So I played the demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning this week for PS3.
When they started really putting a lot of information on their website about the Fate system and showing some artwork, I was really excited about the game. There aren't many authors better at creating fantasy lore than RA Salvatore and Todd McFarlane is pretty much a genius.
Unfortunately, the demo didn't live up to my excitement. At all. The first time I installed, it didn't work at all. Got to the title screen, pressed start, and the game would hang. Deleted the game, reinstalled. It worked. Sort of. Conversations were buggy, and the music/background were all kinds of buggy.
I can forgive a few bugs in a demo if it weren't two weeks before release, and if the gameplay were compelling. Reckoning, by my reckoning (har), wasn't the least bit compelling. The graphics looked dated, the controls felt mushy and unresponsive, the skills were lackluster and the talent trees were boring. For a game that was obviously influenced by great games like The Elder Scrolls, Fable, and World of Warcraft, it was pretty bland.
With Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight 2, and Heart of the Swarm coming up fast, and with my growing stack of games that I should play through, I'm definitely going to skip Reckoning.
