Kingdoms of Amalur

I have been busy with the demo for this new game, that's just out for maybe like 3 days. I believe it went gold on the 7th. As with many of these new be whatever as long as you're a fighter, ranger or mage with restrictions that are called innovative and new, I feared I wouldn't like it much. Kingdoms follows a tried and tested formula by now, a formula invented and perfected by Blizzard North. (A Division of Blizzard responsible for the Diablo franchise.) As such, it is instantly recognizable. You level up, and are constantly on the look out for better gear and weapons. As can be expected with a game with mechanics that are traced back to the very first Diablo, there's absolutely nothing new under the sun.

It gets even worse, because there's a morality system that is blatantly stolen from Bioware. Lockpicking and crafting are carbon-copies from Bethesda's Fallout 3 and Oblivion respectively. Gemming your gear was also first done by Blizzard in yet again Diablo. Voice-acting is so bad Ego Dragonis' voice-acting is worth an Oscar in comparison, because in Ego Dragonis, voice-talent had passed the class where they teach basic intonation. In Kingdoms, voices are flat lines and quite frankly, grate on the nerves rather quick. Luckily, the protagonist doesn't speak. In essence, all of this has been done before and in all cases much better. Especially in the case of voice-acting... Where are Liam Neeson, Jennifer Hale and Eliza Dushku when you need them? Sheesh. Oh, and it suffers from a bad case of "your awesomely acrobatic superhuman with omnipotent ability can't navigate shallow inclines in the land". That's right. You can't hop off from a little ledge your grandma with her brittle hip laughs at. Also, I challenge the notion that an open world is a collection of interconnected mazes.

For the story.., you're a borked lab-experiment in the fountain of eternal rebirth and true immortals don't like it. Think middle-earth and Azeroth here and you'll be getting the general picture. "Rich Lore" nowadays equate to calling elves something else than elves, dreaming up some other races that will never stick outside their own universe and coming up with weird names for villages.

So, in order for Kingdoms to save itself from sub-par mediocrity (if mediocrity has gradations), it must bring something to the table that makes it worth playing. That it does. The fighting is pretty awesome. I gravitated towards stealth and akimbo-daggers. Sneaking up and going for the silent kill is awesome. But also magic and raw melee felt very good. It's just that in these kind of games, stealth demands a more slow approach allowing me to set the pace. So when it became time for me to set my destiny for the first time, I went with Rogue and Finesse. And once I get the full game eventually, I will prolly not venture outside those boundaries.

How does the game play on an I7Core with a Gforce GT420HDMI 1Gig on a 4gig sysmem board? Full righthand sliders across the board here and every setting on "high" (highest settings) did not stop it from playing flawlessly. Yet, seeing as this title is 2012, the graphics still look outdated. There's no wow factor here. I can only guess it's by design, as my computer treats Kingdoms as a light snack between meals.

In short: Absolutely nothing new, patchwork of borrowed ideas that have been done much better in their original games and run off the mill "rich lore". Standard graphics that are nothing to write about, even on full graphic capability. Abismal voice-acting. Very good implemented fighting.

Verdict: wait till Steam has it on sale coming summer.

Hope: That it won't become a franchise. For the love of all that's holy, let it end here.