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.