Co-Optimus

[BigBadBob113]

What's everyone's character build?

I went with the pirate dude race with the water elemental/god thingy. I'm using daggers as primary weapons and a bow as secondary. I've been focusing on the usual roguish skills like lockpicking, sneak and the detect hidden items one. I wasn't all that impressed with the faeblades.

[justabaldguy]

After playing KoA, I'm not sure I'd go back to Skyrim.

That's my thought too, though I haven't played it yet. I noticed though after the last few quests in Skyrim I was slowing down and having a harder time keeping myself interested. I knew I liked the basics. I LOVE seeing so many things to pick up in Skyrim just like Fallout. Unfortunately, I'd say 96% of the things in Skyrim are useless to pick up. How come I constantly find crap helmets and swords? Playing KoA just for a bit seemed to suggest the loot is better, again like the loot from Skyrim (availability wise) in a Fable styled world. This is a good mix for me. I loved how Fable II looked, and for the most part I liked how it played. It just wasn't deep enough, and this looks like it might be.

I'd like to see which builds y'all use and why. Initially I was thinking I'd play daggers and bows with focus on sneak and detect hidden. Also report any gimped class issues if you find them.

[Raines]

I finally settled on a Finesse/Sorcery hybrid with daggers as my main and chakrams as my ranged weapon. Bows are too slow and weak in my opinion. I sneak up on a group, stealth kill one, and if I'm spotted by the others, I use the chakrams to lay waste to the rest. For those playing rogue builds, you can roll while sneaking without penalty. Makes it much faster to pull off stealth kills and get around.

[BigBadBob113]

For those playing rogue builds, you can roll while sneaking without penalty. Makes it much faster to pull off stealth kills and get around.

Cool thanks, I hadn't realized that.

[Macrocephalus]

What's everyone's character build?

I went with the pirate dude race with the water elemental/god thingy. I'm using daggers as primary weapons and a bow as secondary. I've been focusing on the usual roguish skills like lockpicking, sneak and the detect hidden items one. I wasn't all that impressed with the faeblades.

I'm playing a mage. I started off playing kind of a fighter / mage hybrid, but pretty quickly I realized that non-spell staff / chakram / scepter attacks are plenty fun by themselves and using them means I don't have to gimp my magic-tacity to boost might stuff. I haven't really decided which of those weapons to specialize in yet, though. I like the higher damage of staves, chakrams just plain look cool, and scepters balance their lower damage with greater range and speed. They're all tempting in their own ways.

And I forget which race I'm playing, but it was either the third or the fourth (I have pointy ears) and I think I wound up picking the god of order for the benefit to both health and mana since at that point I was planning a fighter-mage.

Since Grommy said Darkness 2 takes about forty-five minutes to play through, though, maybe I should pause Amalur for an evening and hurry up and play D2 so I can send it back to Gamefly.

[BigBadBob113]

I'm playing a mage. I started off playing kind of a fighter / mage hybrid, but pretty quickly I realized that non-spell staff / chakram / scepter attacks are plenty fun by themselves and using them means I don't have to gimp my magic-tacity to boost might stuff. I haven't really decided which of those weapons to specialize in yet, though. I like the higher damage of staves, chakrams just plain look cool, and scepters balance their lower damage with greater range and speed. They're all tempting in their own ways.

Yeah, those chakrams are pretty nifty. I initially thought they were for the rogue class and I was thinking of Xena: Warrior Princess. I was shocked when I saw they were for mages, but like you said, it's awesome to see mages getting a weapon that doesn't totally gimp them.

[coldphirre]

i think i'm the third race, with the rogue-y stats, and went the finesse/sorcery route too, using faeblades and chakrams. the faeblades look cooler than daggers to me and have the added benefit of fending off baddies that jump at me while i'm busy cutting up one of their buddies. do any dagger users have trouble with getting constantly hit from behind or am i just bad at them? rolling teleports is pretty neat though, and having them leave a trail of poison will be pretty cool later on.

i'm working towards maxing out detect hidden and blacksmithing right now, and actually haven't spent any points in lockpicking or sneaking, which i probably should at some point. being able to find hidden caches around the world has definitely helped in the money department, though i figure blacksmithing won't pay off until i max it out to make what i hope will be purple gear.

