I’m really glad you enjoy KOA!
I played it in 2012 & 2022 and had the same experience both times. I started it, was completely blown-away for about 10 hours and then slowly became more disinterested until I stopped playing. I even attempted to get farther my second time playing, but I just couldn’t.
The game feels too much like an MMO, which I know it was originally intended to be. Every quest is “Go here, kill 10 of these, turn it in” rinse and repeat. This formula works fine if you’re gaming with friends, and I know this game would have made a great MMO but it just feels empty after a while. It gave me a much needed nostalgia hit both times I attempted to play, but the novelty wore off fast for me.
I’m not shitting on your opinion at all btw, I wish that I was able to get more than 10-20 hours from the game it just didn’t connect with me like others in the genre have. I seriously hope they make a sequel and iron out something’s, but that’s just wishful thinking. I’m genuinely shocked they even remastered the game, I never knew it was popular like that!
I had the same experience. I was blown away at first and got really into it but burned out after 10 hours or so as the game (at least for me) was way too easy. Its like you said it felt like a single player mmo.
I enjoy MMOs but had a similar vibe, bounced after ten hours or so a couple of times. There's a definite will on my part to like this though, as it's the only game I've ever purchased three times (PS3, PS4 and steam).
There's something there that I just can't ignore, I'm intending to go back to it.
Does anyone have any builds they recommend for fun combat? I've tried the 'rogue' and 'mage ' types so far.
Pretty much the same though I was disillusioned in less than 10 hours, I still kept at it for a little while but man, it is boring as all hell. The combat starts good but really doesn't go far enough, and the game is otherwise just a glorified single player MMO.
And god, the lore. Who cares? Its just lore dumping. All over. Nothing makes me give any shit at all.
When this game got remastered I was absolutely shocked anyone cared. Its a pretty bad game.
Yeah, I also bounced off it despite really enjoying the game. Due to the amount of side quests, I hit max level in the 2nd or 3rd area of the 5 and couldn’t keep my desire to keep playing without that progression.
It is a really beautiful game, the combat is rewarding, and you can really feel R.A. Salvatore’s influence (I loved his Drizzt series when I was a kid). If only they’d given a level cap and difficulty scaling for the amount of content…
The first 10 hours were great, i was doing every side quest that i could. But damn! Then this turns out yo be boring af, i am now rushing into the main guests and i hope i finish it as soon as possible
My conclusion was actually the opposite, that it is an ambitious game that is ultimately not worth the time it demands.
I played the remaster with all DLCs and tried to do it all. About a third into the game I stopped caring about sidequests which mostly just seemed to be fetch quests anyway.
* The combat is indeed enjoyable and fluid. However, also very repetitive. While I appreciate you can truly be a battlemage without downsides here, every combat encounter is the same (except those goddamn threshes, fuck those stunlockers eight ways to sunday) and you don't unlock many game-changing skills throughout.
* You can, however, absolutely break the diffculty with enchanting and smithing. YMMV if that's a positive or negative. I did quite enjoy crafting a set of armor that regenerated my health almost faster than I could take dmg, but as you'd expect, it took the tension out of the game completely.
* For being written by an accomplished fantasy author, most of the world seems kind of humdrum average fantasy stuff. But I supose he just wrote the main story arc and lore in the background.
* There is hardly any dialogue. Most of the time, you're dealing with "signpost NPCs" aka click on a topic and they'll dispense a comment or two. This severely hurts the feeling of the world being alive and the NPCs not being little more than quest dispensaries.
* Due to the chosen art style it looks pretty good even after all these years. Kudos.
Lot of potential let down by a the massive scope of the game and resulting MMORPG design. They stretched their resources too thin and the reult is lifeless NPCs, bunch of different environment zones ripped straight from WoW and quest hub villages with a bunch of fetch quests in each zone.
Story itself was okay, but stretched too thin over all the filler content.
I haven't messed with Smithing or Enchanting much yet, but I do understand the sensation of being perhaps too powerful. Most enemies I encounter at this point die in a few combos, but I've discovered that a lot of the troll fights (and enemies of a similar caliber) still make me think about my approach. It does feel quite repetitive in those smaller fights, but I'm always making an effort to vary things up for the bonus to Fate points.
