Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a phenomenal game in many ways. It had everything: the big names of its creators, high marks of critics, and the love of players. But by the will of fate - which is doubly ironic, since the idea of fate is one of the central themes of the game - action-RPG from Friv2Online Studio became the only friv game of the studio and was soon forgotten, never to be continued. But fate can be fickle - in 2018, the rights to the game went to THQ Nordic, which released a remaster on MS, PS4 and Xbox One in 2020. By March 2021, it made its way to Switch - the version for this platform is what we chose to review.
I learned about Reckoning and its remaster from Western publications solely due to my interest in the industry, then there was a free weekend in the Microsoft Store, which allowed me to evaluate the friv game on Xbox Series X, but the most long-awaited was the release on Switch - it's the console I spend the most time with, and it has repeatedly proven its ability to "pull" serious RPGs - just think of Skyrim and the third "Witcher".
In the English-language press, friv games like Reckoning are often referred to as "hidden gems" - hidden treasures. For a variety of reasons, from technical implementation to poor marketing, they are known only to a small circle of fans, but they are often as good as many of the famous AAA projects, and some of their ideas and mechanics are truly unique.
Given the release on the "big" platforms six months ago, there was some temptation to limit this review solely to the quality of the Switch port - but that would be a continuation of the "line of oblivion" with regard to Kingdoms of Amalur, especially since there was no review of other versions of the game on our site. Therefore, I will at least briefly try to reveal here all the features of Re-Reckoning and tell you why this friv game is so interesting.
The setting of Amalur was created, as I said, by famous people: Robert Salvatore, to whom we owe the story of the dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden, the author of "Spaun" Todd McFarlane, and Oblivion designer Ken Ralston. And I must say, they did their best.
Originally, the world of Amalur was supposed to host an entire MMORPG, but during development it was decided to make a classic single-player game. Of course, certain hints of the online past remained. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad, but it turned out to be a huge, interesting and lively open world.
Of course, it was not without division into large regions, "tunnels" in the spirit of some JRPGs and subloading of separate locations (as a rule, dungeons and houses), but the world of Amalur is very beautiful, diverse and full of interesting characters and quests, some of which can be completed in different ways. And considering that the remaster includes both DLC for the original, Teeth of Naros and Legend of Dead Kel, the friv game can easily take you more than a hundred hours, as a good story RPG should.
During the intricacies of the story, brilliantly executed by renowned screenwriters, our character will have to resurrect, having died in battle with an immortal enemy, find answers to all the questions of fate and fulfill, finally, his destiny.
The theme of fate is central to the Amalur setting. In addition to the story itself, the role-playing system and even part of the combat are tied to it. The pumping scheme is one of the friv game's highlights. There are three ability trees at our disposal: Strength, Dexterity and Magic. At first glance everything is standard - skill points, active and passive abilities, different levels.
But, first, spending a certain number of points in one or more trees gives you access to Destination Cards - the local analog of classes. These cards give your character additional bonuses in accordance with the chosen path, and you can change them at any time - just as long as the conditions correspond. And secondly, the distributed skills can be completely reset - all you need to do is find a special character, the Weaver of Destiny, and pay him a certain amount of money.
Needless to say, this mechanic opens up a huge space for experimentation, allows you to not be afraid of mistakes when pumping and create a character that perfectly suits your style of play? At the same time, its action is explained in terms of the internal laws of the game world. In addition to Destiny Cards, during the course of the friv game we will uncover Destiny Turns - certain events determined by our decisions and actions, which also provide the character with various bonuses.
No, it's not a typo. Re-Reckoning really resembles a hybrid of Oblivion and God of War. And if from TES the game inherited the concept of the world, it is related to the adventures of Kratos by the combat system. The battles are interesting, dynamic and diverse, filled with beautiful special effects and a lot of opportunities to use different weapons, abilities and tactics.
The techniques and combos are controlled quite easily and intuitively, and in the variety are not inferior to any fighting game, although the system is not without bloopers - for example, you can take cover with a shield, even if you are armed with two daggers. Enemies are very different, from wild animals and robbers to monsters and magical spirits. There are also bosses, with which you will have to do your best.
While killing enemies, we fill up the Destiny scale - a kind of rage level. When it reaches the maximum, by pressing ZR ZL you can enter the Revenge mode, in which the damage increases many times and you can perform beautiful kills, realized as QTEs - if they are successful we get more experience.
In addition to the elaborate combat, the friv game is full of various additional mechanics. For example, every chest breaking or removal of charms is a mini-game, where you have to really move the lock pick and make sure it doesn't break, or remove the guard spells in the right order. Eventually it gets a bit boring, but the approach is pleasing - not everything depends on the parameter numbers, much can be pulled out by the skill of the player.
Lovers of loot will surely be pleased with the huge amount of a variety of equipment for every taste with the traditional color coding of rarity, sets and cells for gems for bonuses. You can also make it with your own hands - Re-Reckoning has a very extensive crafting system, in addition to blacksmithing, which covers alchemy and faceting of the mentioned gems. And the remaster also includes bonus items from all add-ons and season passes, stacked in one chest in the first village. It's a great help in the beginning.
If you read all of the above, it seems that Kingdoms of Amalur is just perfect. Unfortunately, it is not. It has one major flaw, at least on Switch - it's technical. Yes, most of the time everything is nearly flawless - beautiful models, vibrant colors, cute combat, spell and lighting effects.
The graphics, improved over the original, are not without slightly soapy textures and look more like "aged well", but their semi-multi-motion charms and stably holds 30fps in both dock and portable, but with one serious exception.
That exception is combat. Sadly enough, one of the best parts of the game in terms of mechanics suffers the most from the Switch's weak hardware. In general, everything is quite playable, but FPS drops are quite noticeable, and the jerky picture in battles significantly spoils the impression.
The second drawback of the friv game is its localization. There is only text in Russian, and in principle, it would be quite enough, if this text was more qualitatively executed. But thanks to the English voice-over (by the way, all dialogs are voiced here, even with minor characters) we can notice that there are a lot of inaccuracies and just gross factual errors in the translation.
The font of the Russian version deserves a special "fi". It immediately dissonates with the interface of the game and evokes memories of pirate localizations of the 1990s. Russian was the default language in the friv game, so at first you can't guess that this ugliness is only in our country. But when I got tired of translation bloopers and switched to English, I almost dropped Switch from my hands - the font was just perfect.
A long story RPG is always great. When it comes out on Switch, it's doubly great. The original Kingdoms of Amalur didn't get the attention it deserved, but now the remaster can give the friv game a second chance. And despite its flaws, it deserves that chance.
It's on par with Skyrim and The Witcher, especially on Switch. Another hit in the collection of story-driven RPGs to take to Nintendo's hybrid console. Hopefully it won't be forgotten again this time around.