Wanted to get a new game, but not so much into souls-like games so asked CHATGPT what is a similar difficulty, combat, & exploration game to BOTW or TOTK.

Welp, this came up... I'll give it a whirl... Tips are welcome, thanks all

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I actually found this game thanks to ChatGPT. I literally asked it something like: "Games similar to Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon's Dogma, Fable, Gothic, and Divinity." (I probably mentioned a few others too, but I don't remember.)

It gave me a list of five games, and Kingdoms of Amalur was at the top. It was on sale for really cheap, so I bought it. Luckily, I also found a translation for my language.

What surprised me the most is how little attention this game gets where I live. I had never even heard of it before, and when I searched for videos about it in my country, I only found two or three. It's honestly crazy how unknown this game is (at least where I hang out), considering how good the gameplay and storytelling are.

I started playing it at the beginning of this month, and somehow I'm already 80+ hours in. I have no idea how it happened, but this game completely hooked me. It's incredible.

This is the version with the least time on it, the others have about 1.5k hours on them combined

I know we all come in here to discuss KoA, and for me, it's my absolute favorite of all time. It has been since it came out. It replaced Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II in my top spot.

How about you?

And if it's NOT your fave game, what is?

Well, everyone, this is my first playthrough, and I decided to start on Very Hard difficulty. At first, the game was challenging, fun, and really enjoyable. However, after a while, I reached a point where I just don't die anymore. My character has become so strong that even the "bosses" aren't much of a challenge.

Is this just because I'm still in the early game?

I currently have 62 hours of playtime, and I'm doing literally every quest that appears. I only continue the main story after completing all the available side quests and tasks. Judging by the map, I still have a lot left to explore, but things like money have become completely meaningless since I make so much just by selling items.

I also maxed out the Blacksmithing and Sagecraft skills, so I craft all of my own weapons and armor. I sold every Finesse and Magic item because I'm not interested in those playstyles. I prefer a build focused entirely on Strength and physical damage.

Could someone please tell me if the game becomes more challenging later on, or is it generally this easy?

P.S. Sorry for any mistakes in my English. I used a translator.

I'm the kind of rpg gamer who does every single sidequest and love to explore every inch of the world, and it increasingly becomes aparent I really under-estimated how large this game is. I came into it thinking it would be fable-length, and it is absolutely not. But I am loving it -- its become almost a cozy game. I come back from work and put a couple hours in just questing and slowly clearing the world of content. I will eventually be trying to get 100% although it looks like itll take me over 200+ hours to do so... I'm suprised they could fit all this on a 360 era game. Was there any discussion at the time on just HOW dauntingly massive this game is. It feels like the Crimson Desert of the 2010s.

I've been thinking about a project that I think could be really interesting, and before investing time into it, I'd like to hear what the community thinks.

Kingdoms of Amalur has an amazing foundation for an MMORPG: beautiful fantasy world, action combat, tons of abilities, loot, crafting, factions, dungeons, and a lot of existing content.

Imagine being able to explore that world with other players, form parties, fight world bosses, run dungeons, trade equipment, join guilds, and progress through a persistent online world.

Rather than building an entirely new game from scratch, the idea would be to investigate whether the existing PC game could be extended through a community modding project.

I know this would be a technically challenging project. Multiplayer movement is one thing, but synchronizing combat, enemies, loot, quests, and persistent character progression is a completely different challenge. I'm not claiming any of this is already working.

For some context, I'm the developer behind a project that rebuilt World of Warcraft 1.12.1 to run directly in the browser. Here's that project:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wowservers/comments/1vsimnk/i_rebuilt_world_of_warcraft_1121_to_run_directly/

Before committing to this idea, I'd like to know:

• Would you genuinely play this? Would you prefer co-op, a small persistent MMO world, or something closer to a full MMORPG?
• What would make it worth playing? New dungeons, raids, world bosses, guilds, crafting, PvP, or something else?
• Would you play the original game with multiplayer added, or would you want new content and progression systems?
• Would anyone here be interested in helping with the technical side, especially reverse engineering, game modding, networking, or multiplayer development?

