Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo
5While its somewhat forgettable WoW-like presentation and obvious console roots may not charm everyone, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is nonetheless an interesting upcoming release not only because it's a full-fledged open world RPG but also because it tries a lot harder than most action RPGs to really get the "action" part right.
Reckoning borrows quite heavily from modern third-person beat 'em ups such as God of War and Darksiders, and if the recently released demo is any indication Big Huge Games has developed a very fast-paced, tactile and flexible system which seems to control better and be more satisfying than the combat in similar games such as Fable, Divinity 2, Two Worlds 2 or Gothic 4. The design of the actual game world comes off as a bit uninspired, though (with too many long winding corridors), and it's difficult to tell whether the free-form, build-your-own-class levelling system really is going to work in practice or if the story and character interaction get better than the rather generic RPG stuff seen in the demo. But, all things considered, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how Reckoning turns out when it gets released next month.