Combat in “Kingdoms of Amalur” is great, each weapon set has a few slots on its respective class tree (swords, hammers..ex for might) and when upgraded you will be able to pull off a handful ofcombos that do things like stagger opponents or grant critical damage. Switching weapons mid combo feels great and allows for a truly unique combat style. When you throw in the dozens of skills like the Thief’s ‘Traps’, ‘Hail of Arrows’, ‘Critical Lunge’ or the Mage’s ‘Stormbolt’, ‘Summon-able zombie’or ‘Mana Shield’, you truly have a diverse set of tools to throw at enemies. What I truly was thankful for was the Mage’s engaging combat that ensures that you’re not just standing as far away as possible hurling magic and waiting through cool-downs. The Mage’s weapons are really unique from the up close and personal staff to the short ranged ‘Chakram’ (large ring weapons coated in blades). The Mage combat is just as action packed as the fighters. Giving enemies the beat-down will not only yield experience but also ‘Fate Essence’ which when peaked can be released in a ‘Reckoning’; a sort of ultimate attack that slows time and allows your character to put as many enemies into a vulnerable state as possible before “Fate Shifting” one of them which will kill all vulnerable enemies and give your character extra experience.

The ‘Fate Shifts’ are a set of random animations that feature your character summoning a weapon of pure energy and proceeding to utterly destroy your opponent with it. With a diverse set of enemies and some fantastic combat scenarios the game keeps fresh battles coming and even some generic bosses can’t rob the game of that feeling.

Photo courtesy of 38 Studios

The one issue with the game’s combat and the over arching design is that the game does not scale based on character level. This is a game you are going to want to explore and conquer, and if you do even a third of the available side quests in an area- before advancing the story through the main quest, by about sixty percent of the way through you will be able to absolutely steamroll anything in your way. Effectively removing any element of challenge, this will also rob the game of one of its greatest strengths: the loot. When you are able to beat up a small army of ‘baddies’ without breaking a sweat you really wont give a damn about finding a better sword than the one your currently owning (and effectively dominating) the game with. In order to seek out a challenge on my second play-through I set the difficulty to hard and ignored all but the main quest. In fourteen hours (with a lot of difficulty I might add: I could not meet the requirements for even decent gear) I had finished the game at half the level I was supposed to be. Maybe this issue can be patched, but for now it stands as a serious detriment for anyone who likes to get the most out of the game-world and feel challenged throughout the experience.