I’m not incredibly far in the game and I don’t want to spoil anything but I do want to give my impressions. Yesterday on Twitter I said I thought it was better than Skyrim and I want to tell you why that is.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a problem with open world games. When given all these options I tend to get paralyzed rather than excited. for some reason Amalur is different and I think I know the reasons why:

The combat in Skyrim is miserable. If games like Bayonetta and God of War are on one end of a spectrum, games like Skyrim are so far on the other end that they have fallen off the spectrum and actually can not even see the spectrum from where they are. It seems like if you want to play a massive open world RPG you have to give up a fun,energetic combat system. The thrill of discovering a cave full of vampires in Skyrim is diminished by the knowledge that once I get in there, fighting them is just going to be a chore.

Amalur is the polar opposite. The combat system in Amalur is fast paced and incredibly deep. I’d say the way this game handles class choice is one of my favorite things about the title. There are three skill trees, might, finesse, and sorcery. As you level up you earn talent points and can invest them into any branch you like. So far pretty standard stuff. The twist is that throwing points into these trees will slowly unlock hybrid classes. For example, I started off in sorcery and chose a pretty standard wizard type class. I got a bonus to my mana pool and that sort of thing. Then I started putting points into finesse and I unlocked a couple of hybrid classes. Now I’m a spell casting rogue with magic blades! I get a bonus to blade weapons and a boost to magic damage. There are tons of these hybrid classes encompassing all the various combinations of talent points and trees. So as you play the game and shuffle your points around you can also be cycling through different class choices each with their own bonuses and special powers.

From the demo the game has no atmosphere at all!, i got bored after 15mins and have not gone back since.

I do not remember exactly wath you do in 15 minutes. Did you escape the starting area ? Because once you're outside, you can start to see what the game has to offer in term of atmosphere. Personally, I even passed by the first village and the first forest zone to enter the second one, then headed north-est to discovert the tellers'court (or something like that) which offered a whole different ambiance.

You guys are weird.

:P

On normal the game was incredibly easy and lacked any sort of challenge. Wish I could have played it on hard.