Though the opening is intriguing, the power of the plot soon dies a belabored death and is easily forgotten. While everyone in Amalur has their fate woven for them, revealed to the mystical fateweavers who can see the threads, you (for reasons to be slowly revealed) have no fate. Or more accurately, you change your fate as you see fit – you hold the strings as it were. It’s an interesting concept that is poorly executed, but it does give license to a number of divergences from typical RPG fare. As you gain experience from quests and killings and level up, you are able to chose a skill (like lockpicking, persuasion, alchemy, or crafting) and assign 3 points to fields of might, stealth, or magic. Points can be assigned to passive bonuses or used to unlock new moves. As you level, you unlock the ability to assign yourself ‘fate cards’ which work like ‘classes’ in other RPGs, awarding bonuses to a style of play. The idea is to award the player for their own style, be it might all the way or a mix of everything. Unfortunately, as you are able to see these fate cards in advance, selecting points to gain the class you want becomes the logical outcome. Furthermore, because fate cards are actually rather limited in variety and mostly boil down to levels within each branch (might, magic-stealth, magic etc.), rather than freeing the player to play to their own whims, the fate cards are functionally limiting, as it makes much more sense to aim for a specific outcome rather than go on a whim. Thankfully, any fateweaver can change all of your leveling allotments at any time for a small fee, giving you ample opportunity to mix things up if you made a poor decision or just need a change.
Let’s be entirely clear: the combat is really good… for an RPG. But actually that’s saying quite a lot. No, it doesn’t reach the heights of a Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden, as action-oriented games which involve the heights of refinement and skill, but Reckoning has likely the best action-combat I’ve ever seen in an ...