I'm trying to gauge genuine interest and understand what people would want before committing to a project of this scale.

If enough people are interested, the next step would be investigating the game's technical feasibility and putting together a small proof of concept.

Curious to hear your thoughts!

First time playing Re-reckoning, played the original. I found this somewhere right outside Gorhart at level 2 maybe even 1, right after equipping The Flame lol. I didn't realize how strong it was, until I was still using it at level 9. I wanted a greatsword playthrough lol. Found a nice greatsword with 84 attack at level 12 🤣

What's the highest you've found early game?

I was thinking about how cool The Fateless One is because they are detached from fate and be able to do anything without it being predetermined.

During my playthrough I was planning for my character to be a warrior mage, therefore I predetermined what The Fateless One is going to be, and therefore I just decided The Fateless One's fate.

Then it hit me.

The Fateless One isn't fateless at all.

In their world they are 100% factually fateless, but beyond their reality, we know they truly are not.

I reflected it upon myself and reality. What if we are just in worlds within worlds? Is our reality fiction to the entities beyond our reality and is theirs too?

The chances of me believing in free will has dropped to zero just because of this game.

i dunno i might be wrong and i am sleepy. good nite.

Absolutely love this one! I like the weapons and combat, the unique concepts of fate and destiny, and the world I got to run around for seemingly endless hours!

Took just a month or so to clock in 200 hours on this game lol. My favorite weapons in this one would have to be the faeblades. Some of the sickest movesets and most thrilling combat had to have come from those damn things (the parry spin attack actually wowed me the most). I really wanted to make my own build that included Chakrams + Faeblades, more abilities, and heavier-looking armor, so I was so glad the Universalist route was an option. Ended up using that the whole way through, and threw in Primal as the main damage type I wanted to beat the game with!

I will say I was slightly disappointed by the main story and the overall decisions given to the player. The story was pretty cheesy and felt like there was so much more potential in using Fate as the main concept woven in. Good thing I don't mind a little cheese now and then, so it didn't drive me away from actually getting into it. As for the decisions, it sort of sucked knowing I had no other way to change the outcome of someone's questline and such, given that my character is supposed to change Fate itself, making it sort of lackluster. Though, one of the few times I did have a choice, I got Nina from Dead Kel killed at the end of things lol

Speaking of characters, Captain Brattigan was my absolute favorite in this. Probably the most hilarious character with her stupid jokes. AND she's thankfully a reliable mate!

I haven't gotten to Fatesworn just yet, but I plan on coming back soon enough once I've had my fill with the other games on my list

Thanks for the recommendation, friend u/AuroreSomersby

Onto Outward, now!

It took me years. I am a big Elder Scrolls fan and an older gamer (55) and I kept on filling up my Steam library every time there was a Steam sale. My backlog is very large, filled games here and there I do play but many others...I just did not feel it. I would force myself to play these games just to get my money's worth.

Then about a month back I was thinking that if you have a game you put a LOT of time into it, it makes up for that $15 game you bought and stopped playing after an hour and forgot to refund.

Two weeks ago I finally understood that I only want to play games that give me a response, sort of an endorphin. Just by playing I am happy. There are a ton of games I like, but when I am playing them I am very neutral.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning does what Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Jurassic World Evolution 3, Warcraft 1, 2 and 3, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fable and World of Warcraft Classic do; they literally make me happy when playing. This is who I am. I love the artwork and lore of Elden Ring but that game is not for me. I started realizing who I am as a gamer and am now running with it.

Backlog be dammed, I am not touching it. I will play one of the games I truly love with new builds.

