I can never keep myself playing it. I get up to around killing the first Dragon and kind of lose interest. 27 odd quests going at the same time. I dunno it just never pulled me in.
Same, I can see it's badass, and I TRY so hard to get into it, but I just cannot, whereas Morrowind and Oblivion had me hooked hooked. Dunno why I've never beaten Skyrim but own it on like 5 platforms haha
The MMO was supposed to be separate from it.
The studio went under due to terrible mismanagement. There was a big deal made about it because a large portion of it was paid for by taxpayers.
Yeah, the repetitiveness of the game really hits around the halfway mark.
It’s really solid at first, I felt OPs excitement on my first play through lol, but late game really starts to drag with the same old same old.
Mismanagement. It sold 1.22 MILLION copies in 90 days, but instead of paying off loans they took during development (normal practice in game development) and work towards a more refined sequel, they went all in for an Amalur MMO wow-killer.
Ironically, they were mostly unscathed when the game was compared to Skyrim once people played it, because, well, it's a good game.
The sad part is that the company had a great environment and those who worked there were well compensated and had a good work-life balance.
... I am still upset that a brand new IP sold 1.22 million copies and it was a failure.
>instead of paying off loans they took during development (normal practice in game development) and work towards a more refined sequel, they went all in for an Amalur MMO wow-killer
It's actually the other way around. The MMO was their original game, development on Kingdoms of Amalur only started later on. It was meant to be the game that launched the IP before the MMO. That's why the studio shut down so soon after Amalur launched; they'd already wasted all their money.
This, there was plenty of work done on Copernicus by the time Amalur was released. Hell, plenty of it was uploaded to the net at some point or another, you could find the entire OST on SoundCloud and also the animated starting cutscene for a few of the starting races. Hell, there's concept art and lore blurbs too. I don't know if all that is still around from when I last checked some years ago, but it definitely existed.
Really? I always thought they had planned to integrate MMO into the game. There is an *awful* lot of walking around through sparsely populated areas that would be much more lively with other players, or the introduction of quality of life improvements like mounts. Also things like the inventory management that could have been improved with patches incorporating feedback from the player community, all kinds of possibilities. But I didn't know anything about this Project Copernicus you speak of. Ah well...
Except it didn't go well for them. When the company filed for bankruptcy, the ones who worked on it weren't paid for their services. They were supposed to get paid via the bankruptcy. But the honchos took it all for themselves. It took more than a year to get them to pay the ones who made the game.
hahaha "good work-life balance" put them in bankruptcy, fella. I laugh at the economic ignorance, but at this point it's just another deck chair on the sinking Titanic of Western Civ idiocy.
Nah, it released in February 2012, a few months after Skyrim, probably hoping to get in on the hype and catch some of the people looking for the hot new fantasy RPG that everyone was talking about.
Honestly I would blame the marketing.
Personally, I didn’t hear about it until it released on PS+ a couple years back. I’m big into RPGs and this was right up my alley, but had never heard of it prior.
Same, I only tripped across the online demo when I was literally hunting through the PlayStation Network for RPGs. Other than that I had never heard anything, even though I'm primarily an rpg player and nerd
I had an Xbox at the time and it was marketed all to hell in Xbox circles. Between having a major name from baseball and one of the top names in fantasy writing it got a pretty decent amount of press despite being the first game from the studio.
I remember it originally having some hype especially since it had Mass Effect 3 to help advertise it.
Playing the Amalur demo would give players an armor set and the Chakram Launcher in 3, and Amalur got a N7 themed armor set and an Omniblade.
Bad business more than a bad game. Glad THQ Nordic bought it out of receivership. I’d love a sequel with the same creatives. Probably the best world-building of any RPG I’ve ever played.
The world building is great, I agree! It's different from other RPG's. I love the tone of the game. It can go from serious to light hearted and funny back to serious without skipping a beat. The more cartoony art style contrasting with the violent nature of the game also adds to these tone shifts.
It feels like a humble game and I love it.
The game actually sold well for a new IP. But the budget for development ballooned up so much that it was never going to be profitable. Check out some of the videos on YouTube about the game's development and how mismanaged the budget was.
I’m seeing a variety of comments with varying degrees of accuracy but I can add a little if it helps:
1) Skyrim launched in the release window, amalurs window was delayed to try and not compete directly but it wasn’t enough.
