I've got the game pre-ordered (PC version), so I just wanted to see if my pc could properly play the game, meaning I skipped all the cutscenes and such and just ran through the tutorial to get to the outside stuff. Well, it runs flawlessly, so I'm definitely gonna play the PC version and I have to say I'm quite pleased with the little I played so far.
The few real complaints I have so far (and again, I did not play this intensively, just for about 20-30 minutes just to see how the game would run) are the level designs and lack of world interaction. The tutorial area I can forgive, but the outside seemed quite restrictive as well and the one dungeon I went in just had a few seemingly random corridors. Also little to no height differences, just flat lay-outs. I hate stuff like this, I want to lose myself in a world and bad level design is the first thing to stop this from happening. But we'll see what the final product brings.
Also, The last 3 big games I've played are Skyrim, Skyward Sword and Dark Souls. These games have perfect world interaction. The world is designed around what the player can do, meaning there's very little wasted space in these games (yes, even Skyrim to an extent) and the player can interact with just about everything he sees. Zelda always does this expertly. You feel like the character you're controlling belongs in this place and everything just works.
Amalur is one of those games where most of the environments are just backdrops for some limited gameplay. There are boxes to be destroyed in an obvious manner, behind which are a surprising number of chests (there's really no better way to hide these?). There is no reason to look at backgrounds, because there is no way to interact with them. You can't fall down cliffs, there are invisible walls all over the place and the map reveals any explorable spot instantly, robbing the player of any satisfaction he'd get from finding out stuff himself.
On the plus side the game looks pleasant, very WoW-like which is no bad thing in my book and it's smooth as shit. The controls work fine and the combat is like Fable's, a combat system which I like very much, not sure why it's hated on so much. It doesn't seem to do anything new, but I think it gonna be a fun little rpg. It seems quite rpg-light though, focusing more on fun that on deep gameplay. I don't think this is something that's gonna wind up hurting the game though, it seems quite confident in what it gives us.
The demo at least convinced me that I'm still gonna have to play the game, but I had confidence it would deliver. Might just be a sleeper-hit.