[Raines]

I've put over 20 hours into the game already and haven't even touched the main quest yet. There's just so much to do and explore. I've been hunting down skill trainers and have Detect Hidden, Stealth, and Persuasion maxed out. I did have Blacksmithing maxed out, but the gear I kept making ended up being weaker than vendor stuff after around level 15 or so. I'm thinking Blacksmithing might be better for the Might builds. Detect Hidden and Persuasion made me filthy rich anyway. Amalur really lets you role-play your character; I rest til nighttime then go around town stealing from houses and pickpocketing people while they sleep. It's worth it too because you can find really good loot and skill books by stealing, and there's no karma system to stop you. Right now I'm doing the Travelers (aka Thieves Guild) quest chain, and many of the dungeons I get sent to let me sneak around everywhere getting stealth kills. If you're going the rogue route, use daggers. Faeblades are ok, but I've noticed that I kill way faster with the daggger's high crit rate and damage. Even if I get surrounded, I just use chakrams and the Sorcery tree's Mark of Flame attack. Maxed Stealth skill + Assassin's Art + Daggers = Good times.

[justabaldguy]

Thanks for all the elaborate feedback guys. I'm really looking forward to finding this cheap. Can't swing much now, but still am betting it'll go on sale pretty cheap before too long. Thinking of a stealthy dagger build, and am glad to hear the opinions on the bow and arrow. I tried that in Dragon Age but it just wasn't nearly as awesome as it sounded. I think running and fighting in real time with button presses could be awesome.

How many ways are y'all finding to resolve quests? In the original dev videos, he was saying you could take different approaches to end the quest. For someone in jail, for example, you could break them out, kill someone and find a key, or find an item (in this case a rare book) and give it to the guy in exchange for the prisoner. Are there many quests which let you end them however you want?

[BigBadBob113]

@Baldy:

There were a few quests with different ways of approaching. Like Fallout, there is a "persuasion" skill so you can talk your way out of some situations also.

[Macrocephalus]

How many ways are y'all finding to resolve quests? In the original dev videos, he was saying you could take different approaches to end the quest. For someone in jail, for example, you could break them out, kill someone and find a key, or find an item (in this case a rare book) and give it to the guy in exchange for the prisoner. Are there many quests which let you end them however you want?

There are extra ways… sometimes. Sometimes you can steal things, sometimes you can persuade people, but usually it seems like it just comes down to fighting. One time I bought some stolen goods off a guy who was expecting to be robbed, though, and he was shocked. It was funny.

Anyway, I'm really getting to like the game. It's too bad some of the problems in the design and execution weren't addressed, because if it had had a better story, fewer irritations and a few other improvements, it could've been one of the all-time greatest RPGs, but as things stand, I still feel it's pretty damn good. I don't know how long it'll hold my interest, but I've already put around 30 hours into it (Sunday in particular pretty much disappeared into the game's wide-open maw) and that's my feeling so far.

For whatever it's worth, here are a few specific reactions.

STUFF I LOVE

Combat
The fighting isn't without its issues, but it rocks. Best ever in a traditional full-scale open-world RPG that I can think off of the top of my head. There are combos, different moves, attacks from guard, positioning issues — the works. And the execution of different attacks is really solid and satisfying. When I blast some guy with a bunch of deadly ice shards, for example, it feels great.

You get more fate for more varied and adept fighting
The game gives you more fate if you mix up your attacks and do a better job of fighting. (Fate is basically the game's power or overcharge meter that, when full, allows you enter a special badass reckoning mode that makes your attacks stronger and gives you extra xp.)

Terrific music and sound design
Both are great. The sound design is especially strong — the sounds of the forest as you walk through it, of animals as you walk by them, of fights, are all outstanding.