This bring me to Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

This game was literally designed for me. Its absolutely insane. Being a big classic WoW fan I have always wanted a single player RPG that felt like an MMO. I am also into art style and prefer that over realistic graphics. Art style is timeless. The music which is important is amazing, and the game isnt a dreaded soulslike. I even love the crafting. Everything about this game is for me. Everything.

If this game isnt for you, and does not make you happy then find that game or games, and if a game isnt making you happy stop playing. Life is short; who cares what anyone else thinks, play those dozen games you love on rotation, sinking hundreds of hours into each. And stop playing games you feel are just "okay" because you need to get your moneys worth on them.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is not a perfect game, no perfect game exists.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is the perfect game for me.

from the combat to the story to the music to the colorful world...this game is just so good. every single character interested me, the armor sets and weapons look cool as hell. holy man, i wish there were more options for character creation but otherwise this game is near perfect...i can see doing a replay just to try other build and playstyles and i never do that. i mean, R.A. Salvatore is involved so couldnt expect any less...but seriously, big names aside, this is so much better than Skyrim...which tbh i dont really like for whatever reason. I'm hooked.

I hope whoever got the IP continues to expand the universe...if not it'd be such a pity.

After waiting so long for the sale on eshop i finally got the game and fatesworn dlc!!!

Playing through it for the first time and the whole atmosphere definitely confused me a bit. The map would make you think it was a very sorta wet, gloomy, oceanside mountain climate with mostly rocky terrain. But then you get there and it's very warm, sunny, green, and idyllic. Did they change their aesthetic ideas midway through development but never updated the map?

I every so often check up on this game, because it is in my opinion one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life top 3, this for me was even better than skyrim (I know controversial, skyrim is great too ofc). Which makes me even more sad that this game was more or less just forgotten. I remembered when the chaos DLC was teased a couple of years ago and I was literally going insane, but personally I was really disappointed. I felt like the new studio really had no idea what KOA really was or is in its essence.

So is there anything like literally anything at all as in news maybe some notes etc coming out about this game? Or is it completely forgotten and left in the shelf?

Disclaimer: I'm a Japanese player, and English is not my first language. I'm using a translation tool to write this post, so I apologize if some parts sound unnatural or if I misunderstand any terminology.

EDIT: By the way, looking through everyone’s comments, I realized there was a mistake in the title. It should actually be “finished it after 10 Years.”
I had AI translate the main post for me, but it seems it got a little carried away. sorry.

After finally reaching a stopping point with Fields of Mistria, I decided to start working through some of the games sitting in my backlog.

That game was Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning.

I have a somewhat unusual history with this game.

I first bought the PS3 version when I was in elementary school. I had been deeply impressed by Oblivion, so I started looking for other open-world RPGs, and Kingdoms of Amalur came up. I bought it used, but eventually gave up because I couldn't get into its world or systems.

Years later, I bought it again on PS4 because of nostalgia and because I remembered never finishing it.

I gave up again.

Then I bought it on Switch.

I gave up again.

Now, with Steam being my main gaming platform, I bought it one more time.

And this time, I finally finished it.

So after all these years, I wanted to think about why I kept coming back to this game, but also why I kept putting it down.

What I liked

Amalur's unique world, its towns and landscapes, and especially its combat system are still excellent.

It has a very distinctive fantasy atmosphere, and I think it's rare to find an RPG with quite this particular aesthetic.

The combat is also surprisingly fast and fluid. Compared with Oblivion, Skyrim, and Dragon's Dogma, which I think were some of its most obvious points of comparison at the time, Amalur has a combat system that I personally prefer.

The Reckoning Mode is especially satisfying.

The feeling of suddenly becoming overwhelmingly powerful is great, and the finishing animations are genuinely cool. My favorite is probably the two-handed axe finisher against humanoid enemies.

The story is fairly conventional: a chosen hero, an enemy threatening the world, and so on.

But I actually like the way it justifies the protagonist being special.

In Amalur, fate is absolute. If fate says you will die, you die. If it says you will succeed, you succeed.

