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!