http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Kingdoms-of-Amalur-Reckoning-DEMO/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80245418983Demo is up. However you feel about the game this is a textbook example of how to do a demo. The demo is the opening of the game with a pretty good tutorial that shows you how to be a melee character, rogue character, or magic character. You get items in the retail game for completing the demo. And where most demos would end at the end of the tutorial level, this one says you now have 45 minutes to explore the world at that point. You can definitely tell whether this is something you want after playing the full demo. I stopped at the tutorial bit because I didn't have time to go for 45 minutes this morning.
As far as the game, this is pretty much a kinda scaled down Bethesda game with 3rd person action combat. Its deeper than Fable by a long shot but not as deep as say Skyrim. You can't pick up nearly everything in the world. If you find Bethesda games a bit daunting, this is more inviting than that. Still it definitely has that Bethesda feel. You pick up herbs and reagents for crafting. The sneak system immediately resembles a Bethesda game down to the winking eye.
The graphics are a slightly more realistic interpretation of Fable with some World of Warcraft thrown in versus the realism of say Skyrim. The voice acting is better than Bethesda's game but I found the story to be a bit too fantasy geek for my taste. I actually sort of prefer the somber tone of Skyrim by comparison but that's just a personal taste kinda thing.
The combat is decent for this type of RPG. I mean they really shouldn't compare themselves to God of War because their combat system isn't as deep and the animations aren't as good as that game. I would say maybe a slightly less good Darksiders is a better comparison on the combat side although its kinda neat how you can bounce between melee and magic pretty easily. A bit stiff though.
I like it. I'll probably pick it up. I wasn't kind of blown away or a bit in awe like I was in Skyrim. The world isn't as expansive as that to create that feeling but it feels decent enough. And it seems like it wants to create a bethesda game that streamlines a bit of the boring elements out of those games (perhaps at the cost of the scale of the world).
Essentially this game feels like what Fable should have been. The menu system is also better than Skyrim. Easier to equip stuff and junk items.
Note though that all these opinions stem from only playing to essentially the end of the tutorial bit. I played for like 5 minutes maybe after that so this isn't necessarily the most indepth take on the game.
