EA released a day 1 DLC (downloadable content) pack for their Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — the Weapon and Armor Bundle. In it are unique weapon sets with cool looks and powerful effects. The video above from Gamer King Tarheel shows them off well.

So is this stuff going to change your life if you buy it? Put the game in easy mode?

Well, since you can already set the game to easy mode, you probably don’t need to spend $5.00 to trivialize the game. Which is good, because these sets are only appropriate for the level in which you get them. If you buy them at level 1, this will be fantastic level 1 gear for you, but you’ll pack it away in a few levels.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In this RPG like most others in the genre, the hunt for better and more impressive gear to take on more challenging opponents is one of the draws that keep players in the game. If the best armor in the game came in a box at level 1, I can’t believe many gamers would make it much past level 10. Because, why?

This DLC is armor that you are guaranteed to outgrow. It looks really cool, but you can’t slip cool looking armor over your functional gear in the way you can in some MMOs. If you are stuck in the game, and even on easy mode you just can’t make it through, and you have tried a few different destinies and none of them are getting you through the hump, and you feel a quick shot of great gear would do the trick, then you should definitely buy this.

Otherwise, it’s just something that will look good for some screenshots but will be soon put away. Gear is not hard to come by in KoA:R, and you can make very good stuff via blacksmithing as well.

Your basic fighter/rogue

I really have come to appreciate Reckoning’s _adaptability_.

I started out as a pure fighter-type, all my points into Might. This gave me fantastic scores in blocking and swordfighting, eventually making me a master of the greatsword. This was all very cool stuff. The armor looked amazing. My ranged skills were sub-par, though, even though I gave up the chakrams for a bow. I really would rather play a stealthy type.

Plus, I got these really wicked unique daggers from a dungeon and I just wanted to play. So, I visited my local Fateweaver and told him to reset my points. It cost a bit over 2,000 gold to arrange, and I imagine that amount will increase each time I have it done.

I put all my points into Finesse, chose a full-on rogue destiny and… realized I was dressed in tatters. All my armor required Might to wear. I went to the forge and salvaged every bit of gear I had, but that didn’t give me enough components to make a full set of decent rogue armor.

This is where I loaded up my latest saved game and tried again…

Worth respeccing for!

I needed seven points of Might to wear all my current armor, so I dutifully put seven points in Might, for shield blocking, because that’s fun to do. The rest into daggers, faeblades and ranged prowess on the Finesse screen.

The hybrid might/finesse destinies seem very much designed for players who want to switch between a stand-up fight and a sneakier approach. I like that. If it doesn’t work out, I can switch again.

I just replaced the last bit of my Mass Effect 3 armor, the gloves, with a pair I crafted. Still would like some way of keeping the appearance of that armor with the stats of the stuff I’m now wearing.

FemShep strikes a pose

Last summer, Electronic Arts held a contest to decide upon the iconic face for the lead character from Mass Effect 3. Though the lead character, Shepard, can be male or female at the player’s choice, Mass Effect and its sequel were marketed with a male Shepard. Fans had been yelling for a more prominent role for the female version, known as FemShep for short.

By playing through the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo, you unlock many items useful for low level adventurers — including FemShep’s famous armored spacesuit. Even though I haven’t actually _played_ any of the Mass Effect games, I wanted FemShep to leave the airlessness of space for the lushness of Amalur for awhile. And so FemShep was born.

I’ve only played for a couple of hours, so this can’t be a full review. The game seems very different from the demo, or perhaps that’s just because I’m not racing against the clock. I’ve already found myself pulled way, way beyond the newbie fields to where the fights become somewhat challenging, leaving loads of unfinished quests behind me. I’ve had to go back and work on those.

Based again on the demo, I turned aside from my usual style of a stealthy, rogue character and sunk most of my skill points — you get three each level — into the “Might” tree. One of my free gifts from the demo were a pair of chakrams, a mage weapon. I sunk a point in to the “Sorcery” tree to get a special chakram move, and now use that instead of a bow against monsters that are reluctant to close, like wolves. I’ve sunk several points into the “Finesse” tree. After another level, I’ll be able to choose the “Duelist” destiny, a hybrid fighter/thief that specializes in melee damage with high crits. I might visit a fateweaver at that time to go completely rogue, but then I wouldn’t be able to wear the cool Shep armor!

