- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
- Favourite title
- Shenmue
Anybody else picked it up? Playing for the first time? Fan since the beginning? Looking forward to the new content next year?
Rambling incoming, so: TL;DR: if you missed it the first time and are a fan of big, open-world RPGs like Elder Scrolls or Fable, give Amalur a shot! There's even a new expansion coming for it next year.
For being two completely different games, Amalur and Shenmue have a lot in common. They both have some of the wildest development histories in gaming, they're both underrated, and they both received mediocre, bare-bones ports years after the fact... ports that, given the context of the games, are worth supporting entirely based on the context.
Basically, like Shenmue, Amalur was destined to fade into gaming history with the IP in limbo and the property basically dead. In a surprise move, THQ Nordic scooped it up and, eight years after the original release launched to acclaim, great sales, and yet failure due to far too lofty sales goals (Shenmue?!) has released the game on PS4, Xbox One, and PC with what amounts to a GOTY-sort of release: a coat of paint, all the existing DLC packaged with it, and some balance adjustments that make it only a little better than the barebones Shenmue ports.
Yet it's totally worth supporting, because it's a great, open-world RPG in a world that needs more of them. Yeah, the game shows a touch of age, but no worse than it's contemporary, Skyrim, and the price tag is arguably a little high for essentially a straightforward port, but it's a series that's worth revisiting. R.A. Salvatore worked on the story, the lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion was the lead designer on Amalur, and Grant Kirkhope did the soundtrack. There were quite a few plans for the future (including a sequel and an MMO), and Re-Reckoning's success could mean more epic, open-world RPGs in a landscape that definitely needs more!
Rambling incoming, so: TL;DR: if you missed it the first time and are a fan of big, open-world RPGs like Elder Scrolls or Fable, give Amalur a shot! There's even a new expansion coming for it next year.
For being two completely different games, Amalur and Shenmue have a lot in common. They both have some of the wildest development histories in gaming, they're both underrated, and they both received mediocre, bare-bones ports years after the fact... ports that, given the context of the games, are worth supporting entirely based on the context.
Basically, like Shenmue, Amalur was destined to fade into gaming history with the IP in limbo and the property basically dead. In a surprise move, THQ Nordic scooped it up and, eight years after the original release launched to acclaim, great sales, and yet failure due to far too lofty sales goals (Shenmue?!) has released the game on PS4, Xbox One, and PC with what amounts to a GOTY-sort of release: a coat of paint, all the existing DLC packaged with it, and some balance adjustments that make it only a little better than the barebones Shenmue ports.
Yet it's totally worth supporting, because it's a great, open-world RPG in a world that needs more of them. Yeah, the game shows a touch of age, but no worse than it's contemporary, Skyrim, and the price tag is arguably a little high for essentially a straightforward port, but it's a series that's worth revisiting. R.A. Salvatore worked on the story, the lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion was the lead designer on Amalur, and Grant Kirkhope did the soundtrack. There were quite a few plans for the future (including a sequel and an MMO), and Re-Reckoning's success could mean more epic, open-world RPGs in a landscape that definitely needs more!