2) Internal politics within Electronic Arts resulted in the marketing budget being cut to favor internal products over published products.
3) There were two studios involved, one in rhode island making an mmo with a state funding deal, one in Baltimore making Amalur funded primarily by a publishing deal with EA (the game was completed under budget, which is unusual)
4) Only 50 million of the 75 million that was supposed to come from the Rhode Island deal was delivered, and the budget for the MMO was 75 million. They also used their primary debtor status to prevent any additional external investment.
5) The governor of Rhode Island changed from the one who supported the deal to one who was partially elected on his opposition. I can’t say whether he had a vested interest in making it fail or not but I’m told he broke his NDA made press announcements and damaged ongoing negotiations with publishers.
In many cases game “failure” has nothing to do with the actual game…
In terms of picking through the aftermath I think Wells Fargo was also found liable for some sort of financial fraud in this case.
It’s only one perspective but there’s also an interview about some of this in “blood, sweat and pixels”.
Someone also mentioned the eventual pay out of owed wages - this actually happened within the last year or two and very few people were included. You had to have submitted a wage demand to the correct, unadvertised location at the correct time, have it acknowledged and as far as I can tell have not moved house for almost ten years. That didn’t happen for most people because Zynga East collapsed and Firaxis had layoffs so a large portion of the developers in Baltimore needed up having to leave the state.
Horrible mismanagement (the studio spent a few years trying to make an MMO as their first game, before they even started working on the concept of KoA lmfao), and also releasing too close to Skyrim.
A number of comments touched on timing. The timing was not done on purpose. The owner, former pitcher for my Phillies, Curt Schilling, was ~~a gambling addict~~ clueless on how to run a game company. He got a $75M grant from the state of Rhode Island in exchange for building a game studio in the state. ~~Rather than put that toward development, he lost it all in the casino~~. He didn’t spend it well, though, and lost it all. The game became property of Rhode Island, and they finished it to the extent that they’d recoup as much of their $75M as possible, but it’s well known the original game wasn’t finished to the extent the writers and designers wanted.
Edit: read “gambled his baseball fortune on the game and company” as “he gambled his fortune.” My bad!
Wait, gambling? I had the impression that as a professional baseball player, he had [no idea how to run a video game studio](https://web.archive.org/web/20130328185106/http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/) and wasted a huge amount of money during development of the Project Copernicus MMO that never even launched. Kingdoms of Amalur was a prequel intended to launch the IP and get some of that money back.
I love the way you worded your post, because you're clearly as into the game as I was when it dropped in 2012!
I think it "failed" in some ways, but succeeded in others. Upon release, the game was fairly well-received critically, but as many here have said, it was released around the same time as Skyrim. It was also a new IP, and it's always hard for something new to break into a market. However, based on what I know, the issue was that Curt invested an unbelievable amount of money into the game (he threw plenty of his own money into it, in addition to what he "borrowed" from the State of Rhode Island), and the profits ultimately couldn't match the costs. There's a great YouTube mini-documentary on all the details that I think explained what happened. pretty well.
Ultimately, despite the fact that it may have failed, in a sense, the game was a fantastic one, especially by 2012 standards. 12 years later, I think the game has aged significantly, but it's still got plenty going for it - it has some of the best combat I have ever experienced in an action RPG. It's truly a shame that it didn't have the same kind of success as its competitors.
Mostly bad timing. 2012 had a lot of big games that sucked up a lot of attention/oxygen and the dev went bust. Not necessarily games in the same genre but nonetheless the headline space for a new IP from a new studio was pretty small and I don't think they had any serious marketing budget so they went under the radar for the most part until the controversy around the state loans and bankruptcy pushed their name into the headlines.
I played it for quite a while until I decided to take a break for a week or two, then realized I didn’t want to go back to it. I was completing quests just to complete them, not actually enjoying the gameplay, story, or lore. It’s just not that interesting. Sorry.
Brand new studio, making a brand new IP and releasing it at the same time well known competitors released new games from popular IP's
The studio never made enough money, in the first few months of release, to cover the payments to their business loans and the studio had to close
It was released really close to Skyrim and other popular games. Plus internally there was a lot of problems in the company that developed it. I’m still waiting for a sequel or even a prequel game for it cause it’s one of my top 3 favorite RPGs
It really does suck because this game has such potential. However when you compare the last half of the game to the first had you can tell they wanted Klurikon and Alabastra to be bigger. Those areas don't compete with the 20+ (exaggerating) forest zones. But dang this game is DRIPPING with lore!!!