Well, I’ve started finding stuff just as good, and soon will start finding better armor. EA was never going to let new players have end-game armor from the start. I’d have liked some way to keep it as appearance armor, though.

In fact, I’d love to have some means of storing things I’m not using at the moment. If there’s a bank or a trunk or a box somewhere to store stuff, I haven’t found it.

The game is fun enough. You can get carried away exploring, and that is A Good Thing. It’s a pretty world, and you quickly accrue a lot of combat moves; your character will adapt to your playstyle, whatever it may be, and it’s easy to fix bad decisions — unlike Skyrim.

The quests so far have been unexciting. I started out letting the NPCs talk their story out, but then started skipping the dialog (I read way faster than they talk) and now just scoop up quests and do them according to the distance of the quest objectives on the map.

In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the combat is the draw. The quests just give reasons to fight.

Cinematic dialog

The “Reckoning” is a special mode you can get into where you become extremely deadly and suck the Fate right out of your fallen enemies. Just in case you were wondering what that was. It’s one of the more distinctive bits of a fantasy RPG that Electronic Arts hopes will be compelling glimpse into the world of Amalur for eager fans awaiting its unveiling as a fully-fledged MMO.

“Reckoning”, developed by Big Huge Games, was originally going to be an RPG with entirely different lore. 38 Studios bought BHG and “Reckoning” as a platform for the assets, lore, and setting for the world R.A.Salvatore and Todd McFarlane developed. A world of deep fantasy, innate magic and twisted beauty.

You wake up on a pile of rotting corpses, in “Reckoning”. As your lifeless corpse is being carted to the incinerator, the gnome corpse handlers discuss the finer points of your well-preserved carcass, giving you (the player) an opportunity to customize your character and set your name “for the records”.

But you aren’t actually dead. Well, not any more. The Well of Souls, an experimental machine, has plucked your spirit from the aether and given you a new body. This trick has never actually resulted in a living being — until now. You’re the first. And now everyone wants to kill you, unless you put your faith in some gnomes.

I recall an interview with R.A. Salvatore where he mentioned that there was finally a game that bothered to give an explanation as to why your character could bounce back so easily from death again and again. But single player RPGs don’t generally do that. You die, it’s game over, load your last save. It’s clear from this that Reckoning truly is meant to be a prelude to the larger game yet to come.

Note the thin paths between zones. Open world this is not.

The tutorial equips you and instructs you in the arts of the three main archetypes (Fates), Warrior (Might), Rogue (Finesse) and Mage (Sorcery), though these are by no means set in stone, and you can change them at any time by changing your gear or by choosing a new Fate, once you have unlocked the ability. Fates are unlocked by purchasing or upgrading abilities on the talent tree when you level. You can choose to stick with one line, or mix two or even all three fates in any way you like. Each combination has its own unique powers.

I chose the Finesse tree (mostly) for the demo, though a bug in the talent tree UI had me spending points in a tree I didn’t expect. Even though I went with Finesse armor and weapons, nothing prevented me from keeping a fire staff ready and casting a spell or two.

BHG only gives you a couple of hours to play the demo before it kicks you out. In that time I completed a few quests, killed dozens of monsters and explored two dungeons. I also unlocked a lot of items for use in the retail game and in Mass Effect 3. You get a Reckoning-theme weapon in ME3 for running out the clock in the demo… so that’s something to watch for.

I went through the demo wondering where I’d seen this game before. Then it hit me: this game looks so much like Sony Online Entertainment’s Free Realms. The PC models are more realistic (if that word has any meaning in a fantasy title), but the world itself — I’d spent time there.

Not the character creation screen

Character Creation

Your character can choose from four races — which correspond roughly to what would be human, barbarian, high elf and wood elf in other RPGs — but aside from a point or two in a different place in your starting talent tree, your race doesn’t make a material difference in the story. My character, a wood elf, came across a human who claimed to be on an errand for powerful, mystical, rarely seen Fae. Considering that the “Fae” would turn out to be wood elf bandits, same race as me, you’d think that human would have taken one look at me, muttered a curse beneath his breath, and simply returned home that very moment.

