Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview and Video Walkthrough

In addition to over 45 minutes worth of video walkthrough to tune into on Games Radar, we have a new hands-on preview of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning to gaze at over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The former is highly recommended to see plenty of new gameplay footage, though you can't go wrong with the latter either if you're still relatively unfamiliar with the title:
In a way, it's comparable to an MMO you vs a world divided into quest-packed, monster-guarded zones of varying difficulty. Rest assured it's built from tailored challenges not generic killing fields, though some side quests do have the kill x of x structure, but x at least tends to be '˜massive bloody rock troll that's probably going to kill you.' You'll also find more esoteric stuff wandering around the woods, I was asked to help act out a improvised ballad intended to summon a big bad. I had the option of sticking to the ballad's intended, ultra-earnest writing or picking pithy, snarky lines that the other performer was forced to adapt to. Minor stuff for sure, but it's life on the battlefield and I got the sense there'd be rather a lot of it.

I also stumbled across a freelance fighter's guild, The Warsworn, who'd welcome me into their fight against thieving rotters The Red Legion if I could perform a few tasks for them taking out some boss fight-inducing Legion leaders for a start. This was about 40 minutes into the game, by which point I'd entirely forgotten about and abandoned the main quest. Happily, the game didn't seem to want to fuss about getting me back on its straight and narrow my own devices seemed to take easy priority.