Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning Review (PS4, also on XB1, Steam) | Backlog Battle.

What’s up everyone? Alex here! When Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning came out in early 2012, its release was overshadowed by one of the most highly anticipated RPGs of the time: Skyrim. Since then, Skyrim has been released on almost every conceivable platform known to man, so it’s fitting for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning to return and be given a new lease on life.

This is in the form of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, a remastered version of the original filled with improvements and enhancements that its publishers are hoping will entice players both old and new. Thanks to THQNordic, I managed to spend a considerable amount of time with this game before its official release, and given that I never had the chance to talk about the original, I want to use this opportunity to share my thoughts of it, especially those that apply to this re-release! Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an action RPG originally developed by Big Huge Games who shares co-development credits with 38 Studios.

Leading up to its original release, the game had a lot of buzz thanks to the involvement of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, award-winning fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore, and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion designer Ken Rolston. What resulted is a game that’s considered a cult classic by many, featuring stellar combat, a massive explorable open world, and a memorable cast of characters.

This remaster was developed by Kaiko, who are also developing a new expansion that’s exclusive to owners of Re-Reckoning! That said, I should point out that Re-Reckoning does contain all of the previously released DLC for the game. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning casts you as a fallen warrior, whose unexpected resurrection sets forth a series of events that propels you on a journey to defeat the evil Tuatha Deohn, who threaten the lives of the people of Amalur.

While the initial premise of the game pulled me in quickly, I will readily admit that the main journey isn’t where I derive a lot of my satisfaction with its storytelling. Reckoning, for me, is all about what I do in the world, as opposed to being whisked away by its main quest from one story beat to the next.

Much like how I played the game in its original release, I played Re-Reckoning by picking up quests that interested me, letting the game take me on a ride to explore the various nooks and crannies of its world. It’s through this play style that I was able to meet Amalur’s many denizens, who seem to all lack the confidence and conviction to go on with their daily lives...

Herc: I would do it but… I am a coward. Brother Egan: I have no courage to speak of. Honest. This meekness in attitude allows you to express yourself in the most hilarious of ways, and given that there really isn’t any sort of morality meter that tracks your behavior, you can be as catty and silly as you want with the given responses.

Agarth: You’re real, right? I swear I haven’t had that much… Agarth: I am! But still... It’s this playful attitude towards its world that allows me to feel invested in my journey every time I play the game, and it’s due to these quirks that I often find myself encouraged to do things I normally wouldn’t do in other RPGs, like pick people’s pockets or anger a town’s entire militia.

While the NPCs’ behaviors aren’t quite complex, I do appreciate that there is a sense of order and rigidity in the world’s rules that feels much easier - and quicker - to understand, reminding me of the fun times I had playing the Fable trilogy, for example.

Because of how vast its world is, Reckoning’s environments opt for a measured polygon count that allows for a kind of scale that was rarely seen in games of the time. This basically means that the art design of the game needed to do some heavy lifting elsewhere in order to make up for the lack of intricate architectural fixtures.

This attention to detail actually comes into play a lot more when playing Re-Reckoning, with Kaiko going over many of the original’s existing art assets, making the game look sharper and smoother than ever before. Unlike the original console versions, Re-Reckoning runs at 60fps, though there are portions of the map where the framerate dips down a bit.

One gripe I have with the game’s visuals is that on one of the TVs I played on, the picture looked quite dark even on the highest brightness setting, which makes me wonder if this will be something that’ll be resolved in the future. There is also a toggle to change the size of the game’s UI, but I would’ve loved for it to have a medium size toggle, as both the default and the small toggles were both too large and too small respectively for what I personally would’ve preferred.

On that topic, outside of the aforementioned graphical improvements and some new sliders and choices in the Options screen, I found it very difficult to tell what else had changed in Re-Reckoning. Before working on this video, I went online to search what changes the developers had implemented into the game, but only found a post on its Steam Community that wasn’t really comprehensive.

I even played my PS3 copy to try and find differences and nuances, but didn’t manage to find anything noteworthy. The developers claim that some of the changes were fixes to certain issues that were present in the original, but I was still able to find some minor issues, and while these didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the game, the lack of information about the changes just left me confused.

Putting that aside, the star of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning really is its combat system, which remains my absolute favorite part of the game even almost a decade later! I recalled watching interviews with the game’s combat designer back in the day, talking about how much of his design was inspired by the fighting games that he played.

What he’s created is a combat system that not only offers a ton of depth, but is also easy to pick up and play. This intuitiveness is achieved by tying the game’s combo system to the weapons you have equipped. Each weapon offers its own unique fighting style, and is tuned to have different startup and recovery animations, so while there’s a huge temptation to just mash your way to victory, finding the right moment to stop attacking is just as vitally important.

That said, Reckoning’s combat allows for an unprecedented amount of freedom of expression. Do you want to be a dagger wielding Rogue and use a staff to cause elemental damage to enemies? Or a Brawler wielding a greatsword and chakrams? Or a Mage wielding both a scepter and a large hammer? Because you can absolutely do that in Reckoning! To add more layers to its combat, you’re given a choice to spend points in three different talent trees, which unlock various new combo attacks and abilities.

One of the biggest pet peeves I have with certain RPGs is that it tends to be rather difficult - or impossible - to have these points reset so you can re-allocate them better. Reckoning does allow you to reset your points - you just need to have the money to do so as well as a Fateweaver to reset them for you.

The problem is that latter part, because Fateweavers - specifically, your “friend” Agarth - doesn’t stay in one place much and travels to different locations depending on what happens during the main story. Fortunately, Reckoning cleverly lets you play around with its class archetypes very early in its story, which was a conscious decision that its original developers made so that players could have the confidence to make important build decisions early on.

How often have you played RPGs where you’re given several classes to choose from but have absolutely no idea how they’ll play? The beginning hour of Reckoning allows you to sample these to your heart’s content, asking you to perform stealth kills, fire off arrows, and even eliminate enemies with your magic staff.

All of this, and you’ve yet to even pick a class! To be clear, classes - or Fates, in Reckoning parlance - merely provide you with buffs depending on what combat archetypes you’ll be taking advantage of, so picking one over the other isn’t quite as big a deal as you might think.

Upon completing the game’s first dungeon, you’ll select just one Fate to start with. But as you spend points in each of the three talent trees, you’ll have the ability to swap around Fates on a whim. Perhaps the only other qualm I have with the game’s combat is that some of the sound effects featured could’ve been better.

While old interviews with the game’s combat director revealed that animators sat right next to them in order to nail the feel of the animations, I kind of wished that the sound designers had as well. There are several attacks in the game that don’t deliver the impact that they should, with the result sounding more like hitting a punching bag filled with sand instead of the appropriate sound.

After playing it for close to a week, I truly wish I could tell you what Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning’s developers changed in the game apart from its aesthetics. But despite this confusion, playing through Re-Reckoning reminded me of how much I absolutely loved and adored the game it brought back.