"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" or "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning"?
- Thread starter Goodsport
- Start date
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I'm not sure these two games are all that similar, other than they're both fantasy games.
I just finished the demo and have to agree with this statement. The two couldn't be more dissimilar if they tried. Kingdoms strongly reminds me of Torchlight, only it's not isometric and has a more complicated levelling system.
After playing the demo I won't be buying Kingdoms. It's just too... fluffy. I am happy I did play it, though, as it unlocked a bonus item for Mass Effect 3
Agamon
Adventurer
OP did say similar premise, which isn't all that inaccurate. But yeah, the play styles are apples and oranges. I personally prefer the more realistic feel and look of Skyrim over KoA, which looks and plays more like single player WoW. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just not my cup'o'tea.
frankthedm
First Post
Skyrim is plenty of fun, but there is a lot of maintenance as well with leveling and selling vendor trash. To say nothing of the oodles of traveling and wandering. Depending on one's play-style, Skyrim can fall into a four hours of play, 15 minutes of fun rut. Plus as some mention, combat isn't perfect.
And dragons are a boring fight. For every character I've had, they've only been a big bag of hit points. My orc warrior-smith two-handed hammer wielder could berserk power-attack one down in two hits, or about a dozen regular melee strikes. My thief-archer could sneak attack (shadow warrior ftw) one down in about 10-15 arrows. And now my pure mage just fireblasts (with impact) one down with about thirty firebolts.
Snore.
Then there's the overabundance of quests. I have about sixty or so quests and yet I can't justify chasing them down without meta-gaming because I always have something more 'urgent' to take care of and by the time you've taken care of it, you've amounted another 5-10 more quests!
Not that the quests actually mean anything other than a bit of gold or the ability to take items from people who like you without being accused of stealing.
Then there's the whole, "Go anywhere, do anything!" Yeah, not. I still find MANY invisible walls, quest blocked doors (ie. you can't go here 'cause it'll ruin questing!), and on the flip-side, entire quest lines ruined simply because you jumped the gun and went somewhere you "shouldn't have"; well if I shouldn't have gone there, then it's not "Go anywhere, do anything!" is it.
For example, I almost had to abandon my thief-archer at 47th level solely because I got bored and decided to rob Riften blind on a burglary rampage. I had no idea that breaking into Mercer's house and taking his plans meant that the entire thieve's guild quest line would break and make it so it couldn't be finished or fixed. I had waited specifically until 46th-level to complete the thieve's guild quests because of level-based rewards capping out at 46, so that I could always use the Nightingale armour and bow without ever upgrading since I liked the look of both. That corn-holed my entire character concept and it was just lucky that I had a save at 43rd-level before I went on the burglary rampage. Of course, now I don't want to go back and play the missing four levels because I feel cheated.
It's not a terrible game, but after a few hundred hours of play, I certainly wouldn't rate it as highly as it has been reviewed. The bugs in it alone make it less than worth those ratings.
Agamon
Adventurer
I admire your commitment. A few hundred hours and it's meh? Personally, I think if one can play a game for that long and only find a few things that aren't perfect about it, it deserves all the merit it gets.
I didn't say it was 'meh', I said it wasn't terrible and that it wasn't worthy of the praise it's getting from reviewers.
I'd put it squarely at a 7/10.
As a comparison, I put Dragon Age at 5/10, Dragon Age II at 6/10 (yes, I thought it was better), Mass Effect at 8.5/10 (the Mako lost it 0.5 points) and Mass Effect II at 9/10.
It has some great aspects to it, but it also has many, many, many flaws that pull those great aspects down significantly. If it was more polished with fewer bugs, greater roleplaying opportunities (hell, it has less roleplaying aspects to it than the extremely linear ME series, your choices are to either do the quest or not do the quest), better combat, more interesting levelling options (most of the trees are pretty goddamn boring and instead of increasing power and options, only really keep you in line with the power curve), less breakable quests (the thieve's guild chain wasn't the only quest I've broken so far and had to either go back to a previous save to fix or just accept that I'm never going to be able to do that quest chain), then I could see it getting up to a 9 out of 10, but as is, it's just not as great as the 'buzz' claims it to be.
The developers could learn a lot from the devs of ME. ME keeps things pretty simple and straightforward so often gets accused of lacking dimensionality, but what it does do, it does very well. Skyrim is trying to be all things to all people and in doing so, falls behind in a lot of areas. This is most visible in the skill trees where some are really good, and others may as well not exist, which is applicable to almost all of the spell trees with only a few notable exceptions. When you're getting nothing but vanilla power boosts that don't even put you ahead of the power curve, you know they just gave up at that point and put it in the 'too hard' basket.
Agamon
Adventurer
I like that Skyrim isn't ME or that either of them are KoA, and that DA, Witcher, Fallout, Fable, Bastion and FF are all different, too. Not all are my cup of tea, but they are someone's. Viva la difference!
For the OP's sake, from my perspective, the bugs in Skyrim aren't that bad. Only one encountered in my 150 hour play-through, and it was a minor, miscellaneous quest. Also, most of the bugs have been squashed, as of the latest patch.
KoA hasn't been out long enough to hear about bugs yet, but in games as wide-scoping as these ones, they are bound to be there.
For the OP's sake, from my perspective, the bugs in Skyrim aren't that bad. Only one encountered in my 150 hour play-through, and it was a minor, miscellaneous quest. Also, most of the bugs have been squashed, as of the latest patch.
KoA hasn't been out long enough to hear about bugs yet, but in games as wide-scoping as these ones, they are bound to be there.
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