KoA: Reckoning

Today were going to take a look at KoA: Reckoning. KoA to me is a hack and slash style of RPG, a cross between God of War and Elder Scrolls it was it screams the most. I have probably about 10 hours worth of play time put in so far as a mage (which i have never played in an RPG).

There are a only a hand full of races to select from that each have there own racial awarded bonuses. Much like the traditional RPG. You may wanna research the following races before rolling your character in KoA so you can decide which path to take from warriors to casters the choice is yours.
     Almain (Human)
     Varain (Human Nomads)
     Ljosalfar (Light Elves)
     Dokkalfar (Dark Elves)

The quest icons in KoA remind me of World of Warcraft as the are displayed on the map as an exclamation point and when the quest is filled and ready to be returned the quest giver has an arrow above his head. On the min map your quest will appear as a gold circle. Make sure you check all buildings for quest if you dont like to miss side quest for easy gold and experience.

The game play is pretty basic as you can combo with your melee weapon, or combine buttons such as LT and X to do longer but more powerful attacks. Casting consists of holding RT and pressing A,B,X,Y to your mapped spells. That makes the ability to cycle through your spells while others are on cool down excellent. But it also causes a frustrating problem for console users because you can only have 4 spells mapped at once, to switch you must go into your abilities menu and map a different one. It might be a good idea before you hop into a dungeon to know what your enemies weakness is.

There are 3 basic skill trees in KoA they are Sorcery, Might, and Finesse. Going back to your race you may want to pick a race that goes well with the tree you are going to build on. I only have experience in the sorcery tree i have yet to expand into the others but i would imagine tree has skills for melee combat, medium range combat, and long range combat.

KoA is a challenging game on Hard Difficulty, i have encountered a few Dungeon Bosses that have given me some fits so far with having to juice up on potions to running away to break there attack aggro. One thing that will help you get through your boss battle is to save your Energy called Fate, with this attack it will allow you to bring the fight into slow motion and also have higher chance to stun. When you knock out your enemy in fate mode it goes into quick time mode where you mash a botton to gain up to 100% more XP.

Overall this game has lived up to the hype, it may not be as big and tedious of Skyrim, but its just what the doctor order.

9/10
Ill keep you update if anything changes but this game just meets the requirements for an RPG, and has a bunch of cool and relaxing features at the same time.

~Casual