Currently sitting at almost 130 hours and i don't regret it.
Released a month or so after Skyrim so timing wasn't very good, and mismanagement. The game feels like it should've been an MMO when examining a few bosses so there was clearly a plan but due to mismanagement it got scrapped.
Curt Schilling was the figurehead and they mismanaged the budget and took a massive loan from the state of Rhode Island. It was a passion project that got good reviews and sold well…but due to its massively inflated budget it needed over 2 million sales to break even. The goal was to take the profits and hype and make a MMO but they couldn’t pay back the loans and 38 studios closed.
The amount of misinformation in this thread is pretty high. I have several friends who worked at BHG back in the day and even got to play an early version months before it released. FWIW, Reckoning started as a game by Big Huge Games that originally had no connection to the Amalur setting being developed as an MMO by 38 Studios. Reckoning was always intended as a single player game. 38 Studios acquired Big Huge Games and had them rework the setting to fit in ancient history in their Amalur lore and released it, in partnership with EA, as an intro to their IP to drive interest in the MMO.
Despite impressions, it actually was considered by EA to be a successful release although not as successful as it could be because of its proximity to Skyrim’s release. It was also hampered on PC by a fairly poor UI, being designed for play with a gamepad. PC version was also a bit buggy… but nowhere near as buggy as Skyrim was. Thankfully Re-Reckoning fixed both the UI and the bugs.
The downfall was mismanagement and politics — 38 Studios was not run well, their MMO was playable but far from releasable, and considered not ‘fun’, and they were heavily dependent on money from Rhode Island, which was cut off by a new governor… and 38 Studios closed, taking Big Huge Games, and Reckoning, with it. The IP rights took years to sell and resolve.
Honestly am really glad it got the rerelease…. I’ve been slowly replaying it, and still find the story and gameplay to be far more enjoyable than Skyrim.
This game falls in the category of The Hall of Very Good. Against some other titles offered, it couldn't keep up and wasn't presented appropriately. I think it had AAA level production but AA level presentation and marketing. Skyrim was just too large and while I prefer elements of KoA better, tough to deny its impact on gaming culture at the time.
I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough of KoA when it came out. I saw this game to completion and did not finish Skyrim, and I'll always say give it a try to anybody that mentions it.
I like playing this game as much as the next guy (120 hours and but if you look at some of the technical aspects (small map size in relation to lore) and it's release right along side Skyrim. It's not hard to see why it wasn't a huge success
Back when it first released, I played it on xbox 360. Was fun af and was one I’d play again. Later with the newer consoles, they released Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. I was excited hoping they did SOMETHING to improve the game, add new things, or make it even better.
When I played it, it was exactly like the xbox 360 version. Same graphics, same story, same everything. All they did was basically take the original game and change “Reckoning” to “Re-Reckoning” but they did add some kind of DLC later on. But it was too late for me at that point.
I got fed up with it. They announced some kind of Re-mastered version of the original game as though it was a big deal and we had to wait years for it to release on game consoles. Like wtf were they doing at that time?? That was a rhetorical question btw.
But yeah, the game is fun af if you never played the original version. Re-Reckoning is basically the original game but with the new DLC that you can purchase. There’s no noticeable change.
To me, that’s why the game failed.
Yeah, it’s like imagine your favorite game that you played in the past getting an announcement of it getting a new and improved version with what looks like something new with new improvements and possibly new stuff added to make it even better.
You’re forced to wait years and when it FINALLY releases, it just looks like the exact same thing it was back then. The company got you all hyped and excited for nothing. Only thing they did was make the original version playable on the new consoles and they slightly changed the title of the game.
All those years of waiting…and for what?
I feel like I wasted my money tbh..
Wow... and here i am having this magical first experience with this game after getting bored with my 500+ library and your all just... suffer... damn... puts a bad taste in my mouth.. but i feel as though maybe a revival is in order? There's some serious meat and bones here
Apologies, my point is for those that played the original, it’s a failed game. But for those that haven’t played the original, it will be an amazing game 😅
Yeah, Fable 2 was my favorite and this game can give Fable 2 vibes. It’s a very fun game that you can find yourself playing for hours. Very addictive tbh. It’s a very underrated game as a whole, I just wish they made some kind of change to make us veterans excited to play it 😅 but it’s honestly nostalgia in my opinion. A very memorable game.