Looting
Looting is more satisfying than in Skyrim for two reasons: the loot is more often useful, and you don't have to play what Coldphirre excellently dubbed the stupid mini-game of selling your crap by going from vendor to vendor to vendor because none of them have much gold. Sure, that's more realistic, but it's not fun.

Mages aren't gimped in combat!
I dig playing mages. But often I play a hybrid fighter-mage when that's an option, despite the fact that it cuts the mage half of the build off at the knees, because mages are usually so tragically pathetic in combat if they can't kill with spells from a distance. Not so in Amalur. Staff and chakram and sceptre attacks are cool and strong and have combos and special abilities of their own. My hybrid build ended as soon as it began because my mage was already kicking ass just on his mage strengths. Fantastic.

It's HUGE
Big world, lots to find and do.

Background manual saves
I don't have to sit there waiting for the game to finish when I save — it just happens merrily in the background. This could've been improved even further, though, by automatically exiting the menu upon starting a save. Apparently I'm so used to being stuck waiting for the save to finish that for awhile, I just stared at the screen instead of exiting on my own.

No serious bugs (yet)
Heck, I've hardly even noticed any significant glitching! After Skyrim and Oblivion, this is a huge breath of fresh air!

STUFF I HATE

Target selection in combat
So I mentioned there are some problems with the combat system despite its general awesomeness? Well, target selection is one of them. It's not just borked by the ganky camera, either. Sometimes it's just totally random. I'll be in a mess of enemies, the selection will be on the one enemy that's not on fire, I'll try to light him on fire… and suddenly my character will turn 90 degrees and waste a spell on empty space. And this happens a lot. I've taken lots of extra damage and even died a few times just because of this. Frickin stupid. On a related note, sometimes I'll try to roll in one direction and I'll wind up heading in another direction entirely. Presumably this has the same root cause, and it's hugely annoying.

A 2" curb? Oh noes!
I hate games that won't let you step over a twig or off a 2" curb or what have you. It's idiotic. I'm coming down a ramp or some stairs, but near the end I can't just step off, oh no, I have to walk all the way out and around, and if I try to cut my trip short, my character will just stand there running in place like a lobotomized robot. The general inability to run around freely and realistically, or even to jump anywhere except at a relative handful of designated jump points, blows.

The visual parts of the engine suck
Seriously, it looks like something midway between the PS2 and the PS3 generations at best. The camera has serious problems, and the game's onscreen text in particular is a crime against humanity. But I've already bitched about this, so I won't spend any more time on the subject.

The region you start out in is the ugliest
Before, I said the game is stunningly ugly. That's not precisely true, as it turns out. The engine still looks like something from an unpleasant corner of the past that should've stayed forgotten, but later regions in the game (I've been to Detyre and the Plains of Erathell so far) look much, much nicer, even though they are still handicapped by the engine. Unfortunately, the region you start out in, Dalentarth, is generally butt-ugly (and its monotony gets old fast, too) so you won't get a taste of the nicer visuals the game has to offer for a fair while.

Ability button mapping constraints
I can only map four abilities (spells) to my controller. You hold R1, and then you hit triangle, square, circle, or cross. This is just idiotic and unfair. PC players can apparently map ten, so why not at the very least also let us hold R1 and hit any of the buttons on the d-pad? At least that would get us to eight. Since there are quite a few more spells than button bindings, I wind up not even investing in other spells, let alone trying them out in combat. Stupid stupid stupid.

Cumbersome menus and grossly inadequate quest list organization
Gaahhhh! You want to look at open quests for the region you're in? Tough. Quests don't even tell you which region they're for! You have to guess or remember. While you can look at your abilities directly from the start menu, checking out your skills requires more button presses. And so on and so forth… and forth… and forth… and forth. The menu system and UI are generally craptastic.

Inventory management
This sucks so much that even though it's really part of the menu system, it deserves its own line item. You can't lock items that aren't equipped but which you don't want to sell. You can't sort things. Shards and gems are lumped in with blacksmithing supplies. And so on. It's just hideous.

Crates all over the place
It's a standard trope, but I'm sick of it. I can be in someone's shop, but if I smash all the crates in there and take whatever money was in them, nobody bats an eye. And piles of crates are everywhere, whether they make any sense or not.