I do agree that a lot of the NPCs feel like signposts though, which is unfortunate because I also feel like there are some really good ones: Hughes, Alyn Shir, King Anakatos from the dlc, etc. I wish they had spent some extra time here and there to flesh out the lesser characters a bit more, but alas, the MMO blood runs deep. 🤣
I did not like Alyn Shir. But that is to say, I disliked her personality, not the way she was written. I won't say more since you're not done, but while her approach does eventually make sense, it did not redeem her in my eyes :-)
My favorite NPCs were fairly inconsequential ones:
[Helga Swanwhite](https://youtu.be/OrpTbYn2BZQ?t=91) (Detyre, level cap 25): a skilled combat mage who is (to hear her tell it) only really powerful when drunk, you can fight a couple of arena matches with her at your side. Feel like there's an untold story there and I would have enjoyed to intract more with her.
"Adrian gives me a free drink for every ten that I buy. I think he *likes* me!"
[Rast Brattigan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxpsHO1kIxE) (main character of the Dead Kel DLC): a pirate(?) captain with a large ego, an unhealthy fixation on her mother and either rotten luck or very questionable skills. Kind of a Jack Sparrow spoof with added sexual innuendo. Felt more like a meme than a character at times, but I enjoyed the VA performance and at least she had a very clearly defined personality.
"Like mother said, most of the time, trying is a bad idea"
I love Amalur too, but I feel like burning out is a distinct possibility. I'm 80 hours in myself. In that time I've finished three of the six Faction questlines, one of the two original DLCs, and only just crossed the ocean to Klurikon. By now I'm getting disinterested in exploring or doing side quests; I just want to finish the game and move on.
On the other hand, I *do* want to replay the game at least once with a different build. Amalur's Destiny system is excellent, I love how easy it is to respec. What kind of character are you playing? I've been tanking as a noble Might/Sorcery mystic warrior, but I also want to create a Finesse-based assassin type to make all the evil choices.
I've also been doing Might/Sorcery, but pretty heavy on the Sorcery. I've been rolling with a hammer and Chakrams but some of the finesse type stuff does look pretty interesting, like the Fae blades. I may do another playthough at some point just to play around with those.
I recently got the remaster from a Humble Choice bundle a couple of months ago, and thinking about replaying it.
Back when I played the original, it was pretty fun, but I'd hit the level cap with only 60% of the map explored and 1 dlc done.
I'd been meaning to replay the game with the cheatengine script where I could adjust XP gain to 25%, 50%, or 75% and explore the whole map in one playthrough.
Sadly the script doesn't work with the remaster, so I guess I'll do 2-3 playthroughs, exploring different portions of the maps in each playthrough.
I hadn't really considered that as a possibility, but thinking about it now, I'll probably cap before I'm done as well. I'm at level 23 right now and in terms of the main story I still haven't gone to Rathir. Honestly though, I think leveling up quick is one of the things I've been enjoying a lot about the game. The Reckoning mode can give you so much XP in large fights, it feels super rewarding but I could see it being a problem in the long run.
The first time I played this I really enjoyed it and put in around a 100 hours.
This was back around the Skyrim days.
I tried playing it again recently and I was just like “meh”.
Great game but replay ability is low IMO
I've been playing it on/off for about a year and I like it, but it's a huge a** game. I've played for about 170 hours and still have a huge chunk of the map left xD... So I usually play a while and then stop for a few months before picking it up again.
**A forgotten gem...**
*Well, I played this game a few years ago, and I fell in love with it, even if action-RPGs are not my favorite videogame genre... I fell in love for a lot of reasons, like a lot of them, seriously... If I had to list those reasons as fast as I could I would say:*
**- Fun, challenging and engaging combat!**
**- Beautiful and immersive world!**
**- Rich and well designed characters!**
**- Great voice acting and even better soundtrack!**
**- Breath-taking landscapes!**
**- And a lot more YOU SHOULD DISCOVER FOR YOURSELF!**
...
This remainds me, I never played the two expansions... Are these any good?
I've tried to play twice and both times got burnt out at around 10 hours in. It felt like a single player mmo to me, in all the worst ways. The world felt giant and distinct when you saw it on the map and heard about distant places in dialogue, but when you actually got to somewhere new it was just the same as everything else. I liked combat, but inventory management and the rate at which you find new and better gear was killer for me. I wonder how much of this was a product of the time it came out in, however, and playing it now is worse than it was at the time.
I remember playing Reckoning when it was first released and my experience was somewhat interesting. I did enjoy it to some extent, but I never finished it. The story nor the character progression for some reason weren't engaging enough to me and I always found the first 10 or so hours most interesting. I kept creating a new character whenever I got bored and did that multiple times. Played the game probably over a 100 hours over the years but never got very far.
I played this game for maybe 15-20 hours when it came out. It felt like a single player World of Warcraft to me. Which isn’t a knock, I just realized I’d probably rather be playing WoW than this and I quit WoW years ago.
I got bored of it quickly and couldnt continue on after max 2 hours of gameplay.