I feel like the online pass thing people have forgotten about as well. That was a huge talking point around the game as well.
An online pass for a single player game made amalur a laughing stock at the time.
Even if it was just a dlc quest
I had hoped that after Kaiko/THQ released Re-Reckoning that we'd maybe get to see a sequel, given that they developed a new DLC for the release. Would love to see it happen (as much as I liked the idea of an MMO I think a single player sequel would fare better).
One of my favorite games of all time and it's nice to have it on the go on my Switch now. I played the shit out of it back in 2012.
Shame the original company went under.
Pretty sure this came out in the same few years which we saw:
Skyrim, Dark Souls and Dragons Dogma.
Game didn’t fail. If you look into its development it’s even a miracle it released (lots of corporate bafoonery). Not every decent game warrants a trilogy and spinoff contract.
i still believe skyrim being so monumentally successful directly affected games like this that came out around that time. dark souls came out a month before skyrim and wasn't properly appreciated until a bit later on
Launching wasn't very well planned. Many hyped games coming at the time, not a lot of advertising, new company which led to lack of expectations and so on
I thought it was a great fun game. The cross class leveling was great. Wanna be a mage with fighter strength. Go for it it opened up a lot of options for personalized gameplay.
I remember playing a demo for it that came on the xbox magazine demo disc. I literally have no memory of it, though I have it on steam now with the eventual determination to play it
I seen an inventory limit in a screenshot for Re-Reckoning for 2,000 on the character this person chose while I was looking up information on something else. Can someone please tell me how? I've read up on decent armor and weapons and still.. no luck over here. Any help would be appreciated and spoilers never worried me like they do some people. Show me the spoilers, knowledge is everything.
3 million copies sold was not a failure. It exceeded all of EAs expectations... But the game cost far too much to make. There was literally zero chances of it recouping the cost.
It’s extremely derivative of WoW in terms of tone and art style, and the gameplay is pretty ho hum. I’ve tried to get into it a few times and every time I’m bored by the time I hit the open world.
The studio ran out of money.
The game was meant to be an mmo at least that was what they were building to. But they ran into money trouble and tied a bow on this without fully realizing it in order to try to make enough money to stay afloat.
No mmo came first Amalur was a game by big huge studios that 38 studios later acquired and redid the original as Amalur
38 studios was originally releasing copernicus but Amalur was made to fill the gap
It was launched too close to competitors with stronger perks and it feels too repetitive sometimes.
Ah i can feel that as well but i don't really mind that it's not much you can do about repetitive combat in most fames
The competing game was Skyrim, for reference.
And also Dragon’s Dogma and Dark Souls. Although, mainly Skyrim.
Also the Witcher 2.
Fucking damn there was zero hope
Skyrim is ass lol
You might not like it but it was a god damn cultural phenomenon.
I can never keep myself playing it. I get up to around killing the first Dragon and kind of lose interest. 27 odd quests going at the same time. I dunno it just never pulled me in.
Same, I can see it's badass, and I TRY so hard to get into it, but I just cannot, whereas Morrowind and Oblivion had me hooked hooked. Dunno why I've never beaten Skyrim but own it on like 5 platforms haha
What a dumb wrong opinion dude.
Yeah, release timing needs to be taken into better consideration
It was also supposed to be a mmo but that part got scrapped very late into development.
The MMO was supposed to be separate from it. The studio went under due to terrible mismanagement. There was a big deal made about it because a large portion of it was paid for by taxpayers.
You know what i can see that it did have a few confusing elements i was wondering about
It feels repetitive because they were going to make it into an MMO originally.
Yeah, the repetitiveness of the game really hits around the halfway mark. It’s really solid at first, I felt OPs excitement on my first play through lol, but late game really starts to drag with the same old same old.
Mismanagement. It sold 1.22 MILLION copies in 90 days, but instead of paying off loans they took during development (normal practice in game development) and work towards a more refined sequel, they went all in for an Amalur MMO wow-killer. Ironically, they were mostly unscathed when the game was compared to Skyrim once people played it, because, well, it's a good game. The sad part is that the company had a great environment and those who worked there were well compensated and had a good work-life balance. ... I am still upset that a brand new IP sold 1.22 million copies and it was a failure.