Dull story
It's gotten a little bit more interesting with some added intrigue about who the character was before dying courtesy of someone who seems to know a lot she's not saying, but it still could've been much, much better.

Lock-picking and dispelling
The lock-picking mini-game is stolen from Bethesda, but they actually made it a little more annoying. And the ward dispelling mini-game, which more and more often you'll play right before or instead of the lock-picking mini-game, is even worse.

You have power over the weave of fate!
Sounds great, right? But basically all it means is that every now and then, whenever you fill your fate meter and then deem a group of enemies worth using reckoning on, your attacks get briefly turbocharged and you get some extra xp for killing bad guys and monsters if you finish them off quickly enough. Whee.

STUFF I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT

Alchemy
I don't hate it, and I know why it's there… but I'm really getting sick of it, and Amalur brings absolutely nothing new to the table. It just feels like make-work.

The generic setting
I don't hate the world, and I understand why they went with a bog-standard fantasy setting since they didn't want to give people reasons not to try the game, but still, it's just not interesting. I wish they'd at least tried to do something fresh with the tradition.

People just tell you sh** like you made them take a truth serum
Again, I understand that it's sort of necessary for people to spontaneously spill their guts to a stranger in order to get quests moving, but still, it strains credulity too much. This is an element of the RPG standard that needs serious work, and the writing in Amalur often makes this particularly painful.

Quests are mostly blah
I'm still hooked by the game, at least for now, but I can't help but think if they'd only put, say, 150 hours of gameplay in there — already a terrific number — instead of 300, they could've devoted more energy to making each of those hours more distinctive and inherently interesting. That said, based on a very limited sampling, they do seem to get a tad bit better once you leave Dalentarch.


CONCLUSIONS

All in all, the game has a bunch of issues that I hope the developers address in the sequel, but it's still really, really good. In almost every respect, it's what I was hoping for from the Dragon Age series and frankly didn't get with either game, and it improves on a few aspects of the Elder Scrolls games a lot. If you like this sort of thing, play it. I don't think you'll regret it — really, not playing it would be the proper cause for regret, not skipping it. Unless you get fired from your job or divorced from your spouse because you spend too damn much time in Amalur, anyway.

[coldphirre]

Target selection in combat
So I mentioned there are some problems with the combat system despite its general awesomeness? Well, target selection is one of them. It's not just borked by the ganky camera, either. Sometimes it's just totally random. I'll be in a mess of enemies, the selection will be on the one enemy that's not on fire, I'll try to light him on fire… and suddenly my character will turn 90 degrees and waste a spell on empty space. And this happens a lot. I've taken lots of extra damage and even died a few times just because of this. Frickin stupid. On a related note, sometimes I'll try to roll in one direction and I'll wind up heading in another direction entirely. Presumably this has the same root cause, and it's hugely annoying.

this problem was the sole reason i stopped using a bow, because the targeting system often thought it would be better to shoot someone else that had full health rather than finish off the last bit of health on the guy hiding in the back shooting spells at me.

Cumbersome menus and grossly inadequate quest list organization
Gaahhhh! You want to look at open quests for the region you're in? Tough. Quests don't even tell you which region they're for! You have to guess or remember. While you can look at your abilities directly from the start menu, checking out your skills requires more button presses. And so on and so forth… and forth… and forth… and forth. The menu system and UI are generally craptastic.

is there a way to drop quests? there are some that i really don't want to bother pursuing but can't hide without hiding ALL quests or collapsing the entire category of quests. not a huge deal-breaker, but a pretty big annoyance nonetheless.

Dull story
It's gotten a little bit more interesting with some added intrigue about who the character was before dying courtesy of someone who seems to know a lot she's not saying, but it still could've been much, much better.

i actually found some of the faction quests to be slightly more interesting, though they do tend to drag on a little bit longer than i'd like. (house of ballads!) if you're referring to the main storyline, then i agree that it's not very interesting at all. go here, talk to this guy, who tells you to talk to some other guy.

