At The End, Do You Understand

Well.

There I was, on the home stretch of Kingdoms of Amalur.  Maybe three to five hours of gameplay left, and two days off to get them done.

Then I fought out that the game is fricking broken!  Thanks to the wonders of combining event flags and open-world RPG mechanics, I found out that smacking around some of the forces of evil's stuff that I randomly stumbled upon without the relevant quest up to the right point leaves the quest broken and unable to be completed.  This wouldn't be so bad, except that it's a main storyline quest, and renders the game unbeatable.  To rub salt into the wound, the only backup save I have is clocked at 25 hours; my primary save currently sits at 64.  Forty damned hours of catchup to do if I want to fix it.

Honestly, to hell with it.  This is a fun game, and the faeblades bring the Harvest to new, graceful heights; it is not worth redoing a full month's worth of playing time right now.  As it stands now, Amalur is currently going to be marked as 'halted indefinitely' on my campaign list, and put to bed.

So, some thoughts, that can be considered a 'final impressions' entry.

The game itself plays wonderfully, and while the combat is fairly simplistic, it works very well, especially for a first effort on the part of a developer.  The boss fights are something of a disappointment, leaving the mooks to pick up the slack.  They consistently delivered challenge, and holds a rare place as an RPG that had mooks that actually took me out a couple of times a session, typically.

The loot and crafting is simple and enjoyable.  I liked being able to harvest components from junked gear to turn into new, custom loot to play with.  There are a few gripes, mostly the randomness of the salvage mechanic, and the tendency for the game to drop early-level potions in late-game areas.  If there was an opportunity to upgrade the potions (say, by using the 'upgrade' reagents on a potion), it would make something useful of an otherwise wasted inventory slot.  That said, being able to crank out personalizes goodies without the usual mucking about with tables and guesswork a big point in this game's favor.

The story is, well, ok.  You've got the usual 'chosen one' crap.  The Fae concept used here works out fairly well, but the whole dying race bit gets fairly old, and its pretty bizarre to be effectively the last member standing of a couple of factions at the end of their questlines.  The sidequests are all over the place, but most of them are fairly original takes on things.  Stuff like hunting down a phaseshifting fountain so you can restore a wolf from human form (a nifty reversal on the usual cliche), getting into some small-scale, but hardcore, corporate warfare, and winding up with your own mine out of it, and deciding which dumbass elf gets to keep the army of skeletal relatives are some of the highlights.  I also liked the idea of a Mirkwood ripoff becoming fairly benevolent, with people harvesting the silk from giant spiderwebs and making it into a industry.  And ripping enemies fate out of them and smiting them with it is damn awesome.

Unfortunately there are a fair amount to bugs, to be expected with a both a first foray and a complex open-world RPG.  Most of them are minor annoyances, like a conversation with an NPC being completely blocked onscreen by a nasty graphical glitch.  Some can be funny.  Try fast-traveling or loading into an area with 'wounded' NPCs.  The game loads them like normal versions, and then they kneel or lie down, jump back up, and then go back down and sit there acting pathetic.  It breaks immersion, but its a hoot to think that these poor shmucks are like "Oh crap, the hero's here, gotta act all wounded now," like actors screwing up their cues.  Then there are the nasty ones that lock out quests, including the above one that renders the game unbeatable.  Cheese for everyone, I guess.

Overall, this is a fun game, and I recommend giving this a whirl if you would like to try to try a different take on the usual RPG wanderings.  And don't forget that this game lets you dual-wield bat'leths!

Juxtaposition of Suction

So.

I've been trying to accelerate the Amalur campaign so I can put it to bed and start on the huge pile of JRPGs that are starting to accumulate.  Paypal plus joke of a sleeping schedule equals lots of bad decisions, in case no one else told you.

In any case, I had a bit of a roller coaster experience with it today.  Started off with a bit of futzing about; I needed to get back in the zone.  Some games give you a house or mansion to hang out in and stash your stuff as a reward.  Amalur gives you those, but then it up the ante:  You can have your own mine!  Seriously, a quest chain involves you clearing out a competitor for a gnomish mining company, and they reward you with the (now crushed and outlawed) guy's assets, plus workers and staff to get started.  While it's really just an elaborate gold farm, just the idea of really tickles me.  The only thing that would make it perfect is if you could get mineral-based reagents instead as an option.

So I have a good time with my new mine and Swag Shack, then I buckle down and continue the main quest.  Protip:  There is a major boss fight, with a lot of buildup and drama.  I won't give specifics in case of spoilerphobia; suffice to say that you help with securing a special method to deal with it, you have convince people to help, yadda yadda.  And then you get to the big battle and drama happens and stuff...and the actual fight against the thing is plain boring.  It's Borderlands 2's Wilhelm all over again, with the added insult of crappy drops.

I know that perfect games do not exist, and we have a game that was supposed to kickstart a franchise, so a few rough edges are to be expected.  This one was just, well, tragic.  It does the mook fights pretty well, and its capable of giving you a run for your money when it wants to.  Then you get an actually big scary boss that has been wrecking the good guys' shit for half of forever, and it amounts to three to five minutes of button mashing and remembering to maybe use your shield some.

But hey, the game is still good, and you get a mine out of the deal.

Travelocity

So.