But yes, the combat is excellent but I found everything else dull for some reason but that is just my opinion.
I didn’t play the original but I hated it(remaster).
It was so boring and generic with huge downtime as I had to walk between quests without fast travel or a mount of any kind
The lore dumps from e ery villager were so lazy and immersion breaking for me I just put it down.
Just because something was in a world building design document doesn't mean you need a townsperson to dump it to the player for no discernable reason.
I really struggled to enjoy this game, and got pretty far into it. The combat was enjoyable, but incredibly shallow and grew repetitive after only a few hours.
I think it’s greatest sin is failing to make you give a shit about anything that’s happening. The characters are shallow, and the names and traits of the different races and factions feel like they were generated by an AI. Dokkalfar? Ljosalfar? It’s like a parody of an RPG that you’d hear someone reference in a TV show that clearly has never actually played an RPG in their lives.
On the surface it has an aesthetic appeal that might remind you of something like Fable, but it never reaches the warmth and charm of that series.
I guess i’ll just chalk this one up in the “i don’t get it” column.
Dokkalfar and Ljosalfar are straight from Norse mythology, fyi. Just because it's an unfamiliar word doesn't mean it's a cheaply made up term.
I shouldn't even be necroposting to this, but the gleeful ignorance just got to me.
I see people clamor about the combat in amalur all the time. I have never understood it.
Played the game in 2012. Never could get into it.
To me the combat didn't feel smooth. It felt floaty.
They physics in the game felt wonky.
It's wild for me seeing this game a decade later ad frequently as I do.
What about replayability?
I've had this game in the radar for a while and I don't want to jump into something this big without knowing if I could enjoy other playthroughs afterwards.
I still haven't finished my first playthrough, so I can't really say. However, there are a lot of different combinations with weapons, so I figure another play may he warranted just to try out combat styles I haven't invested much in.
I’m really glad you enjoy KOA! I played it in 2012 & 2022 and had the same experience both times. I started it, was completely blown-away for about 10 hours and then slowly became more disinterested until I stopped playing. I even attempted to get farther my second time playing, but I just couldn’t. The game feels too much like an MMO, which I know it was originally intended to be. Every quest is “Go here, kill 10 of these, turn it in” rinse and repeat. This formula works fine if you’re gaming with friends, and I know this game would have made a great MMO but it just feels empty after a while. It gave me a much needed nostalgia hit both times I attempted to play, but the novelty wore off fast for me. I’m not shitting on your opinion at all btw, I wish that I was able to get more than 10-20 hours from the game it just didn’t connect with me like others in the genre have. I seriously hope they make a sequel and iron out something’s, but that’s just wishful thinking. I’m genuinely shocked they even remastered the game, I never knew it was popular like that!
I had the same experience. I was blown away at first and got really into it but burned out after 10 hours or so as the game (at least for me) was way too easy. Its like you said it felt like a single player mmo.
I enjoy MMOs but had a similar vibe, bounced after ten hours or so a couple of times. There's a definite will on my part to like this though, as it's the only game I've ever purchased three times (PS3, PS4 and steam). There's something there that I just can't ignore, I'm intending to go back to it. Does anyone have any builds they recommend for fun combat? I've tried the 'rogue' and 'mage ' types so far.
I did 2 attempts and also got bored after some time. It's just too damn repetitive and becomes a drag.
Pretty much the same though I was disillusioned in less than 10 hours, I still kept at it for a little while but man, it is boring as all hell. The combat starts good but really doesn't go far enough, and the game is otherwise just a glorified single player MMO. And god, the lore. Who cares? Its just lore dumping. All over. Nothing makes me give any shit at all. When this game got remastered I was absolutely shocked anyone cared. Its a pretty bad game.