Combat

Combat is a hybrid between the click to target and you hit what you aim at methods. The game will pick out the likeliest target automatically based on which way you are facing, your weapon and distance to target and that will be your target, even if it means it has to swivel your character to point off screen and attack something you hadn’t seen. Instead of the enemy in front of you.

You can and should dodge enemy attacks, or pull out your shield to block. Holding up a shield while the enemy does a 1-2-3 hit and then unleashing a melee barrage while they recover is the way to win any battle. Kill enough and you can unleash the “reckoning”, which puts you slightly out of phase with the world, sends everything in slow motion, and lets you just become a killing machine, ending with a showy finishing move (that can be enhanced through a quick time event; watch for it).

Players can learn combo attacks and dodge out of the way of almost any attack.

All characters can block with a shield, cast spells or enter stealth. Spending points in the appropriate trees enhances these. Choosing appropriate fates even more.

Reckoning’s version of a stealth archer is pretty far up the Fate list. I like playing stealthy roguely types, the hallmark of the Rogue fate. Sneak up behind someone fast enough and wait for the UI to signal the special Backstab move. Nigh instant death. That works if you can get behind them before they see you, anyway. Mobs typically are positioned so that they are staring right at you as you enter the room, so stealth wasn’t that useful for me. The higher level Fates seem to address the problem, eventually, but you’ll want to be relying on other talents until stealth becomes useful.

The Well of Souls

Questing

I haven’t seen a Kill Ten X quest in the demo; all the quests further the story in some way (the dark elf Tuatha are invading the land in order to destroy the Well of Souls and just cause general mischief). Or introduce the land and the lore. Escort quests seem to be an early favorite. I also got a “collect ten lost things” quest, so, generally, Reckoning doesn’t break any new ground in questing.

The Pros

The developers of BHG have definitely done a good job with the assets of Amalur, telling the story, introducing the races, the gods, the magic system and the lore. Quest objectives are marked on a map, fast travel is available, difficulty can be adjusted and the graphics are low fidelity enough that it should (should) “run on a toaster”.

The combat closely resembles the hybrid combat found in RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons Online. The armor and weapons look appropriate and impressive. The “fate” system is an intriguing way of implementing classes, of which there are many.

Though as the player is unique in the world in having no fate and therefore being able to pick and choose their fate, the implication is that everyone else in the world is born with their eventual class pre-determined by their unchangeable fate.

The giving and continuing of quests using in-game cinematics might be a pro or a con, depending on how you feel about them. I’m leaving it in the pro side. It adds to the atmosphere of the game and they can be skipped.

The game can be played, on the PC, with either mouse or keyboard or a game controller. The UI shifts between the two control methods based on which one you most recently used, moment to moment. It’s actually rather neat.

The Cons

I couldn’t play the game at first; I asked for help and was told to bring down my graphics settings. That worked, but there were still graphical glitches elsewhere in the game. Presumably all these will be sorted out by the time the game goes live (and I have read they are already fixed; we’re running old code in the demo).

Rogues seem a little weaker than the other main paths in the demo.

The game is, graphically, flat and decidedly old school. This could be because I had to lower the graphics to get the game to run or a deliberate choice, but it doesn’t stand up well to modern RPGs like Skyrim or Dragon Age II. Again, this is entirely subjective, and you might well prefer this style. The most popular MMORPG in the world uses it. Can’t argue with eleven million players.

While an online connection doesn’t seem to be required, it is necessary to be connected to log achievements and so on.

As in many newer games released both on consoles and the PC, the UI strongly favors a game controller. Looking at inventory, equipping gear, changing weapons and spells and so on all require navigating through menus. Hopefully this will be modded out as Skyrim’s similar design decision allowed.

Buy/No Buy?

If you’re eager for a peek at 38 Studio’s “Copernicus”, which shares a setting with Reckoning, this has to be a day 1 buy for you. If you’re after a fun RPG with a good story, Reckoning will likely fill the bill.

Last year my single player RPGs were Dragon Age II, Dungeon Siege III and Elder Scrolls V (Skyrim). Sequels all. Reckoning starts a new franchise in an expansive world. It’s no Skyrim, but not every game has to be a Skyrim. It’s a clear sight better than DS3 and DA2, if you set aside Reckoning’s relatively shoddy graphics (which, again, may be a bug that has already been fixed).

I’m giving it a cautious recommendation.