Co-Optimus

[Silentstriderm]

Definitely did not expect that exaggerated art style from a "Epic world spanning blah blah blah" type of game, and definitely don't see much of the McFarlane influence yet.

I couldn't believe how touchy the camera was by default... I had to adjust the sensitivity drastically to get it to a comfortable speed.

I do think it is great that you will be able to re-spec constantly if you so choose, and won't be locked in to one destiny

[Raines]

The camera bothered me at first, but I got used to it. Two Worlds II has the same camera whipping around like KOA does. And yeah, I don't see the Todd McFarlane influence at all, unless he's a WoW addict now.

[Macrocephalus]

I do think it is great that you will be able to re-spec constantly if you so choose, and won't be locked in to one destiny

That's one thing I wasn't clear on — I get that you can change destinies, but can you also change the way you've allocated your… what were they, sage points?

[Silentstriderm]

That's one thing I wasn't clear on — I get that you can change destinies, but can you also change the way you've allocated your… what were they, sage points?

That was my impression from some of the interviews I've seen

[Raines]

There's some comfort knowing the full game isn't nearly as buggy as the demo (from IGN):

Finally, the technical fidelity of the game stands out to me, especially considering how ambitiously big Reckoning is. I'm playing a debug version of the final build of the game on my test PlayStation 3, and the game hasn't frozen or locked-up on me once. The framerate occasionally stutters during fierce combat featuring a large number of enemies and the draw distance won't impress you, but the game has run reliably. That means no incessant "fear saves" due to an unstable game!

There's a glitch that gives you unlimited time in the demo for anyone who doesn't know already. You hit the demo boundary right at the time the demo timer expires, and it'll freeze it. It's tricky, but it works.

[justabaldguy]

I like what I've seen so far. I rushed through the opening part, but it's pretty neat. Love the looting, the dodging while attacking, and the ease of use. Seems much like a Fable II clone and that's good so far. My only real beef is saving. I couldn't find any way to save. Ran out of time so I had to stop, which I did after leveling when you get out of the dungeon. I when to the main menu and hit Play Story Mode or whatever and it took me right back to the beginning. Did I miss something?

[Engineer Seven]

I like what I've seen so far. I rushed through the opening part, but it's pretty neat. Love the looting, the dodging while attacking, and the ease of use. Seems much like a Fable II clone and that's good so far. My only real beef is saving. I couldn't find any way to save. Ran out of time so I had to stop, which I did after leveling when you get out of the dungeon. I when to the main menu and hit Play Story Mode or whatever and it took me right back to the beginning. Did I miss something?

It doesn't save your progress beyond clearing the tutorial. Once you exit the Well of Souls you should be able to restart from the point for any future plays. You may have needed to go talk to the Fate Weaver guy - the good news is that the timer on the demo doesn't start until you're done speaking with him.

[justabaldguy]

Well, then, that's just plain... weird. But good enough to try again. I really enjoyed the combat so far. Provided the entire game isn't just long bendy tunnels/corridors connecting the areas to each other it could be good. I like the ease of equipping weapons, and it seems you never run out of arrow, merely the ability to shoot them for a bit. Stealth kills are satisfying. I'm certainly interested in the final product on this.

[BigBadBob113]

I enjoyed the demo. It reminded me of Two Worlds II, in that it wasn't a perfectly polished game, but it was good enough to keep me interested. I liked the flow of combat and the skill trees seemed pretty interesting. I'll be making sure my Gamefly queue is open for this one.

[justabaldguy]

I would have liked to tried a more fleshed out skill tree. Wonder why they keep us on such a short leash? Why not jump us to a level 10 character? Let us experience putting in points and trying a few things out to see what it's like to play with some of the upper level abilities. As it is, the initial levels are pretty basic. I remember thinking this about Borderlands, the first few levels were almost nothing in terms of usefulness. I'm hoping some RPG soon will figure this out and let us get some great, useful skills early on. KoA might be good for this and you'd think they'd want us to try this early.

[justabaldguy]

Saw a new video on Joystiq talking about the various locations and missions. Have to say, this one's looking very good.

[BigBadBob113]

Yeah, I was tossed up between renting this and Darkness II on release day, and I'm going with Kingdoms. It felt like a pretty solid RPG and should be pretty fun.

[Macrocephalus]

Yeah, I was tossed up between renting this and Darkness II on release day, and I'm going with Kingdoms. It felt like a pretty solid RPG and should be pretty fun.