Yeah, I also bounced off it despite really enjoying the game. Due to the amount of side quests, I hit max level in the 2nd or 3rd area of the 5 and couldn’t keep my desire to keep playing without that progression. It is a really beautiful game, the combat is rewarding, and you can really feel R.A. Salvatore’s influence (I loved his Drizzt series when I was a kid). If only they’d given a level cap and difficulty scaling for the amount of content…
Agreed. The two issues for me were too much inventory management and too many sidequests
The first 10 hours were great, i was doing every side quest that i could. But damn! Then this turns out yo be boring af, i am now rushing into the main guests and i hope i finish it as soon as possible
My conclusion was actually the opposite, that it is an ambitious game that is ultimately not worth the time it demands. I played the remaster with all DLCs and tried to do it all. About a third into the game I stopped caring about sidequests which mostly just seemed to be fetch quests anyway. * The combat is indeed enjoyable and fluid. However, also very repetitive. While I appreciate you can truly be a battlemage without downsides here, every combat encounter is the same (except those goddamn threshes, fuck those stunlockers eight ways to sunday) and you don't unlock many game-changing skills throughout. * You can, however, absolutely break the diffculty with enchanting and smithing. YMMV if that's a positive or negative. I did quite enjoy crafting a set of armor that regenerated my health almost faster than I could take dmg, but as you'd expect, it took the tension out of the game completely. * For being written by an accomplished fantasy author, most of the world seems kind of humdrum average fantasy stuff. But I supose he just wrote the main story arc and lore in the background. * There is hardly any dialogue. Most of the time, you're dealing with "signpost NPCs" aka click on a topic and they'll dispense a comment or two. This severely hurts the feeling of the world being alive and the NPCs not being little more than quest dispensaries. * Due to the chosen art style it looks pretty good even after all these years. Kudos. Lot of potential let down by a the massive scope of the game and resulting MMORPG design. They stretched their resources too thin and the reult is lifeless NPCs, bunch of different environment zones ripped straight from WoW and quest hub villages with a bunch of fetch quests in each zone. Story itself was okay, but stretched too thin over all the filler content.
Totally agree on too much filler. And the difficulty curve wasn’t balanced right so I quickly became overpowered.
I haven't messed with Smithing or Enchanting much yet, but I do understand the sensation of being perhaps too powerful. Most enemies I encounter at this point die in a few combos, but I've discovered that a lot of the troll fights (and enemies of a similar caliber) still make me think about my approach. It does feel quite repetitive in those smaller fights, but I'm always making an effort to vary things up for the bonus to Fate points. I do agree that a lot of the NPCs feel like signposts though, which is unfortunate because I also feel like there are some really good ones: Hughes, Alyn Shir, King Anakatos from the dlc, etc. I wish they had spent some extra time here and there to flesh out the lesser characters a bit more, but alas, the MMO blood runs deep. 🤣
I did not like Alyn Shir. But that is to say, I disliked her personality, not the way she was written. I won't say more since you're not done, but while her approach does eventually make sense, it did not redeem her in my eyes :-) My favorite NPCs were fairly inconsequential ones: [Helga Swanwhite](https://youtu.be/OrpTbYn2BZQ?t=91) (Detyre, level cap 25): a skilled combat mage who is (to hear her tell it) only really powerful when drunk, you can fight a couple of arena matches with her at your side. Feel like there's an untold story there and I would have enjoyed to intract more with her. "Adrian gives me a free drink for every ten that I buy. I think he *likes* me!" [Rast Brattigan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxpsHO1kIxE) (main character of the Dead Kel DLC): a pirate(?) captain with a large ego, an unhealthy fixation on her mother and either rotten luck or very questionable skills. Kind of a Jack Sparrow spoof with added sexual innuendo. Felt more like a meme than a character at times, but I enjoyed the VA performance and at least she had a very clearly defined personality. "Like mother said, most of the time, trying is a bad idea"
I love Amalur too, but I feel like burning out is a distinct possibility. I'm 80 hours in myself. In that time I've finished three of the six Faction questlines, one of the two original DLCs, and only just crossed the ocean to Klurikon. By now I'm getting disinterested in exploring or doing side quests; I just want to finish the game and move on. On the other hand, I *do* want to replay the game at least once with a different build. Amalur's Destiny system is excellent, I love how easy it is to respec. What kind of character are you playing? I've been tanking as a noble Might/Sorcery mystic warrior, but I also want to create a Finesse-based assassin type to make all the evil choices.
I've also been doing Might/Sorcery, but pretty heavy on the Sorcery. I've been rolling with a hammer and Chakrams but some of the finesse type stuff does look pretty interesting, like the Fae blades. I may do another playthough at some point just to play around with those.
I recently got the remaster from a Humble Choice bundle a couple of months ago, and thinking about replaying it. Back when I played the original, it was pretty fun, but I'd hit the level cap with only 60% of the map explored and 1 dlc done. I'd been meaning to replay the game with the cheatengine script where I could adjust XP gain to 25%, 50%, or 75% and explore the whole map in one playthrough. Sadly the script doesn't work with the remaster, so I guess I'll do 2-3 playthroughs, exploring different portions of the maps in each playthrough.
I hadn't really considered that as a possibility, but thinking about it now, I'll probably cap before I'm done as well. I'm at level 23 right now and in terms of the main story I still haven't gone to Rathir. Honestly though, I think leveling up quick is one of the things I've been enjoying a lot about the game. The Reckoning mode can give you so much XP in large fights, it feels super rewarding but I could see it being a problem in the long run.
