Full disclosure: I never had the opportunity to play the original game of Kingdoms of Amalur. In other words, this isn’t going to be a game of “which version did it better?” Also yes, I did roll my eyes on the inside every time that title came across my screen. Ultimately, Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning plays itself too straight to really merit the cheekily clumsy title choice.

Still, I’m sitting at about 20 hours of gameplay at time of writing, and I’m certainly enjoying myself overall. The graphics (from what I can tell) are a clear improvement over the original, without feeling compelled to complicate matters groundlessly. This mattered to me both at the beginning of the game and any time onward; because you’re going to spend a lot of time running around in, and looking at, Amalur’s various environments.

Even if you skip the majority of the side quests, or only do those that lie immediately in your path while following the main storyline, there is a lot to do and see. If you’re anything like me, you’ll appreciate a game that knows how to be visually appealing without bombarding the senses. Sure, that means certain other tradeoffs are being made — most, if not all, of the NPCs look like fairly standard Western fantasy fare, and we’ll come back to that — but the landscapes and creatures are varied enough to be fun without being overwhelming.

Speaking of NPCs, the voice acting is overall pretty solid. With maybe one or two exceptions, you can tell there’s a host of actors involved — that is to say, not just a small handful of people voicing multiple characters each. Of course, this means that you’ll probably recognize Liam O’Brien’s voice the minute his character opens his mouth, but that isn’t, per se, a negative.

In a game that seems to be partially dependent on nostalgic goodwill to work, casting a known and loved set of voice actors is a reasonable and understandable move. That being said, there are some definite moments where you’ll find the dialogue clumsy. This is especially the case if you’re playing either of the Alfar races offered to you in character creation. In what seems to be most of the game, most NPCs will talk to you like you’re either an Almain or Varani — which seem to be the human stand-ins.

I picked Dokkalfar on my first playthrough, and there were multiple scenes where a human-ish NPC explained my own culture to me. It wasn’t until I reached Rathir, the Dokkalfar capital if you will, that characters started recognizing me as one of their own.

Equally, it’s worth noting that the character creator is a bit on the bland side, and there are some pretty significant limitations. Much like other games in a similar vein, your initial choices don’t matter enormously. Though there are slight skill buffs associated with given selections, any real character building you do comes about with levelling up, so it’s essentially down to aesthetics.

These aesthetics quickly become deeply problematized, though, when you realize that the Almain are the only characters that can really look non-white, and that’s being generous. I was able to get a tanned character, basically, and only from the one race. Your gender choices are also limited to male or female.

The handful of NPCs I met that were characters of color was similarly limited, exposing once again the fault lines in heavily white replications of Western fantasy games. It stands out, and not in a good way, that Amalur‘s designers are somehow able to make grey, blue and green skin, but no more than one or two shades of brown. The shades of brown are questionably rendered ones at that.

Many games are finally moving past these limitations to really allow players to create characters that look, dress, and sound like them. Because of that it’s deeply frustrating that Amalur seems so attached to genre conventions that it’s refused to catch up.

Let’s talk about the Travelers while we’re at it, shall we? Having a whole faction questline surrounding a group of vaguely Irish nomadic thieves and criminals who openly flout the law is suspicious at best. Even worse when they just happen to share a name with an Indigenous group based out of Ireland that is often stereotyped as being a criminal threat.

The plot, too, isn’t bringing a great deal of novelty to the fantasy RPG table, so to speak. One assumes this is simply a hangover from the original, so up to a point I understand the desire not to change so much that it becomes unrecognizable. Still, as Western-fantasy RPG systems hinging on the appearance of a mysteriously powerful Chosen One and their challenge of healing a warring, broken realm have proliferated; it’s hard to avoid feeling like Amalur has mostly ended up reinventing the wheel.

Oddly, though, for a game that clearly cares about having a world steeped in extensive lore, nearly all of it that I’ve been able to discover has come about through exposition by NPCs or clumsily-timed cinematic sequences. Exploring and finding out some of this information on your own can (theoretically) be done through side quests, but I have to put a heavy emphasis on the side.

Largely, they seem to be a way to earn experience and gold. This is no doubt valuable, especially if you’re playing at higher difficulties. Other than that, it’s hard to tell what else would motivate someone to step away from the main storyline to chase the slightly mind-boggling number of fetch-and-retrieve errands Amalur throws your way.

I started out being determined to follow them through, but soon got weighed down with so many that I gave up to focus on the central story. I completed them only if they fell directly across my path or if I was desperately in need of a level up to proceed.

It’s unclear, too, what impact (if any) they have on that central story. The choices you make in accepting or rejecting quests, or how you treat certain NPCs, seem to have very little impact beyond the immediate next fight or two.

Similarly, the game tells you very little about the factions present. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any real in-world consequence for choosing one faction over another. Faction quests are, elsewhere, often a source of great roleplay, relationship-building, and character definition moments. Their seeming lack of significance complicates the ability to call Amalur a “roleplaying game” pretty drastically.

On the topic of levelling up, though, it should be said that I really like the approach to character advancement. Sure, the menus and skill trees are a little crunchy and not particularly novel, but the “destiny” skill card system feels fun and fresh enough that you feel accomplished in more ways than just moving from level 5 to level 6.

There is also a real attraction to the fact that you can dual-class, granting some more flexibility than the standard warrior/mage/rogue options you start out with. If you don’t like a gameplay style, you can also respec and go in a different direction.

The combat itself is generally a lot of fun and may be the smoothest-running aspect of the game. That is worth noting, since you’ll be doing a lot of it. Depending on your weapon choices, it can get a little button-mashy; I don’t want to downplay that. Still, there’s also a lot of opportunities for branching abilities, and tactical uses of dodging and dashing. The visual effects of my “fate” ability still haven’t gotten old.

That is, until the camera angles decide to take a vacation, clipping through the ground either at the end of a battle. There is nothing to do about it except wait. Worse though is when the camera messes up right when you get surrounded by enemies you now can’t really see. Then we can talk about button-mashing, when you’re just hoping that the game’s lock-on mechanism will carry you as you click haphazardly.

This visual bug, though, isn’t nearly as frustrating as the frequency with which the game likes to crash. It has crashed often, sometimes even in the middle of an important stretch of dialogue. I can’t say for sure if this will hold true on everyone’s machine, but it certainly did on mine.

I got in the habit of saving excessively, pretty much after every fight or significant conversation, so I wouldn’t have to repeat it all. Once I reached Rathir, I crashed about three times in the space of ten minutes. Suffice it to say many players may not be as tooth-and-nail stubborn to finish something as me.

Okay, okay, I’ve been critiquing a lot: I don’t want to sound like I’m not having fun. Despite the clumsiness, despite the hiccups, despite the storyline perhaps being a bit on the generic side, I’m still planning on diving back in.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning isn’t going to be the kind of game that becomes my fixation for the next year. However, it’s a comfortable, if kind of over-familiar, space. A place I can switch my brain off, fight some monsters, and pretend to be someone stronger than me for a while. Assuming that’s the game’s overall goal, and assuming you’re either stubborn enough or patient enough to put up with the crashes and bugs, we’ll call it a qualified success.

A PC Review Copy of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning was provided by THQ Nordic for this Review.

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Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

$40.00

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Attractive if simple graphics
• Solid voice acting
• Combat is smooth and enjoyable
• Interesting approach to character advancement

Cons

• Prone to crashing
• Side quests and some dialogue aren't very narratively cohesive
• Plot is a bit generic Western fantasy
• Lacks diversity
• Fairly frequent camera and field-of-view glitches