Given that EA's going to require renters to buy a pass to get at just about 10% of reckoning and D2 apparently won't require a pass for online co-op, I'm leaning back towards D2 and away from Amalur.

Frustrating.

[Raines]

Given that EA's going to require renters to buy a pass to get at just about 10% of reckoning and D2 apparently won't require a pass for online co-op, I'm leaning back towards D2 and away from Amalur.

Frustrating.

Yup, a whole questline is blocked out if you don't buy KOA new:

http://www.destructoid.com/38-studios-e ... 0491.phtml

[BigBadBob113]

Yeah, I was tossed up between renting this and Darkness II on release day, and I'm going with Kingdoms. It felt like a pretty solid RPG and should be pretty fun.

Given that EA's going to require renters to buy a pass to get at just about 10% of reckoning and D2 apparently won't require a pass for online co-op, I'm leaning back towards D2 and away from Amalur.

Frustrating.

From what I heard they are not blocking anything out, just making the first batch of DLC (that's not on the disc) available earlier than intended as a bonus for buying new.

[Macrocephalus]

From what I heard they are not blocking anything out, just making the first batch of DLC (that's not on the disc) available earlier than intended as a bonus for buying new.

I could be wrong, but AFAIK, while that's their spin, that's BS and it's actually on the disc.

[justabaldguy]

I generally buy brand new, though I doubt I'll buy this game before reading about it. Hopefully I'll be able to wait until I can get it for cheap. I'm not terribly concerned about this, but I do think it'll have much more replay value for me than Darkness II. I dug Darkness but it's still a shooter, whereas Kingdoms has impressed me a good bit. Still hoping to see more out of it though and not rushing it at all.

[Bakken Hood]

New word from the top: the buggy code used for the demo isn't the code that's going into the final product. Who knows how buggy the actual game will be? Less buggy than the demo, apparently, though I suspect it's going on impossible to ship a big, open-ended game like this without glitches. Let's see if they can beat Bethesda at their own game. If KoA runs cleaner than Skyrim, I'll be impressed. Cleaner than FNV, not so much.

For my money, KoA's "online pass" is somewhere around the upper limit of what I think is acceptable. I don't know what they're hiding behind the online pass, but it sounds to me like renters will find plenty to enjoy whether they buy the "DLC" or not. I'd say this approach is less malicious than the traditional multiplayer online pass, where renters really are losing a critical chunk of the game.

[Raines]

Batman: Arkham City had an Online Pass, and that was a fairly significant chunk of the game. RAGE had one, but that game kinda sucked anyway. Regardless of how publishers want to justify it, it's getting to the point where every game, whether single- or multiplayer, is getting some sort of BS requirement to pay $10 extra if you don't buy the game new. Eventually instead of seeing "Press Start" at the title screen, you're going to see "Pay $10 to Continue." Then after that, every multiplayer game's gonna have an MMO-like fee to play it per month.

[Macrocephalus]

Batman: Arkham City had an Online Pass, and that was a fairly significant chunk of the game. RAGE had one, but that game kinda sucked anyway. Regardless of how publishers want to justify it, it's getting to the point where every game, whether single- or multiplayer, is getting some sort of BS requirement to pay $10 extra if you don't buy the game new. Eventually instead of seeing "Press Start" at the title screen, you're going to see "Pay $10 to Continue." Then after that, every multiplayer game's gonna have an MMO-like fee to play it per month.

Yup. How long before Activision moves more of CoD behind the Elite paywall? And I'd tend to think that even though they're easing towards this bit by bit instead of dumping it on us all at once, they're going to lose a lot of their customer base that way. These idiots don't seem to realize that people have more and more alternatives to spend their entertainment dollars and time on.

I rented Arkham City and I liked it enough that I was tempted to buy the pass, but in the end, I was able to stop myself. RAGE, like you said, sucked. KoA looks fairly cool, but not anywhere near enough of a sure thing to buy, but because of the pass crap, I might just not even rent it in the first place.

I also find it kind of odd that renting never seems to come up in press and developer discussions about passes. Since people who rent a game on day one are, effectively, responsible for the sale of a full copy of the game, and people who rent it later on down the line obviously weren't interested enough to be potential day one retail customers in the first place, it seems to me that developers shouldn't be counting renting as a negative even in the sort of blinkered, short-term analysis that leads to all these online passes. After all, lots of day-one renters wouldn't have bought the game anyway, but they're still moving retail copies, and some use renting as a try-before-you-buy system. But the larger the fraction of a game that gets locked behind a pass paywall, the less likely I'd think people will be to rent it.