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Kingdoms of Amalur demo impressions thread [Up On 360/Origin/Steam/U.S. PSN]

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Bah, you beat me by seconds. :p I'm hoping for the PC demo to hit sooner rather than later; it's already 7PM here.
 

Almighty

Member
Luckily my free month of XBL is still on so i am dling it now.

In all honesty I don't know much about this game. Pretty much going into the demo blind.
 
Just saw the Giant Bomb preview, looks like my kind of game! Could do with more polish as it looks rough around the edges, but the gameplay looks like a lot of fun. The PC version better be fucking good.
 

jediyoshi

Member
I dont see how XBL Gold factors into this but ok :D

It's a Gold exclusive download for the 360. You'd think the amount of people that curbs already outside of the fact that bandwidth is usually the first thing cited for justifying a subscription fee would alleviate that.
 

GlamFM

Banned
Can we have a separate thread for whining ( about xbl gold or why this isn´t on psn yet ) and keep this one for impressions? Would be sweet.
 

Rokam

Member
Played through the first little bit and unlocked my first set of cards. Pretty damn tired so this'll be short.

-Magic is nice so far, only have 1 spell, but two different weapons that cast spells as well.
-I like the UI easy to use potions/spells, healing and mana are hotkeyed to the directional pad, and then you have a bigger reticule to bind whatever you want to.
-Deathblow animation at the end of the first boss was awesome
create a glowing trident and throw it right into the trolls face
-The little quicktime events for bonus experience is a good touch as well and look pretty awesome.
-Not going to comment yet on graphics as I'm playing it on an older tv, tomorrow I'll hook it up to the HD.
-Lockpicking mini game is basically Skyrim's except your pick location doesn't get reset upon failure. THANK FUCKING GOD.
-Minor sound bugs, music would cut out sometimes, not that big of a deal, you'll more than likely want to turn down music/sound as the speech can get hidden behind it during certain scenes. Some npcs speech doesn't seem to be working, and with subtitles on it still just flashes quickly on screen.
-I was on the fence about this, but it appears to have delivered on what their videos promised as far as combat goes. The very first boss has tells for you to know when to dodge/attack and he uses the abilities randomly.
-Found lots of hidden shit already.
-Completed a small dungeon no boss at the end, but did have a couple greens. I imagine since it's the first one they just wanted to give a taste. Like Skyrim there was a shortcut from the end leading back to the entrance.

More impressions tomorrow.
 

burgerdog

Member
Just played through the tutorial. It teaches you basic things like equipping items, attacking, blocking with a shield(which you can still do with daggers or staves!), dodging, magic, etc. You find a surprising amount of loot in the tutorial dungeon and item pieces already have bonuses like +critical damage, increased critical rate, mana regen, armor sockets and the like. Combat looks like it's going to be dmc-lite, at least that's the impression I get from my very brief playing period so there's a chance it might even get better. You can dodge or pull out your shield to cancel any move that you are currently performing so that's very cool. I'm about to pass out so sorry for the sloppy impressions, I just made it to the meat of the demo, too. Will play more later today.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Can we have a separate thread for whining ( about xbl gold or why this isn´t on psn yet ) and keep this one for impressions? Would be sweet.

Only one person is "whining" about slow XBL speeds, and the posts regarding the current lack of a PC/PS3 demo will subside when the aforementioned platforms get it later today.
 

Rokam

Member
Just played through the tutorial. It teaches you basic things like equipping items, attacking, blocking with a shield(which you can still do with daggers or staves!), dodging, magic, etc. You find a surprising amount of loot in the tutorial dungeon and item pieces already have bonuses like +critical damage, increased critical rate, mana regen, armor sockets and the like. Combat looks like it's going to be dmc-lite, at least that's the impression I get from my very brief playing period so there's a chance it might even get better. You can dodge or pull out your shield to cancel any move that you are currently performing so that's very cool. I'm about to pass out so sorry for the sloppy impressions, I just made it to the meat of the demo, too. Will play more later today.

Forgot to mention that. It's so nice!
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
1.9 gb for a demo ?
jesus H that's like 1/3rd of the 360 DVD :S

how many discs is the game on ? 1 ?
 

Micerider

Member
Good to hear that the combats could live up to the expectations.

Could anyone comment about the general "atmosphear" and the quality of the writting/dubbing?
 

Rokam

Member
Good to hear that the combats could live up to the expectations.

