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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

I played and finished this game, and I'm eager to tell you a little about it! Let's take a look at Wikipedia, hmm, what do we have here? "The game was released on February 7, 2012." It hasn't been 10 years yet, so the YOBA police can relax a bit for now. But not too much, because the malicious violators of the harmony of the universe are not asleep. The graphics are decent, not Crysis 3, of course, but pleasant. The physics (ha, let me copy your homework) is also pleasant, it doesn't annoy. What could I compare it to? Well, it's like some kind of MMORPG, only it doesn't make your eyes bleed. The style is unique. Not surprising, because on the same Wikipedia, I read that the project was originally conceived as an MMO.

What exactly is it about, sir? What is Amalur, we haven't heard of it.
In general, it's fantasy, as usual. At first, it seems that the world is just a backdrop, with two pages written for it while drinking beer, but as you explore it, you realize that a lot of work has been done. Despite the simple plot, the story is filled with some interesting details, telling amazing stories about the life of the world, its inhabitants, and singing ballads from the lore stones (these are things scattered throughout Amalur, telling snippets of stories), and shoving a couple of dozen readable books in your face. And NPCs can tell you all sorts of irrelevant things.
There is a race called Fae in Amalur, immortal guardians of nature and everything else, who, after death, go into a great cycle, reincarnate, and so on. All other races, humans and two types of elves, are mortal. The Fae call them "children of dust," or simply "dustlings." Their attitude towards them is about the same as towards dust, yes. And one day, one of the immortals had an interesting thought: "Why don't I burn all the mortals from the earth?"
What's the plot? You are brought in a cart, presumably dead, dumped in a pile of corpses, and you wake up. Ding! And somewhere there, in another part of Amalur, an evil villain has seized power, and now an army of immortal Fae is cleansing the world of the disgusting mortals with fire and sword. AAAH, WHAT A VILLAIN, WHAT SHOULD WE DO? WE GRAB AN AXE AND KILL EVERYONE. Okay.
What can we kill with? There are three branches: in one, swords are sharpened, in another, daggers are smeared with poison, and in the third, staffs sparkle with magic.
The first is Might, specializing in a lot of HP, heavy armor, hammers, swords, and very large swords. Just to chop up enemies satisfyingly without taking damage. The warrior doesn't approach the enemies, he pulls them in with a harpoon. The warrior can hold down the shift button and go have tea while the enemies beat themselves against his impenetrable shield.
The second is Finesse, the mother's killer, a dagger-wielding assassin, sneaking up from behind like a rat and slitting throats. There are also frost mines, poisonous daggers, bombs, smoke screens, poison, poison, poison, a little more poison, bleeding. There is also the possibility to feel like Illidan, taking Faeblades in your hands - an almost exact copy of his wonderful blades.
And the third, Sorcery, a mage with lightning and fireballs, waving chakrams, puffing with staffs. Just magic, basically. From what I've seen, I can say that he constantly teleports and throws chains of fireballs at targets. An unpleasant guy.
I played as Finesse, it's good, but towards the end there's nowhere to develop, the useful skills run out. And most of the assassin gadgets aren't really needed in combat, as the game is too easy, and I was playing on hard. Mines only make sense at the beginning, when a bear or troll can deal some good damage, but then it's easier to just stab anyone with knives or shoot them with a bow, which is overpowered here. Illidan's stuff looks fun, you jump and spin, shredding enemies to pieces.
The combat system in the game is quite poor, but it's fun and beautiful.


What else is there besides fighting? There are quests, even not that bad ones. Conversations with NPCs, searching for hidden chests scattered throughout the map, searching for lore stones, the collections of which give stats. In addition to combat skills, there are other abilities. Alchemy allows you to brew potions, blah blah, Lockpicking allows you to pick locks with lockpicks, Sagecraft allows you to craft stones. Standard. Mercantilism gives discounts in the store, allows you to sell for more, nothing interesting. Persuasion is also useless, it can be applied in about 2% of all quests, and even those 2% don't give anything special, it's a completely useless thing. Finding Hidden is more interesting, it reveals the location of hidden treasures, enemies on the map, and other magical things. More interesting, but still not a great skill. Dispelling is like lockpicking, only the principle is different. Objects in Amalur can be locked with two types of protection, a lock and this thing. This is unlocked very amusingly, a dot moves around in a circle, passing through signs that need to be deactivated by pressing. A miniature local Osu! The next skill is Stealth, one of the most useful and used by me. Even if we don't take into account stabbing someone in the back, the ability to sneak past NPCs helps to acquire many useful things, including quest items. Perhaps the most useful and interesting is Crafting, the ability to craft your own gear with useful stats. The question arises: what's so special about it? And the fact that here your own gear turns out to be better than what is sold or found. Therefore, high-quality parts are found much less often than purple items and are much more valuable. So, I put together a great set of items!


