and makes it quite fun to explore. It's a pretty solid RPG which I think probably holds up to the reputative it received at release as a decent but not special game. It's cheap too so pick it up.

What I enjoyed
- good combat (so far played as Sorcerer), especially boss and sub-boss fights
- acceptable graphics and art style
- very low system requirements in 2023
- alyn shir

What I didn't enjoy
- levels felt too big and stretched out
- no mounts at all, either run around or fast travel
- getting to a new area felt like a template: new area to explore = talk to key NPC's that will give you literal fetch quests to complete, some ending with a boss fight. I know this formula is in every other game, but here I really felt it.
- respec has a cost (should have been free)

I don't think I've encountered a western RPG that's quite as ... whimsical as this one? The art direction and atmosphere feel like something out of a storybook, it's just so fun and colorful and gives me the same feelings I got when I was a kid reading fantasy novels. Sort of Spiderwick wibes, almost? With the fae and the little critters that bite your ankles.

But the game's not wholesome, it's weirdly horny in spots, clearly written by male fantasy authors, so of course it needs to be horny and edgy and violent. And tbh you can tell that it was heavily inspired by thicc fantasy novels because the game is heavy on lore and worldbuilding but the actual plot is fuck-all and the characters are cardboard cutouts. It's the type of fantasy where the writers flex their imagination in terms of creature design but then turn around and put their female characters in leather belts instead of clothes, ya know? It feels very immature in spots, which adds to the sort of childlike feeling of it all. You're just a Cool Guy/Gal running around punching out bad guys and isn't that what you want? Look at this hot elf lady! Isn't she a hot elf?

Really fun combat, though! It feels and looks super fun and snappy, and it's unique in that it lets you have cool powers from the start, so you don't get that usual slog of having shitty and boring powers in the early game. It fully embraces the power fantasy of being the Chosen One. You get to upgrade those cool powers as you go (which makes them scalable and worth having even in the late game) and get even cooler ones (ye olde meteor summon), and take your character in whichever way you want across three different combat styles. Also, this game is the only one where you can effectively play as a battlemage, at least in my opinion.

Overall, I think this game is heavily underrated, has a really fun aesthetic style and fun gameplay, but the story is really boring and lacks any interesting characters to root for and the RP potential is weak to non-existent. It makes up for in style and fun-factor for what it lacks in storytelling. Defo give it a go if you haven't yet, but don't expect vintage BioWare levels of writing. It holds a special place in my heart despite its flaws simply because of how fun and whimsical and adorable it is.