The Harvest is still tearing a swath thought the unworthy in Kingdoms of Amalur:  Reckoning.  I've finally managed (read: bothered) to make it to Adessa, the local gnome capital.  The gnomes are all caste-ey and stuff, and you get some the usual hints of magitek-punk wackiness expected of gnomes, but they have a good unique flavor.  They wander around and scheme and stuff, and sport Scot accents.  The part that really amuses me is that their warriors dress like Romans.

Roman gnomes!  Whether they admit it or not; whether they intended it not, that is so obviously a play on the Travelocity Roaming Gnome.  Hell, a case can be made that the Scot accent idea is a reference to Old Man Henderson, gnome collector and certified crazy awesome badass.

Can you see it yet?  An army of beardy mini-legionaries, scream that they have come to enforce the guarantee?  Just when this game couldn't get more cookie-cutter fantasy cliche, we start getting glimmering glimpses of the insano genius that was going on the studio.  Too bad we could get playable gnomes.  Imagine become a gnome faeblade specialist with the special destiny:  Acolyte of Belkar.  We all gnome mooks go whirr in the blender!

Too. Many. Games!

Since I have absolutely no one's attention...

Well, I'm still tearing about and letting the Harvest tear through the unworthy in Kingdoms of Amalur:  Reckoning.  Still damned fun, too.

But then again, my heretofore unstated goal of creating and surpassing my old console RPG collection is having a consequence that I really should have seen coming; the queue is now almost depressingly long now.  Par for the course, when I actually bother to have something of an ambition, it backfires in a bleakly hilarious way.

Ironically enough, I've actually been a great deal more industrious about my gaming, in spite of, or maybe even because I'm a working-class stiff with a full-time job.  I've pulled off three consecutive RPG kills last year (Tales of Legendia, Tales of The Abyss, and Tales of Vesperia), while adding only one or two a year before that, mostly because I kept doing reruns of Diablo III and Borderlands 2.

But overall, it still been my most nerdly productive period ever thus far.  As lame as it sounds, I'm still dead set on knuckling down and adding some old friends to my 'completed' list.  We'll see.

Fifty Blades of Fae

No matter that nobody reads my gibbering madness, I shall scream into the cyber-winds!

I've been tearing about again in Kingdoms of Amalur:  Reckoning.  It's still an awful amount of fun, especially if you go ahead and take in in fairly small doses.  It's that rare RPG that doesn't really reward going for marathon runs.

It's starting to actually getting fun with the combat.  Somebody at Big Huge Games played way too Soul Calibur.   Things have actually gotten crazier with the 'flavor' weapons, particularly the Faeblades.  From the name, you'd figure it'd be some extra goofy elf dagger thingies, and you'd be close to right.  However, in the hands of a capable character, you get a very different picture; they're called Faeblades because the lawyers wouldn't let be called dual-wield bat'leths.  Seriously, you're tearing around in the closest thing we'll ever have to Klingon ninja madness.  It's a lovely day to die!  The only way it'd get more crazy awesome is if we got gnomes a playable race.  Behold, I am the Ginsu Gnome, acolyte of Belkar, come to enforce the guarantee.

Fate Is For The Weak!

Well, despite the spambots efforts and my own apathy, I'm inflicting another assault upon the oh-so-innocent blogosphere.

Still tearing about and terrorizing the forces of evil in Kingdoms of Amalur.  I've found that its actually one of those rare RPGs that rewards being taken in fairly small bursts.  That said, you can still binge like a madman if you feel like.

I've managed to use and unleash the harvest with most of the weapon types offered thus far.  The swords and daggers, and other 'standard' weapons do pretty much what you expect.  But then I found the 'flavor' weapons of the game:  chakrams and faeblades.  So, did you want to play an RPG with a Soul Calibur character?  Holy crap is this game for you then!  It's a bit difficult to explain the faeblade's moveset without visual references, but suffice to say that you get to tear around with these miniature double-bladed scimitars of doom (and you dual wield the things), and you come awfully close to becoming a cross between Taz and a giant salad shooter.  Behold the Death Blender!

Chakrams are also quite awesome, this version being magically controlled ring-shaped boomerangs of slicer-y.  For whatever reason, these are considered 'mage' weapons, so they come standard with all sorts of elemental powers.  They're no quite the insanity of some of the other 'crazy' weapons I've seen, but they make up for it with serious defensive crowd control.

The mooks encountered thus far are fairly diverse.  You've got your usual bandits and wolves and bears (none of which are nearly as scary as their Skyrim counterparts), then you get some fairly off-the-wall things like boggarts (angry little tree-spirits that spread plague) and sprites (pretty much what you get when you cross cherub-babies with Gremlins); all in all, a nice group of baddies thus far.

Oh, have I mentioned the eponymous Reckoning yet?  Reckoning is this games super-mode, where you control the threads of fate(!) and wreck faces in an extra flashy fashion.  If you kill something in Reckoning mode, you can do a little QTE finisher for extra experience.  The cool part?  You're ripping their fate out and killing them with it!  Evil is even more trouble than usual now, since you can beat minions to death and then be all "I'LL BREAK YOU DEAD" and rip then up with their own doom!  No Doctor Who bullshit to come back and haunt you either.  Fate is now your bitch, which is extra sweet if you've ever played Chrono Cross.

Ugh, I'm such a nerd.