Also, in conjunction with leveling up skills from a certain combat branch, you have the opportunity to choose a fate. This is a thing that gives additional stats and abilities. For example, the dodge roll, available to everyone initially, is replaced with a blink for mages. And multi-class heroes have even more cool things, well done.
In the end, it turned out to be a game where you constantly fight, level up stats and skills, search for treasures, and pickpocket corpses. Oh my god, it's... THE PERFECT RPG...
I liked it, despite the fact that the game cannot provide any challenge. Except at the beginning, when the player has nothing, and in the middle, and even then I suspect that the damage from some strong enemies was high only because I was running around in low-level armor with bonuses to stealth. Pleasant, relaxing gameplay, atmospheric locations, beautiful. I wouldn't want to play it again, at least not now. It's too easy, there are practically no interesting alternative ways to develop a character. Perhaps it's a bit too long.

7/10.

Played as a Warrior. Noticed (in addition to Visu):
1. In terms of weapons, two-handed swords are better than alternatives. The advantages of one-handed swords are unclear. Hammers hit hard, but attacks are constantly interrupted. Two-handed sword attacks still take a long time to prepare, but the huge attack area allows you not to worry about being interrupted.
2. I didn't find much point in leveling up lockpicking and magic lock skills: there's save/load. However, the mechanism of magic locks is quite tedious, and particularly complex ones may require many reloads, and you'll just get tired... But even if you fail to pick the lock, it still opens.
P.S. Good game, but I didn't finish it.

I would also add that crafting gems is just as useful as crafting armor. If you fill the slots with the best runes for regeneration, you become virtually immortal. However, I found stealth to be useless, as even with a zero skill level, I was able to successfully pickpocket people and complete stealth quests without much difficulty. I also didn't finish the game because it gets too repetitive.

One-handed swords have a higher attack speed, allowing you to strike enemies with an endless series of blows, preventing them from retaliating.

Crafting stones is also useful, but not as much. There are plenty of stones of all kinds lying around at the merchants, and by the middle of the game, you'll have a huge amount of crystals and shards.
Some chests cannot be safely looted without a high stealth level, and some characters cannot be robbed at all. But even so, you can simply pay the guards.
Nothing is needed except a blacksmith. That's how it is.

One-handed swords have a higher attack speed, allowing you to strike enemies with an endless series of blows, preventing them from retaliating.

Low damage, small attack angle, and radius. If surrounded by a dense group, you won't be able to interrupt all of their attacks (but with a two-handed sword, it's easy).
Although in a duel, it might be fun: you grab them and start hitting...

Nothing is needed except a blacksmith. That's how it is.

I find the ability to locate hidden things very useful: secret doors, traps... It's helpful.

The whole point is to focus on one target. But a warrior probably doesn't need that. He's wearing armor, after all.
For the same reason, Illidan's abilities don't work as well on a Rogue; you take a lot of damage. But in a multiclass build, it would be perfect.

I haven't played this game in a long time, but I installed a Russian localization patch to fully immerse myself in the atmosphere. The game isn't bad, but unfortunately, the studio that created it went bankrupt, as far as I know...
Of the secondary quests, I remember the quest about the elven tales. I played through the game to the end, and I liked the final battle with the Dragon, but I think the game has another ending; you just need to say something different in key places in the plot.

Don't know English?

Don't know English?

It's more enjoyable in Russian with a high-quality, artistic translation by fans. In English, many interesting details are missed due to insufficient knowledge of the language, and it's not always possible to fully understand all aspects of the plot.

I don't even know, on the one hand, the official translations are absolute garbage, and on the other hand, what good could fan translations possibly produce? Especially since it's not the most popular game, probably.
But it's not just that, many things can't be translated into Russian. For example, Faeblades. Blades of the Fae? Fairy blades? Fairy daggers? Blades of the Fairies? Not great.

Faeries.

"The game was released on February 7, 2012." It hasn't been 10 years yet, so the YOBA police can relax a little for now. But not too much, because the malicious violators of the harmony of the universe are not asleep.

The graphics in the screenshots aren't great, on par with the first Witcher. You'll get away with a fine this time, but be vigilant!

Syndicate.

I replayed this game again, a game that didn't gain much popularity in the world of cute girls and huge sandboxes.
On the one hand, that's even good, fewer schoolkids will be around to fawn over it, but personally, I'd like to see a sequel, and for that to happen, the games need to bring in at least some profit for greedy EA.
I haven't played the Sega Syndicate games, or any others, I saw a trailer on TV once and realized I wanted to play it. I suggest you take a look too, it's well done.


