gibberingtroper
Since: May, 2009
10/09/2013 00:00:00
The camera is fixed. That was my only real issue.
brc2000
Since: Jul, 2010
11/19/2014 00:00:00
Two things about this - 1) Many Western RP Gs have faceless protagonists. It's pretty much a standard acpect of them, and what WRPG fans typically want and expect, so they can build their own character. Even in games like Planescape where the character has a backstory, your character's current personality depends on your choices. There's a reason a lot of people didn't like Hawke from Dragon Age 2. There are exceptions, but they're rare. It's not so different from Skyrim, Fable, or even Dark Souls. 2) Not all of the NP Cs have Scottish accents. It's mostly only the gnomes that use them.
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Ripping Off Better Games: The Game
I watched the Let's Play of this game by Day Nine and Felicia Day; they looked like they were having fun. I enjoyed both Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends; and hey, R. A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane. How bad could it be?
Well, it's competent, and there are some good choices, but they're all cribbed from other, more successful titles. Even worse, they grabbed the mechanics but not the logic behind them. "Let's have Action Commands for Finishing Moves! God of War did!" Yeah, they gave us Quick Time Events to create tense, spectacular Puzzle Bosses; Amalur's Button Mashing only lets you earn bonus EXP from an already-defeated boss. "Let's have a dialogue wheel with nice & mean options! Mass Effect did!" Yeah, but that game featured a Karma Meter and embraced Multiple Endings; Amalur offers Railroading. Item Crafting, the "versatile" Point Build System, Socketed Equipment, the profusion of Fetch Quests, the occasional Persuasion check... They seem like Shout Outs to other games.
Creator's Apathy is blindingly obvious. Camera Screw is prevalent, solely because someone insisted on adding an auto-targeting feature. As Zero Punctuation pointed out, much of the Scenery Porn is lost because the camera spends its time pointed at the ground. The worldbuilding is pretty deep, but with a Featureless Protagonist and incredibly-bland NPCs, the Eight Deadly Words take over. And you know how the Player Character is Immune to Fate and can Screw Destiny? Imagine how cool it would be to actually be able to shape the lives of the game's NPCs... and then keep imagining it, because you gets no plot- or story-relevant powers, just a lame Bullet Time Super Mode.
In video games, what you do never matters—it's a video game, for crying out loud. But some games are better about disguising that fact than others. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is not one of them. It's the Mockbuster version of better games. It's the equivalent of slapping a Formula One paint job on your minivan and expecting to go faster. Play accordingly.