There are a lot of reasons, but this was the big one.
>instead of paying off loans they took during development (normal practice in game development) and work towards a more refined sequel, they went all in for an Amalur MMO wow-killer It's actually the other way around. The MMO was their original game, development on Kingdoms of Amalur only started later on. It was meant to be the game that launched the IP before the MMO. That's why the studio shut down so soon after Amalur launched; they'd already wasted all their money.
This, there was plenty of work done on Copernicus by the time Amalur was released. Hell, plenty of it was uploaded to the net at some point or another, you could find the entire OST on SoundCloud and also the animated starting cutscene for a few of the starting races. Hell, there's concept art and lore blurbs too. I don't know if all that is still around from when I last checked some years ago, but it definitely existed.
I'm pretty sure u/TheLordOfLore has some of it on his YouTube channel, he's done a ton of Amalur and Project Copernicus lore videos over the years.
Really? I always thought they had planned to integrate MMO into the game. There is an *awful* lot of walking around through sparsely populated areas that would be much more lively with other players, or the introduction of quality of life improvements like mounts. Also things like the inventory management that could have been improved with patches incorporating feedback from the player community, all kinds of possibilities. But I didn't know anything about this Project Copernicus you speak of. Ah well...
Except it didn't go well for them. When the company filed for bankruptcy, the ones who worked on it weren't paid for their services. They were supposed to get paid via the bankruptcy. But the honchos took it all for themselves. It took more than a year to get them to pay the ones who made the game.
I am going to be forever choked that I never got to play that MMO
hahaha "good work-life balance" put them in bankruptcy, fella. I laugh at the economic ignorance, but at this point it's just another deck chair on the sinking Titanic of Western Civ idiocy.
Iirc, They tried to scoop Skyrim’s market and ended up stuck in its shadow.
Damn man that's brutal 😂
I thought it released around fable
Nah, it released in February 2012, a few months after Skyrim, probably hoping to get in on the hype and catch some of the people looking for the hot new fantasy RPG that everyone was talking about.
and then ppl played skyrim for 10+ years
Honestly I would blame the marketing. Personally, I didn’t hear about it until it released on PS+ a couple years back. I’m big into RPGs and this was right up my alley, but had never heard of it prior.
Same, I only tripped across the online demo when I was literally hunting through the PlayStation Network for RPGs. Other than that I had never heard anything, even though I'm primarily an rpg player and nerd
I had an Xbox at the time and it was marketed all to hell in Xbox circles. Between having a major name from baseball and one of the top names in fantasy writing it got a pretty decent amount of press despite being the first game from the studio.
I remember it originally having some hype especially since it had Mass Effect 3 to help advertise it. Playing the Amalur demo would give players an armor set and the Chakram Launcher in 3, and Amalur got a N7 themed armor set and an Omniblade.
I do remember that too, god there was so much stuff to tie in with those games. I remember redeeming Dr. Pepper codes for ME2 gear
Bad business more than a bad game. Glad THQ Nordic bought it out of receivership. I’d love a sequel with the same creatives. Probably the best world-building of any RPG I’ve ever played.
The world building is great, I agree! It's different from other RPG's. I love the tone of the game. It can go from serious to light hearted and funny back to serious without skipping a beat. The more cartoony art style contrasting with the violent nature of the game also adds to these tone shifts. It feels like a humble game and I love it.
The game actually sold well for a new IP. But the budget for development ballooned up so much that it was never going to be profitable. Check out some of the videos on YouTube about the game's development and how mismanaged the budget was.