The game is, in general, an ordinary shooter, you run around, shoot, use all sorts of cool things to kill even more enemies. Perhaps, even the mechanics here suffer a bit, shooting isn't as convenient as you'd like. It's a little unusual, but it doesn't matter. First, about how it works: pew-pew, rolls, spells, and so on.
There are about 10 guns, maybe more, and they are roughly divided into the following:
. Pistols - basic, there's another one. Ordinary pistols, just pass them by.
. Assault Rifles - three, I think. One is weaker, Chinese, the second is stronger, European, and the third is the most powerful, from the non-chipped guys. Perhaps the most used weapon in the game.
. Revolvers - two. One-shot kill to the head, but not for everyone. Weaker against lower-tier enemies, stronger against EuroCorp. A good weapon, but because you need to get used to the shooting in this game, it might not be too pleasant to shoot with them on your first playthrough.
. Shotgun - quite weak, effective (not) only at close range, at which it's easier to break an enemy's neck in melee.
. Laser - quite accurate, quite powerful, appears towards the end of the game.
. Gauss - instead of aiming, it locks onto the target and the bullets fly to it themselves. Amazing. Not the most useful weapon, although it's fun.
. Minigun - you get it three times, infinite ammo, you run and spray everyone with an endless stream of lead. Fun.
. Explosive things - grenades, EMP grenades, a rocket launcher, and a rocket launcher-shotgun with self-guided rounds(!). With the exception of grenades, you encounter them once each in the game, so you won't get to use them much.
. Flamethrower - you get it once, it burns everyone just like in Fallout, nice!

In addition to guns, the agent can run up to an enemy and, with a light movement of his hand, break his neck. Also, as you progress, three abilities become available, hacking the chip in the enemy's head:
. Suicide - the enemy picks up a grenade and blows himself up, taking his closest friends with him.
. Backfire - the chip in the enemy's weapon explodes (yes, there are chips everywhere and everything explodes), dealing damage, knocking him to the ground, and making him vulnerable.
. Persuade - forces the enemy to stand on your side, killing his own allies. And if there are no more former allies, the target will play Kurt Cobain.

During the game, you also have the opportunity to get various passive abilities, like... shooting more accurately, exploding heads more painfully, staying in DART mode longer. Useful, and they also add variety to the playthrough. DART overlay is a kind of slow-motion, shots are more accurate here, hacking is faster, and previously spotted enemies can be seen through walls.
Personally, I really like the fact that you have to use all these abilities throughout the game, nothing лишнее, no skill, no gun (except the shotgun, perhaps, haha), no upgrade. Everything is clear. Otherwise, you know, they sometimes add a hundred abilities - you end up using only one, gameplay.

The plot is so-so, not mind-blowing. You are an Agent, a super-upgraded soldier of a corporation. In the case of the main character, Miles Kilo, the corporation is EuroCorp. But our hero is not just any agent, he has a prototype of a very cool new DART 6 chip in his head, developed by the lovely Lily. So, the head of EuroCorp says, "well, guys, stop calibrating, testing, or whatever you're doing, let him go and kick our enemies' asses," and we're already flying to Aspari, hunting a smart Asian scientist.

But it's not the plot that makes this game. Not the plot and not the gameplay, what are you even talking about, have you been eating too much spice? Now I'll tell you what I like so much about it.
Excellent, captivating atmosphere. A world of the future, far ahead in technological development. Huge corporations that have taken control of people, doing whatever they want. A war of a completely different level, agents, hacking not just some abstract information banks, but the minds of people, dependent on chips that immerse them in a sweet, dreamy global network. The confrontation of syndicates, their individuality, methods of warfare, technologies used. Poor people from the lower zones, showing their teeth, deprived of the opportunity to join the happy owners of chips. Rebels from Towers Will Burn, hiding in swamps littered with EMP mines.
The game takes us through many interesting locations, briefly introducing us to some of the residents of this city, through data banks. Look, here's a scientist from Aspari, who оказался not in the right place at the right time, or a worker who was late for his morning train, hastily forgetting his documents in a bar, and there, in the lower zone, a homeless man named Jakey, nicknamed "Rat," who has had a few bottles of cheap beer, repeats the same words. Who paints black pictures on the walls, depicting Agents in a halo of weapons? What can you see with your special vision, looking at the EuroCorp propaganda posters? The network is ready to tell you about every item you encounter, placing neat icons with descriptions above them. The chip, whose beautiful female voice guides us forward, is also ready to share a wide variety of information.
Magic, a linear shooter turned out to be able to enchant me with its amazing, captivating world, which at first glance seems superficial and insignificant.
I've played this game many times with pleasure. I think I'll play it many more times.