[Macrocephalus]

Target selection in combat
…

this problem was the sole reason i stopped using a bow, because the targeting system often thought it would be better to shoot someone else that had full health rather than finish off the last bit of health on the guy hiding in the back shooting spells at me.

Yeah, it's a pretty serious problem. They need to release a patch to address it IMO.

is there a way to drop quests? there are some that i really don't want to bother pursuing but can't hide without hiding ALL quests or collapsing the entire category of quests. not a huge deal-breaker, but a pretty big annoyance nonetheless.

Nope! Collapsing or expanding your Main Story, Faction, Side, and Task quest categories is all you can do. It's lame.

i actually found some of the faction quests to be slightly more interesting, though they do tend to drag on a little bit longer than i'd like. (house of ballads!) if you're referring to the main storyline, then i agree that it's not very interesting at all. go here, talk to this guy, who tells you to talk to some other guy.

Yeah, I was referring to the main story with the "it's gotten slightly better" comment, but in general I'm just not impressed with the writing. It's generic and tedious, by and large. I get drowned in dialogue I'm mostly not interested in.

But again, despite its flaws, I'm having a really good (if frequently irritated) time with it, and if Kingdoms 2 fixes most or all of these problems and doesn't introduce major new ones, it'll be pretty damned spectacular.

[Macrocephalus]

No serious bugs (yet)
Heck, I've hardly even noticed any significant glitching! After Skyrim and Oblivion, this is a huge breath of fresh air!

Well, I guess I jinxed myself, because I just ran into my first serious bug. At or near the end of the reaaallllly looooong House of Ballads quest line, I chose to kill someone (details below) but while the game gave me the 'X' prompt to finish her off, the X button didn't actually work. I reloaded my previous save, fought the big battle over and tried again, but the same thing happened. So I restarted the game, fought the big battle again — and once again, no dice. Trying the evil option worked, but that's not what I wanted to do.

Spoiler: show

I'm talking about the Maiden of Windemere. If I try to kill her after the big boss battle against her and her annoying-bastard minions, the game won't let me actually finish the job. I tried putting the House of Ballads armor back on after the battle, but that didn't work. I have no idea what else to do. Very frustrating. I'm not supposed to wear the stupid Ballads armor the whole time, am I?

[coldphirre]

No serious bugs (yet)
Heck, I've hardly even noticed any significant glitching! After Skyrim and Oblivion, this is a huge breath of fresh air!

Well, I guess I jinxed myself, because I just ran into my first serious bug. At or near the end of the reaaallllly looooong House of Ballads quest line, I chose to kill someone (details below) but while the game gave me the 'X' prompt to finish her off, the X button didn't actually work. I reloaded my previous save, fought the big battle over and tried again, but the same thing happened. So I restarted the game, fought the big battle again — and once again, no dice. Trying the evil option worked, but that's not what I wanted to do.

i've actually gotten a couple of bugs like that throughout my game to the point where i'm saving before every boss/mini-boss/end of quest event now. the game also lags a little bit from time to time, which is a little disconcerting, as it was completely smooth while i was running around in the first zone. i experienced the exact same problem you described, but the second time i reloaded it did work for me, doing the very thing you asked about in the last line of your spoiler.

most of the bugs i've run into are just the game no longer responding to my button presses like the "X" issue, but i've had a couple system freezes that required a hard restart. i've been doing more of the main storyline now to try and wrap it up and avoid any small side quests that require me to go out of my way just to cut down on the game time and avoid any more bugs.

[justabaldguy]

For whatever it's worth, here are a few specific reactions.

HOW are you not a contributor for this site?? That's hands down the most useful information presented in the best manner possible I've yet to read on this game. This is just what I want to see when trying to make a decision on if I should buy this game or not, as well as takes on different build, interactions, etc. Thank you for your time and effort Macro, I really enjoyed reading as always.

[Macrocephalus]

HOW are you not a contributor for this site?? That's hands down the most useful information presented in the best manner possible I've yet to read on this game. This is just what I want to see when trying to make a decision on if I should buy this game or not, as well as takes on different build, interactions, etc. Thank you for your time and effort Macro, I really enjoyed reading as always.