Could anyone comment about the general "atmosphear" and the quality of the writting/dubbing?

I won't speak to the story as I kind of skipped through stuff, but there seemed to be a lot of information for those who want to get immersed. I will say right off the bat you can tell they don't take themselves too seriously. Opening cutscene bit
Gnomes taking your dead body to dump it off and they peek under the sheet and that's how you customize your looks, then one gnome asks the other if there's anything else and says something along the lines of "Not unless you want to give it a name" and then the xbox keyboard pops up :)

Your avatar reminded me my character looks like a blue Nathan Drake, and when he first stumbled around I couldn't help but laugh.
 

Rokam

Member
I know some who are already getting the game might avoid the demo or just load it up to get the free stuff, but you need to get your first set of fate cards to get the last 2 bonus items. So be sure to do that.
 

Fjordson

Member
Just played through the demo. I definitely liked what was there. Combat was a little mashy, lots of pressing X over and over for melee, but this is literally the opening of the game so you don't have many skills to work with yet. It's fun, though. Feels very fluid, looks good, and chaining combos together is satisfying, whether you're using one weapon or combining all three (melee, ranged, and magic abilities). Some pretty sweet finishing moves for stealth characters as well.

The world looks great. I love it. Super colourful, lots of nice ambient sounds, animals running around, etc. It's actually a lot more open than I thought it would be so that's nice. I was expecting it to be as "open" as Fable, but areas seem way, way bigger than that. Definitely some exploration to be had. Though when I first stepped outside I did run into a few small barriers that were kind of jarring. After playing so much Skyrim, it was weird to not be able to bypass a knee-high fence, or hop down into a river, but you sorta stop running into that once you get a feel for how they've laid out the world.

Technically seems fine. No framerate issues, animations look superb, and the loading times are solid. 5-6 seconds at most to get in and out of a dungeon or building. I had seen a video for some press preview last week that showed a few load times up near a minute, but that thankfully doesn't seem to be present anymore.

The menus and general UI is fantastic. All information when you're looking at things like skills, equipment, and quests is concise and easily accessed. They did a real good job with all of that. Also love how quick and easy looting is. When I open a chest with armor or weapons I can, without pausing the game or opening up any additional menus, see how the loot compares to what I currently have, I can equip it and choose which slot for it to go into, or I can automatically send it to the trash pile (vendors have a handy "sell all junk" option). Couldn't be easier.

Could anyone comment about the general "atmosphear" and the quality of the writting/dubbing?
I was asking a lot of questions to NPC's for background info so I mostly got standard info dumps and whatnot, jury is still out on the writing I guess. The lore and setup for the game's story is interesting, though.

The voice acting I heard was good. That'll probably vary as it does in almost any RPG with a ton of voiced NPC's, but I'm liking it so far.
 

neoemonk

Member
I thought I remembered Giant Bomb making fun of this game a while back, something about the generic name of Reckoning. I was really surprised when they had a little mini-podcast about it suddenly.

I think the game comes from a decent pedigree so I'll check out the demo on PC when it hits.
 

glaurung

Member
Made my pre-order via Game. This is what it looks like on the invoice:

almur.jpg


Stay classy, Game.
 

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
Oh boy~

Went from passing by Kingdoms of Amalur headlines to wanting to play the demo asap.
 
So, apparently the game thinks I'm mashing the A button and all NPC dialogue is getting skipped automatically. It's also skipping through all the story driven menus until I need to confirm with X like where you have to dump points or choose your fate. REALLY annoying. This is a glitch, not just the demo pushing me through, right?
 

Rokam

Member
So, apparently the game thinks I'm mashing the A button and all NPC dialogue is getting skipped automatically. It's also skipping through all the story driven menus until I need to confirms with X like where you have to dump points or choose your fate. REALLY annoying. This is a glitch, not just the demo pushing me through, right?

Either a glitch or your controller. Didn't happen to me.
 

Fjordson

Member
So, apparently the game thinks I'm mashing the A button and all NPC dialogue is getting skipped automatically. It's also skipping through all the story driven menus until I need to confirm with X like where you have to dump points or choose your fate. REALLY annoying. This is a glitch, not just the demo pushing me through, right?
Yeah, something weird happening, I didn't get that.

And the demo's timer pauses when you're talking to NPC's and stuff so it doesn't need to rush anything.
 
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