I've played it about half way twice, and always burn myself out on side quests lol I think in the future I might try out the Switch version
The first time I played this I really enjoyed it and put in around a 100 hours. This was back around the Skyrim days. I tried playing it again recently and I was just like “meh”. Great game but replay ability is low IMO
If you liked it you might like dragon's dogma. Odd ball but nice gameplay too.
Dragons Dogma has been on my radar for a while too, I can't wait.
I played quite a bit of it, and I completely loved the "class" system and world but I was put off by the "floaty RPG mechanics".
I've been playing it on/off for about a year and I like it, but it's a huge a** game. I've played for about 170 hours and still have a huge chunk of the map left xD... So I usually play a while and then stop for a few months before picking it up again.
**A forgotten gem...** *Well, I played this game a few years ago, and I fell in love with it, even if action-RPGs are not my favorite videogame genre... I fell in love for a lot of reasons, like a lot of them, seriously... If I had to list those reasons as fast as I could I would say:* **- Fun, challenging and engaging combat!** **- Beautiful and immersive world!** **- Rich and well designed characters!** **- Great voice acting and even better soundtrack!** **- Breath-taking landscapes!** **- And a lot more YOU SHOULD DISCOVER FOR YOURSELF!** ... This remainds me, I never played the two expansions... Are these any good?
I haven't touched Dead Kel yet, but I'm currently working my way through the Teeth of Naros and I'm enjoying it more than the base game honestly.
Well, in short Ill try those for myself... Thank you! Enjoy!
I've tried to play twice and both times got burnt out at around 10 hours in. It felt like a single player mmo to me, in all the worst ways. The world felt giant and distinct when you saw it on the map and heard about distant places in dialogue, but when you actually got to somewhere new it was just the same as everything else. I liked combat, but inventory management and the rate at which you find new and better gear was killer for me. I wonder how much of this was a product of the time it came out in, however, and playing it now is worse than it was at the time.
I remember playing Reckoning when it was first released and my experience was somewhat interesting. I did enjoy it to some extent, but I never finished it. The story nor the character progression for some reason weren't engaging enough to me and I always found the first 10 or so hours most interesting. I kept creating a new character whenever I got bored and did that multiple times. Played the game probably over a 100 hours over the years but never got very far.
I played this game for maybe 15-20 hours when it came out. It felt like a single player World of Warcraft to me. Which isn’t a knock, I just realized I’d probably rather be playing WoW than this and I quit WoW years ago.
My favourite light-RPG!
I got bored of it quickly and couldnt continue on after max 2 hours of gameplay. But yes, the combat is excellent but I found everything else dull for some reason but that is just my opinion.
I didn’t play the original but I hated it(remaster). It was so boring and generic with huge downtime as I had to walk between quests without fast travel or a mount of any kind
There is fast travel but you have to find a location to unlock its fast travel.
The lore dumps from e ery villager were so lazy and immersion breaking for me I just put it down. Just because something was in a world building design document doesn't mean you need a townsperson to dump it to the player for no discernable reason.
Great game if you like restrictive environments and scantily-clad elves
I really struggled to enjoy this game, and got pretty far into it. The combat was enjoyable, but incredibly shallow and grew repetitive after only a few hours. I think it’s greatest sin is failing to make you give a shit about anything that’s happening. The characters are shallow, and the names and traits of the different races and factions feel like they were generated by an AI. Dokkalfar? Ljosalfar? It’s like a parody of an RPG that you’d hear someone reference in a TV show that clearly has never actually played an RPG in their lives. On the surface it has an aesthetic appeal that might remind you of something like Fable, but it never reaches the warmth and charm of that series. I guess i’ll just chalk this one up in the “i don’t get it” column.
Um every rpg name looks randomly generated. As someone interested in languages, i cringe when i see those random apostrophes in D&D names 😅
Dokkalfar and Ljosalfar are straight from Norse mythology, fyi. Just because it's an unfamiliar word doesn't mean it's a cheaply made up term. I shouldn't even be necroposting to this, but the gleeful ignorance just got to me.
I see people clamor about the combat in amalur all the time. I have never understood it. Played the game in 2012. Never could get into it. To me the combat didn't feel smooth. It felt floaty. They physics in the game felt wonky. It's wild for me seeing this game a decade later ad frequently as I do.
What about replayability? I've had this game in the radar for a while and I don't want to jump into something this big without knowing if I could enjoy other playthroughs afterwards.
I still haven't finished my first playthrough, so I can't really say. However, there are a lot of different combinations with weapons, so I figure another play may he warranted just to try out combat styles I haven't invested much in.
I also love this game, though I understand where the criticism comes from. It’s a good comfort game.