The protagonist, however, becomes an existence outside of fate because of a certain event.

So while "the chosen one" is a very familiar concept, using fate itself to explain why the protagonist is special was, in my opinion, a clever idea.

I also found the game relatively stable. There were some minor bugs in side quests, but I never encountered anything that completely blocked my progress through the main story.

Where I think the game has problems

Unfortunately, Amalur also has some very noticeable problems.

The first is the size of the map.

The world is simply too large for a game without mounts or jumping.

Towns and dungeons also feel like they were made one or two sizes larger than necessary. Even though the protagonist can run fairly quickly, there is an enormous amount of time spent simply running from one place to another.

And this becomes even worse with the dungeon design.

One thing I like about Skyrim and Oblivion is that their dungeons are generally designed in a very player-friendly way.

You fight your way through a dungeon, defeat the boss, and then often find a shortcut back to the entrance or an exit that naturally leads you onward.

Amalur often doesn't do this.

There are many dungeons where you defeat the boss and then have to walk all the way back the way you came.

That would already be somewhat annoying.

But remember that everything in this game is huge.

So in a game where your main method of movement is running, the game is effectively making you repeat a long stretch of completely uneventful travel.

It becomes exhausting.

Side quests and exploration

The main story is pretty good, but I have a much harder time defending the side quests.

There are a huge number of them, but most seem to boil down to variations of fetch quests.

Because the world is so large, these quests also create a lot of repetitive travel.

Another problem is that I often couldn't see how completing a side quest actually changed the world.

The game might tell you that something has changed, but when you return to the area, there often isn't much visible evidence of that change.

This also interacts badly with the dungeon design.

Almost every dungeon seems to be connected to a side quest in some way.

So when I discovered a dungeon while exploring, I often felt that entering it immediately wasn't actually useful. There was a good chance I would simply have to come back later when a quest sent me there.

Because of this, exploration gradually stopped feeling like exploration.

It became more like:

Find fast travel point → unlock it → move on.

By the later parts of the game, especially after crossing the sea, I almost completely stopped doing side quests and focused on finishing the main story.

The worldbuilding problem

This is probably one of the biggest reasons I had trouble getting into Amalur when I was younger.

The world itself is very rich and distinctive.

The problem is how the game communicates that world to the player.

There is an enormous amount of lore, and there are proper nouns everywhere.

The Lorestones, for example, explain the history of the world in a theatrical, almost dramatic style.

I understand what they were trying to do, but I found it very difficult to absorb.

There is already so much unfamiliar information coming at you, and then you're expected to remember names, factions, places, events, and history through spoken or text-heavy exposition.

And since I'm a Japanese player playing the game in English, this obviously makes it even harder for me to process everything naturally.

So although I think Amalur has an excellent worldbuilding foundation, I don't think it does a particularly good job of introducing that world to the player.

It tells you about the world much more than it lets you discover the world.

I also found the lack of memorable NPCs disappointing.

There are certainly some memorable characters—the DLC's captain and the drunken mage in the arena come to mind—but outside of the major characters in the main story, surprisingly few NPCs left a strong impression on me.

Crafting and balance

The combat is great, but the balance is another story.

If you want to become as strong as possible, you will eventually discover that crafting your own equipment is ridiculously powerful.

The system allows you to compensate for almost any weakness an item might have.

Low critical chance but high critical damage?

Add components to fix the critical chance.

Want more elemental damage?

You can build for that.

Want more physical damage or defense?

You can build for that too.

The crafting system itself is actually quite impressive.

The problem is that it is too effective.

Eventually, crafted equipment completely outclasses most shop-bought and unique equipment.

Unique weapons and armor often look much cooler, and I wanted to use them, but their stats were frequently so much worse than my crafted gear that I had very little reason to do so.

This also makes most shops almost pointless.

Aside from merchants selling things like backpacks and lockpicks, and certain healers, there isn't much reason to visit most merchants.

