Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Kingdoms of Amalur Demo thoughts

[quote name="Lurker 56498"]Initial Impression It's a single player MMO with full on action combat. I got that same feeling I got with Dead Space that EA cut up a bunch of popular games and jammed them all together til they fit. It sort of feels like EA wanted a second go at Dragon Age 2 by way of Fable with a detour through WoW. After the tutorial, the game gives you 45 minutes to run around the big open starting area. You see the giant Quest Markers and then kill all of the wolves or break all of the boxes. You are the CHOSEN ONE destined to HAVE NO DESTINY. Pros - Free items for Mass Effect 3. I guess they figured that was the only way to get people to play a demo for a game whose name I've forgotten 3 times since I started writing this. - Combat can be pretty fast and enemies take good, normal difficulty sized chunks out of your health with every hit. Every time I tried to just click click click to win I'd get my ass handed to me so you actually have to make use of the dodge AND block AND magic, can't just pick one. - Stealth feels OK. It's a little slow, but you can just roll on over to guys and stab them in the neck for 100x damage. - The trailer at the end of the demo shows some cool DMC weapon switching and juggling with arrows and stuff I didn't even think of trying, but maybe that was just trailer magic. Cons - WoW graphics (maybe that's a plus for you?) - 3 different kinds of elves (but at least one of them is just there for you to kill) - Fucking CONTROL is the default for SPRINT, SHIFT is for BLOCK, and RIGHT CLICK is for MAGIC. What the fuck? At least you can rebind keys. - The camera can't be zoomed out or even controlled very well. Probably works fine on a controller but at least 30% of my screen was taken up by my beardo's incredibly dull brown leathers. Sometimes it will thankfully zoom out to a nice, wide view during fights, but then it'll snap right back to your ass. - Feels like an MMO from the get-go. Everything is a fucking chore and for every fight that's a little bit exciting, there's 5 more that might as well be Dragon Age 2's "click once and watch everything die" - Skills are ridiculously unbalanced. I was trying to make a neck-stabbing dagger rogue, so I unlocked and upgraded the first charge up attack that lets you do the jump between enemies attack from the first PS2 Prince of Persia. Imagine my surprise when, after charging for 3 seconds, every single hit did 5 damage to the bear I was fighting. Then I cast the instant lightning bolt spell I got for free during the tutorial and the bear took 50 damage and died. Then I put 3 points into the rogue dagger throw and do 60x3 damage to a mini boss, killing it instantly. I was level 4 when the demo ended. - It just feels a little sloppy, mostly in the controls and especially in the menus. Your character and the dialogue choices can get stuck moving in one direction if you were holding down any movement key during a transition (fixes if you hit the same key instead of trying to fight against it). -$60 on Steam for anything that isn't Skyrim seems like a total rip off Did anyone else manage to play this? [/quote]