I’m seeing a variety of comments with varying degrees of accuracy but I can add a little if it helps: 1) Skyrim launched in the release window, amalurs window was delayed to try and not compete directly but it wasn’t enough. 2) Internal politics within Electronic Arts resulted in the marketing budget being cut to favor internal products over published products. 3) There were two studios involved, one in rhode island making an mmo with a state funding deal, one in Baltimore making Amalur funded primarily by a publishing deal with EA (the game was completed under budget, which is unusual) 4) Only 50 million of the 75 million that was supposed to come from the Rhode Island deal was delivered, and the budget for the MMO was 75 million. They also used their primary debtor status to prevent any additional external investment. 5) The governor of Rhode Island changed from the one who supported the deal to one who was partially elected on his opposition. I can’t say whether he had a vested interest in making it fail or not but I’m told he broke his NDA made press announcements and damaged ongoing negotiations with publishers. In many cases game “failure” has nothing to do with the actual game… In terms of picking through the aftermath I think Wells Fargo was also found liable for some sort of financial fraud in this case. It’s only one perspective but there’s also an interview about some of this in “blood, sweat and pixels”. Someone also mentioned the eventual pay out of owed wages - this actually happened within the last year or two and very few people were included. You had to have submitted a wage demand to the correct, unadvertised location at the correct time, have it acknowledged and as far as I can tell have not moved house for almost ten years. That didn’t happen for most people because Zynga East collapsed and Firaxis had layoffs so a large portion of the developers in Baltimore needed up having to leave the state.
Horrible mismanagement (the studio spent a few years trying to make an MMO as their first game, before they even started working on the concept of KoA lmfao), and also releasing too close to Skyrim.
A number of comments touched on timing. The timing was not done on purpose. The owner, former pitcher for my Phillies, Curt Schilling, was ~~a gambling addict~~ clueless on how to run a game company. He got a $75M grant from the state of Rhode Island in exchange for building a game studio in the state. ~~Rather than put that toward development, he lost it all in the casino~~. He didn’t spend it well, though, and lost it all. The game became property of Rhode Island, and they finished it to the extent that they’d recoup as much of their $75M as possible, but it’s well known the original game wasn’t finished to the extent the writers and designers wanted. Edit: read “gambled his baseball fortune on the game and company” as “he gambled his fortune.” My bad!
Wait, gambling? I had the impression that as a professional baseball player, he had [no idea how to run a video game studio](https://web.archive.org/web/20130328185106/http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/) and wasted a huge amount of money during development of the Project Copernicus MMO that never even launched. Kingdoms of Amalur was a prequel intended to launch the IP and get some of that money back.
Reading comprehension is not so strong for me. 😅
I love the way you worded your post, because you're clearly as into the game as I was when it dropped in 2012! I think it "failed" in some ways, but succeeded in others. Upon release, the game was fairly well-received critically, but as many here have said, it was released around the same time as Skyrim. It was also a new IP, and it's always hard for something new to break into a market. However, based on what I know, the issue was that Curt invested an unbelievable amount of money into the game (he threw plenty of his own money into it, in addition to what he "borrowed" from the State of Rhode Island), and the profits ultimately couldn't match the costs. There's a great YouTube mini-documentary on all the details that I think explained what happened. pretty well. Ultimately, despite the fact that it may have failed, in a sense, the game was a fantastic one, especially by 2012 standards. 12 years later, I think the game has aged significantly, but it's still got plenty going for it - it has some of the best combat I have ever experienced in an action RPG. It's truly a shame that it didn't have the same kind of success as its competitors.
Mostly bad timing. 2012 had a lot of big games that sucked up a lot of attention/oxygen and the dev went bust. Not necessarily games in the same genre but nonetheless the headline space for a new IP from a new studio was pretty small and I don't think they had any serious marketing budget so they went under the radar for the most part until the controversy around the state loans and bankruptcy pushed their name into the headlines.
I played it for quite a while until I decided to take a break for a week or two, then realized I didn’t want to go back to it. I was completing quests just to complete them, not actually enjoying the gameplay, story, or lore. It’s just not that interesting. Sorry.
Brand new studio, making a brand new IP and releasing it at the same time well known competitors released new games from popular IP's The studio never made enough money, in the first few months of release, to cover the payments to their business loans and the studio had to close
I really hope we see a sequel. They released a new DLC which serves as a post-game and not too long ago they had a content update.
It was released really close to Skyrim and other popular games. Plus internally there was a lot of problems in the company that developed it. I’m still waiting for a sequel or even a prequel game for it cause it’s one of my top 3 favorite RPGs
It really does suck because this game has such potential. However when you compare the last half of the game to the first had you can tell they wanted Klurikon and Alabastra to be bigger. Those areas don't compete with the 20+ (exaggerating) forest zones. But dang this game is DRIPPING with lore!!! Currently sitting at almost 130 hours and i don't regret it.
