Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Previews

We have another couple of previews for 38 Studios’ Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning straight from GamesCom, both courtesy of some hands-on time spent with the game.

IGN praises the combat:

My warrior wielded two blades, each assigned to a button. One was a massive sword crackling with electricity, while the other was smaller and wreathed in flames. The combo system is based around context and timing. Mashing one of the attack buttons will unleash a basic three-move combo, but tapping through at a slower pace results in quite a different sequence. Similarly, attacking from out of a block or out of a roll results in different attacks.

Each weapon also had charge attacks. Holding down then releasing the attack button for the fire-infused blade saw him dash forward in a powerful thrust move. Charging his other weapon resulted in a spinning blade move that could be extended into multiple spins ending in a devastating overhead attack by hitting the button repeatedly after unleashing it. Mixing and matching between weapons, blocks and dodges is as simple and responsive as you’d expect.

So they’re the meat and potatoes of combat. How about something a little more elaborate? That’s where the right trigger/R2 button comes in. Hold that and you can access the four special moves you’ve assigned to the face buttons. One might boost your attack strength, with each successive unbroken hit in a chain doing extra damage, another might fire out a grappling hook that reels enemies in (or reels you in to the enemy if they’re big enough). Yet another might cause huge stone spikes to rise up out of the ground.

While AusGamers notes that their hands-on time has been really short before getting to the meat of the preview:

Attacks are relative to your equipped weapons, which can be mapped to X and Y, respectively, and correctly timed inputs in combo form mean you can string together devastating blows that often finish in launchers, allowing for even more impact. Pulling in the Right Trigger brings up four mapped abilities, such as buffs or straight-up magic, that can be activated in conjunction with your melee strikes. So clever players could easily put together lengthy combos full of magic, melee strikes and peripheral abilities, and, interestingly, these are incredibly easy to perform on console, even with the limited input space on a controller and I can’t stress enough how intuitive it all was.

Adding to the accessibility and depth of the system, is a handy B-button evade move, which you can obviously spam in order to cross the world quicker (and let’s face it, this is always one of the more fun ways to get around in games like), but also use in tactical play, as many a character can also lay mechanical or magical traps — during combat — for extra effect. This means, luring enemies into your set path of destruction is as easy as using yourself as bait, followed by a tap of the B-button for a timely evade to then deal with any other enemies working against you to uneven the odds.

In fact, it’s the latter component that stuck out most. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning takes no leaf out of the book of tag-team enemy encounters where you’re only ever grappled by a single baddie, among many around you, once. Instead, like more modern combat-focused games (the Batman: Arkham series, for example), your foes will attack in grouped numbers, and in full-force. It’s not known what the scaling system will be like area-to-area just yet (or level-to-level), but it at least felt like you’re always going to be reaching into game’s magic bag of combat tricks to get the most out of everything they’ve created here. And even in the very short time I had with the game, the variations in enemy encounters — and enemy types — was more than enough to sell me on wanting to get the absolute most out of it.