Cards are also playing part of shaping your character by helping to determine your destiny. Destinies and talent trees will lead you towards different character types. If you spent time with RPGs before you will probably find yourself gearing your character toward a familiar set up.

Combat in Kingdoms of Amalur will be pretty familiar to you if you have played an action game before. Combat works based on the timing of button presses, you have 2 buttons, one for your primary weapons and one for your secondary. If you like straight up combats there are swords, daggers, bows. For the Mages among you there is plenty of Magic based on the mighty elements: Fire, Ice and Lightning. By charging up your fate (health) meter you will be able to get into a “reckoning mode” super charged/power. You will have the option to use potions during combat to help you. As lead combat designer, Joe Quadara emphasized, “Twitch skill is only going to get you so far. Strategy and proper RPG playing is going to get you farther.” 

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning looks like it will be at the top of the RPG 2012 class. I will definitely buy this one and see if it lives up to Ken Rolston’s quote, “I want them (gamers) to be thrashing around in their seat with their controller jiggling and having fun, which is not by the way a characteristic of most role playing video game combat experiences. They tend to be slow paced and less then satisfying.”

Christophe Chanel

Photos courtesy of  38 Studios.