The buzz-iest bullet points of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning revolve around its creative dream team. You’re probably well aware of Todd McFarlane’s, R.A. Salvatore’s, and Ken Ralston’s respective roles as art director, writer, and lead designer. What you haven’t been privy to, however, are deep-diving details on its actual gameplay. After spending a few hours in its fairytale-meets-dark-fantasy world, we can report Reckoning plays as good as its résumé reads.

While it’s not the first RPG to begin with the resurrection of its protagonist, Reckoning puts a fresh spin on the rise-from-the-dead premise. Just seconds into the game, “You died” unceremoniously appears on-screen; moments later, a pair of gnomes wheels our lifeless body toward a mountain of corpses. Before dumping us onto the fly-infested pile, though, the Oompa Loompa-looking chaps peel back the tarp covering our face, yielding a neat little transition into the character creation screen. 

After studying the four selectable races, we go with the Almain for their alchemy, blacksmithing, and persuasion bonuses. Upon selecting a patron god that grants us an additional 5-point boost in armor and physical damage, it’s time to customize our physical features. Reckoning sports the usual face-, hair- and eye-tweaking sliders, but also has more tattoos and piercings than Travis Barker. Embracing the punk rock attitude, we choose a pixie-haired female, complete with nose ring, black lipstick, and a tat.

With our character ready to save the world — or go to a rave — the gnomes dump her on the decaying flesh pile. Apparently destined for greater things, we rise from the dead, loot a big-ass sword from a skeleton, and meet Reckoning’s first menaces. In a fun nod to the dungeon-dwelling genre, we introduce our blade to a pack of oversized rats; sporting oozing soars aplenty, the rodents are some of the ugliest we’ve seen, and they don’t get any prettier when we reduce them to pulpy red puddles. 

Despite the grisly display, our thumbs are more engaged than our eyes thanks to the responsive, lightning-quick combat. As anyone who’s chatted up a villager or mixed a potion will tell you, RPGs are great at weaving epic yarns and doling out quests, but  sometimes fall short in delivering visceral battles. Recalling the fluidity of a dedicated third-person actioner, Reckoning’s slicing-and-dicing isn’t sullied by any of the stuttering or hesitation that sometimes plagues the genre’s mechanics. 

It doesn’t hurt that the game wastes no time in arming players with a brimming arsenal of life-taking toys. Minutes into our session, we’d collected a broadsword, longbow, fire-spitting stave, dual daggers, and a corpse-crisping storm-bolt spell. Oh, and then there’s screen-clearing Fateshifts, allowing players to “unravel enemies’ fates.” As dangerous as it sounds, this meter-based power temporarily ups your ability to kick epic amounts of monster hide and, more specifically, sucks the life from all stunned enemies onscreen when you waste a single baddie.

Of course, all the rune-encrusted broadswords in the world won’t do any good if the controls don’t complement their use. Reckoning sidesteps this common pitfall by intuitively mapping attacks: a primary and secondary weapon are assigned to X and Y, respectively, and a pull of the right trigger overlays face-button actions with spells. So, when battling Volkswagen-sized spiders, for example, we’re able to alternate between ranged attacks and up-close killers using the same button (RT). When facing even larger foes like the rock troll that pounded us into a chunky cobblestone smear, it also helps to have mana and health regeneration easily accessed on the D-pad.

While our demo effectively displayed Reckoning’s ability to deliver super-slick combat, it also showed off its RPG chops. Leveling allows skill points to be applied in the expected fashion, say, granting a passive boost to your stealth ability. What separates it from the stat-tracking pack, though, is the Destiny system, a class-switching feature defined by abilities managed and unlocked within Sorcery, Might, and Finesse specializations; whether dabbling in all three areas or pouring every point into one, path-shaping destinies continually evolve and new ones open up. We didn’t get deep enough to see how significantly this system affects the journey, but the developers promise an emergent experience that never locks you into a particular class. We look forward to forging our fate — and unraveling others’ — with the first real challenger to the Elder Scrolls throne.