Why buy equipment when you can craft something better?

And why buy equipment when the game is constantly throwing gear at you through chests and enemies?

Many shops end up feeling like little more than places where you sell junk.

So why didn't Amalur become another Skyrim?

I know this is a somewhat unfair comparison, but I kept thinking about it while playing.

Amalur reportedly sold over a million copies, so it wasn't some complete commercial failure.

But Skyrim is still being played and discussed today, while Amalur is much less commonly brought up.

Why?

My personal theory is that Amalur simply tried to put too much into one game.

The map is huge.

There are tons of side quests.

The lore is huge.

There are tons of items.

There is crafting.

There are multiple regions.

There are a lot of systems competing for your attention.

Almost everything feels excessive.

If I were designing Amalur as a series, I would actually split it into several games.

The first game could focus only on Dalentarth and the Plains of Erathell.

If that succeeded, the second game could introduce Detyre and Klurikon.

Then the final game could take place in Alabastra.

The worldbuilding could also be revealed gradually, giving players time to understand the setting and making them genuinely curious about what lies beyond the areas they already know.

In other words, I think Amalur needed more time to let the player digest what it was offering.

Final thoughts

After finally finishing the game after all these years, I think the best word I can use to describe what Amalur needed is:

"Condensation."

The world needed to be condensed.

The fields and dungeons needed to be condensed.

The systems needed to be condensed.

The game balance needed to be refined.

I don't think Amalur is a bad game.

But I also don't think it's an especially great game.

It has so many genuinely good ideas that I can understand why I kept buying it again over the years.

At the same time, it has so many things working against those good ideas that I can also understand why I kept abandoning it.

Maybe that's what makes Amalur so interesting to me.

It's a game with an unusually strong flavor—but perhaps there was simply too much of it.

I'd be interested to hear what other people think, especially people who played the original game around the time it was released.

Did you have the same experience with the huge world and side quests, or did those things work for you?

I've had some stuff spoiled for me, and ngl it sounds kinda awful. Did you guys have fun?

Hey all.
The game is on sale on steam and I’m thinking about getting it.
What is it like? Does it have quests? Campaign?
Bosses?
What would you describe it as?

Didn't spend too much time in it, just switched to a might/finesse hybrid and so far I'm enjoying it more. Full sorcerer the damage didnt match up to the other 2, fights lasted longer. I'm guessing I need a specific setup of amulet and rings to add the extra dmg to make it OP? Anyway will try might+sorcery next, I feel sorcery is OP as a secondary.

I also haven't tried full finesse or full might. Maybe I'll give those 2 a shot as well.

I've explored almost all of Dalentarth and I have four quest lines in my main quest tab, I started Teeth of Naros thinking it was the main quest (Well I should have known better, flying city and all), but now I know it's not. The elven pirate ship quest line I know is DLC, and then there is the quests with the dead fateweaver and the one about the fae city of Ysa, both I assumed to be DLC but one (or both) of them now got to be the main one. Which one is the main and is there a preferred order of doing them all?

since the last time i posted how enthusiastic I was about this game, I have put in another 15 hours or so. and...this game really doesnt disappoint. im almost 20 hours in and im still not sick of it. its repetitive and all but for some reason i love the hell out of it. i dunno how or why but i love this game so dang much.

i admit, at the start i really did struggle because my gear sucked, but now im having a blast. im about level 15 and the game still doesnt feel as imbalanced as people say it is. i enjoy hitting higher levels constantly and having to be resourceful enough to somehow quickly find better gear so i wouldnt struggle with every encounter.

i dont dread any aspect of it, which i start feeling for any game once i hit the 30 hour mark, we shall see...

this is the first game that i am seriously considering replaying haha. when i was a kid i always replayed my fav games, but ever since im an adult, ive stopped. but i wouldnt mind replaying this. this game is so underrated. if they ever make a sequel i hope they invest more in marketing.