Have you guys tried this out yet? The demo is on Steam and plays really well. If I had to draw comparisons I'd say it draws from the character building and dialog system of Dragon Age: Origins and the combat of God of War. It has an Elder Scrolls style open world, though the areas you travel in are much more... ground level in scale. It's actually closer to Dragon Age in terms of the world you're exploring, though as far as I can tell, you actually travel around the whole world just like in Elder Scrolls, though the areas may end up all being instanced, MMO style. Not sure yet. Anyway, it's incredibly fun to play. The combat is seamless and fast and controls great. You basically equip a primary and a secondary weapon and bind a button to each. I went with Daggers for Primary and Staff secondary. I can mix it up between magic and melee perfectly seamlessly. The combat is fast, punchy and the sound effects are really satisfying. In the video I post below you will see that towards the end I equip some smoldering daggers that release a crackling explosion with every hit. I played with a 360 controller which worked exceptionally well, but if you're playing with a M+K you get a powers tray where you can bind things with 0-9 and I assume the attack buttons are bound to clicks. With the controller, when you want to use a special attack you hold down the right trigger and you get to use any of the face buttons, A, B, X and Y to use the special that you've bound to them. This makes it really easy to mix it up and throw out specials right in the middle of heated combat. Dodging is super effective and assuming you have a shield equipped you can time your blocks to parry an enemy attack, which staggers them and slows down time. I'm not sure yet, as this is just a demo, but the game seems to perfectly blend third person action game combat with deep RPG mechanics, and that is really awesome as far as I'm concerned
I did enjoy the demo, and I think I would describe it as a hybrid of fable and dragon age. I'm just not sure about the graphical style though, it seems very cartoony and bright which I just don't think meshes to well with the story, which seemed to be played very much straight. Having said that, I liked the levelling system and the combat was solid. It's also nice to see a game with that much celtic mythology in it.
Loved it. And apparently they didn't even want to make a demo because they were worried how to show that it's such a big game when you have to make such a small demo. I'll definitely buy it too.
Windows Live Movie Maker doesn't want to recognize WMV files (WTF?) so my journey to getting this video posted will be delayed yet. Getting the trial for Sony Vegas now. I know most of you can probably play the demo 10 times over in the time it'll take me to post this video, but it's more of a personal vendetta now than anything. Plus it's fun learning and playing with video editing software Here's the problem I had: Fraps'd about 35 minutes of 1080p, 60fps video. About 120 gigs worth. Threw it into Windows Live figuring it would just work (I've done this before with other games) but all I got was a black screen in the preview window and in a test output video it was black but with audio. Mind you the images on the clips themselves in the right hand side of Live were visible. Downloaded Microsoft expression and converted all of the files to wmv, which took TWELVE hours (guess my OC is stable), and it's still giving me black screens in Windows Live even though I can play the actual files themselves in WMP and they work just fine. So now I'm gonna try it in Sony Vegas, because that doesn't seem like crap and it's got a free trial... Edit: Video's too long for youtube now. Screw it, you get the idea
Has anyone else bought this game. Bought over the weekend, so only played about 5 hours so far - but I think it a really cool game.
Got it on release so played that entire first Saturday day and Sunday day, but got dragged into BF3 each night and pretty much forgot about it over the next week or so. Graphics are decent, gameplay is fun, story is on par with the writers (RA Salvatore zomg)
Quite liked it, even though I only played for the free ME3 gear. Not a massive fan of the cartoony art direction though.
Personally I like the cartoony style for a change, was getting quite tired of the gorey, dark look that most RPGs take on these days. Reminds me slightly of the Fable series I question for you guys though: Coming straight from yet another playthrough (5th I think) of the Witcher series - is there an alignment system in KoA? I mean I can see there's nothing visual, but I mean like The Witcher series, where the game tracks any choices you make in the background? To elaborate: Want to play "Evil" (to whatever degree the game allows) Rogue, but the side quests in the first town area are very "Timmy fell in the well - go save him". Do I ignore them, or do them? That's much and Rep for info
Theres a mechanic called "twist of fate". You get them from doing the main story and faction quests / the Colosseum. During the faction quests you can chose a good or evil choice in a lot of cases (although some arent a clear good verses evil choice). The twists of fate will give you a unique permanent stat bonus as well. I only did one "evil" twist of fate and have the foresworn attacking me every time i saw them, which was fun.
Downloaded this off steam with zero expectations and I've had a blast so far. Other than some slightly annoying wonky camera-angles in combat and the complete irrelevance of a couple of the main skills, I don't have any complaints. The fateweaver conceit really appeals to me, you don't have to worry at all about screwing up your character build. Also that you can see clearly where the mission people are and, as far as I can tell, don't have to listen to everything random people have got to say on all topics is brilliant for quick sessions. Additionally, I've actually died a couple of times when using ill-advised tactics which is a nice change of pace from the other similar RPGs I've played in the last couple of years...
I had fun with the game, though I found the ending to be a bit meh / the last boss battle was easy (maybe because I was playing on normal). Anywho, I'm trying to get all the lorestones now and I'm level 34 or so and all might and I kill stuff damn fast and don't take very much damage. Might try respec'ing into magic, not sure yet. Don't feel like starting over and I don't know if any of your quest decisions make any real difference besides the rewards you get.