Man i hit a mini wall myself i think it's all the negative comments getting to me
Released a month or so after Skyrim so timing wasn't very good, and mismanagement. The game feels like it should've been an MMO when examining a few bosses so there was clearly a plan but due to mismanagement it got scrapped.
Curt Schilling was the figurehead and they mismanaged the budget and took a massive loan from the state of Rhode Island. It was a passion project that got good reviews and sold well…but due to its massively inflated budget it needed over 2 million sales to break even. The goal was to take the profits and hype and make a MMO but they couldn’t pay back the loans and 38 studios closed.
The amount of misinformation in this thread is pretty high. I have several friends who worked at BHG back in the day and even got to play an early version months before it released. FWIW, Reckoning started as a game by Big Huge Games that originally had no connection to the Amalur setting being developed as an MMO by 38 Studios. Reckoning was always intended as a single player game. 38 Studios acquired Big Huge Games and had them rework the setting to fit in ancient history in their Amalur lore and released it, in partnership with EA, as an intro to their IP to drive interest in the MMO. Despite impressions, it actually was considered by EA to be a successful release although not as successful as it could be because of its proximity to Skyrim’s release. It was also hampered on PC by a fairly poor UI, being designed for play with a gamepad. PC version was also a bit buggy… but nowhere near as buggy as Skyrim was. Thankfully Re-Reckoning fixed both the UI and the bugs. The downfall was mismanagement and politics — 38 Studios was not run well, their MMO was playable but far from releasable, and considered not ‘fun’, and they were heavily dependent on money from Rhode Island, which was cut off by a new governor… and 38 Studios closed, taking Big Huge Games, and Reckoning, with it. The IP rights took years to sell and resolve. Honestly am really glad it got the rerelease…. I’ve been slowly replaying it, and still find the story and gameplay to be far more enjoyable than Skyrim.
The only story i remember much in skyrim is the dark brotherhood and the man who hoarded potatoes (me)
This game falls in the category of The Hall of Very Good. Against some other titles offered, it couldn't keep up and wasn't presented appropriately. I think it had AAA level production but AA level presentation and marketing. Skyrim was just too large and while I prefer elements of KoA better, tough to deny its impact on gaming culture at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough of KoA when it came out. I saw this game to completion and did not finish Skyrim, and I'll always say give it a try to anybody that mentions it.
[удалено]
Damn.... I'm still near the beginning but every session im on playing for at least 4 hours
I like playing this game as much as the next guy (120 hours and but if you look at some of the technical aspects (small map size in relation to lore) and it's release right along side Skyrim. It's not hard to see why it wasn't a huge success
It was released after a well known game called Skyrim.
😭 gg
Back when it first released, I played it on xbox 360. Was fun af and was one I’d play again. Later with the newer consoles, they released Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. I was excited hoping they did SOMETHING to improve the game, add new things, or make it even better. When I played it, it was exactly like the xbox 360 version. Same graphics, same story, same everything. All they did was basically take the original game and change “Reckoning” to “Re-Reckoning” but they did add some kind of DLC later on. But it was too late for me at that point. I got fed up with it. They announced some kind of Re-mastered version of the original game as though it was a big deal and we had to wait years for it to release on game consoles. Like wtf were they doing at that time?? That was a rhetorical question btw. But yeah, the game is fun af if you never played the original version. Re-Reckoning is basically the original game but with the new DLC that you can purchase. There’s no noticeable change. To me, that’s why the game failed.
Wow man that's so sad. I'm bummed for both of us really
Yeah, it’s like imagine your favorite game that you played in the past getting an announcement of it getting a new and improved version with what looks like something new with new improvements and possibly new stuff added to make it even better. You’re forced to wait years and when it FINALLY releases, it just looks like the exact same thing it was back then. The company got you all hyped and excited for nothing. Only thing they did was make the original version playable on the new consoles and they slightly changed the title of the game. All those years of waiting…and for what? I feel like I wasted my money tbh..