Thanks as always for the kind words, Baldy! I'm often fascinated by game reviews that seem to be reviewing a different game entirely than the one I played. Dead Island, for example, showed up on a ton of reviewers' worst-of-the-year lists, and I think that was for two main reasons — the famous (or infamous) trailer set up false expectations, and reviewers didn't play it co-op. It may be kind of a blah game if you play it solo, but with friends, it's spectacular. And I think Amalur suffered from expectations too due to the devs' and publishers' endless trumpeting of R. A. Salvator's and Todd MacFarlane's involvement and the whole fate thing which frankly doesn't amount to squat in the game as far as I can see. I think half the battle with reviews is just positioning, which is stupid.

[Macrocephalus]

i've actually gotten a couple of bugs like that throughout my game to the point where i'm saving before every boss/mini-boss/end of quest event now. the game also lags a little bit from time to time, which is a little disconcerting, as it was completely smooth while i was running around in the first zone. i experienced the exact same problem you described, but the second time i reloaded it did work for me, doing the very thing you asked about in the last line of your spoiler.

most of the bugs i've run into are just the game no longer responding to my button presses like the "X" issue, but i've had a couple system freezes that required a hard restart. i've been doing more of the main storyline now to try and wrap it up and avoid any small side quests that require me to go out of my way just to cut down on the game time and avoid any more bugs.

Well, I managed to squeeze a little gaming in last night, and your advice worked — I tried the boss battle again wearing the supplied armor, and though it seemed for a moment like the game wasn't going to accept my response to the prompt, it finally did. So thanks for the advice!

Anyway, after that I picked up a few new quests and started noticing a little intermittent lag (I was not happy about that!) so I decided to do some quick quest pruning and finished off a handful of them, and that seemed to put an end to the lag. No guarantees, since I only played for about an hour, but maybe having too many quests and tasks open at once just taxed the engine too much. Unfortunately, since some of the task-style quests seem to be endless, I wonder if there'll come a point when that solution no longer works… assuming it even worked in the first place, of course.

[BigBadBob113]

I've probably got at least thirty side quests active right now, but luckily I haven't come across any lag at all. The only issue I've noticed the the x button not responding when initiating dialog, opening a chest or trying to do an ultimate fate kill combo thingy.

Edit:

I also want to say that I'm enjoying playing as a mage for the first time in my life! I usually find mages to be weak and that their magic is more of a hinderance than anything, but KoA did mages right. The staff and charkans are excellent weapons that don't leave me feeling like a fool, and the spells are pretty badass. The meteor spell is killing everything around me in one shot, and it's not even maxed out yet!

Note- I did start out with a finesse build, but thanks to the game's ability to easily reset your stats, it's very easy to rewrite your character to check out some of the other "classes" abilities.

[coldphirre]

No guarantees, since I only played for about an hour, but maybe having too many quests and tasks open at once just taxed the engine too much. Unfortunately, since some of the task-style quests seem to be endless, I wonder if there'll come a point when that solution no longer works… assuming it even worked in the first place, of course.

those endless tasks drove me crazy! all those waypoints on my minimap that refuse to go away! i finally rushed through the main storyline when i got to the last zone, avoiding all quest givers, and still had a good 40 open quests by the time i finished the game.

I've probably got at least thirty side quests active right now, but luckily I haven't come across any lag at all. The only issue I've noticed the the x button not responding when initiating dialog, opening a chest or trying to do an ultimate fate kill combo thingy.

i've run into the input problem also, but in addition to the x button, ALL buttons would stop working occasionally, especially when i was switching between the map and the menus, and i had to restart the game to fix the issue. maybe the game can't take all that input at once? no idea.

Note- I did start out with a finesse build, but thanks to the game's ability to easily reset your stats, it's very easy to rewrite your character to check out some of the other "classes" abilities.

i "'unbound" my fate 7 times just to play with all the different abilities. my favorite part? being stripped naked the same was i was stripped of my fate powers.