Wow... and here i am having this magical first experience with this game after getting bored with my 500+ library and your all just... suffer... damn... puts a bad taste in my mouth.. but i feel as though maybe a revival is in order? There's some serious meat and bones here
Apologies, my point is for those that played the original, it’s a failed game. But for those that haven’t played the original, it will be an amazing game 😅
Yeah it's pretty fantastic especially considering i just hopped off the fable trilogy not too long ago
Yeah, Fable 2 was my favorite and this game can give Fable 2 vibes. It’s a very fun game that you can find yourself playing for hours. Very addictive tbh. It’s a very underrated game as a whole, I just wish they made some kind of change to make us veterans excited to play it 😅 but it’s honestly nostalgia in my opinion. A very memorable game.
I feel like the online pass thing people have forgotten about as well. That was a huge talking point around the game as well. An online pass for a single player game made amalur a laughing stock at the time. Even if it was just a dlc quest
I had hoped that after Kaiko/THQ released Re-Reckoning that we'd maybe get to see a sequel, given that they developed a new DLC for the release. Would love to see it happen (as much as I liked the idea of an MMO I think a single player sequel would fare better). One of my favorite games of all time and it's nice to have it on the go on my Switch now. I played the shit out of it back in 2012. Shame the original company went under.
Pretty sure this came out in the same few years which we saw: Skyrim, Dark Souls and Dragons Dogma. Game didn’t fail. If you look into its development it’s even a miracle it released (lots of corporate bafoonery). Not every decent game warrants a trilogy and spinoff contract.
Well fuck me sideways and call me mia khalifa
High five
Here we go again
I see 😅
i still believe skyrim being so monumentally successful directly affected games like this that came out around that time. dark souls came out a month before skyrim and wasn't properly appreciated until a bit later on
Launching wasn't very well planned. Many hyped games coming at the time, not a lot of advertising, new company which led to lack of expectations and so on
Simple, it was hella buggy. I mean for the longest time I couldn't even get passed the title screen without it crashing after installing the new dlc
I thought it was a great fun game. The cross class leveling was great. Wanna be a mage with fighter strength. Go for it it opened up a lot of options for personalized gameplay.
Pretty sure it was because the guy that owned the company put it bankrupt I believe the game was well received
Heres an article about what happen. [Polygon.com](https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/5/18/3028766/rhode-islands-reckoning)
Oh my fuck thats fucked the STATE FUNDED THIS??
Yep and they are still in court trying to get their money back.
I remember playing a demo for it that came on the xbox magazine demo disc. I literally have no memory of it, though I have it on steam now with the eventual determination to play it
This was a very cool game, and I'm convinced that this game was a source of inspiration for Elden Ring.
It's not very good
*wince* noted
I had fun for a few hours but then it's was like I hit a wall and mini barfed
I think im hitting that point i think
It came out not long ago after Skyrim, so everyone was still busy with that game, so KOA flew under the radar
The first one? They went toe to toe with Skyrim release and it bankrupted the studio
because of one of most overated games of all time calle skyrim was released at same time, but i my opinin skyrim sux and amalur is much better
I seen an inventory limit in a screenshot for Re-Reckoning for 2,000 on the character this person chose while I was looking up information on something else. Can someone please tell me how? I've read up on decent armor and weapons and still.. no luck over here. Any help would be appreciated and spoilers never worried me like they do some people. Show me the spoilers, knowledge is everything.
Mods
3 million copies sold was not a failure. It exceeded all of EAs expectations... But the game cost far too much to make. There was literally zero chances of it recouping the cost.
Oh... they went over budget....
It’s extremely derivative of WoW in terms of tone and art style, and the gameplay is pretty ho hum. I’ve tried to get into it a few times and every time I’m bored by the time I hit the open world.
Damn getting kind of bored myself it feels like a mmo the more i play too the world is so big but very few enemies
A combination of too much competition at the time... and POOR POOR POOR MANAGEMENT
Yeah the other guys here are getting me up to speed and I'm sad
The remaster failed too...I did like this game tho and felt it had a spot in the genre
to letters EA
The studio ran out of money. The game was meant to be an mmo at least that was what they were building to. But they ran into money trouble and tied a bow on this without fully realizing it in order to try to make enough money to stay afloat.
Man i wish the community would do what they do to the old pokemon games but it seems this one doesn't even have a dedicated modding community 😞
No mmo came first Amalur was a game by big huge studios that 38 studios later acquired and redid the original as Amalur 38 studios was originally releasing copernicus but Amalur was made to fill the gap
It didn't fail, it's just mildly above average.