Weapons impart a number of special skills. These Faeblades let your Rogue become a spinning Cuisinart of fury.

Fate has an ironclad grip on Amalur. Its Fateweavers can determine your destiny — and your death — with absolute certainty. So what happens to the world when an individual stands outside fate...and can even decide the realm’s fate?

The result is almost magical. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning feels like an old-school role-playing game, and at other times, even a bit like a massively multiplayer game. The main quest chronicles a war between immortals and the younger races, but the game also packs in a huge number of side quests — some with true narrative payoff. You can join five factions, while crafting potions, weapons, and ability-enhancing gems. Though at times it may seem like Amalur has too much going on, it all weaves the experience into a fun, engrossing adventure.

You’re not always alone as you face the dangers of Amalur — but not all of your allies are what they appear to be.

You begin your journey...atop a pile of corpses, shortly before pulling yourself out of the graveyard only to run into the Tuatha. Immortal Fae bent on conquering the world, the Tuatha are Amalur’s villains. As you learn more about your character, your role outside of Fate, and the Tuatha’s goals, you can see the handiwork of New York Times best-selling author R.A. Salvatore (of Drizzt Do’Urden fame) — the game has a fantastic amount of lore and a vibrant world.

The joys of Amalur are twofold. Its emphasis on narrative is fantastic, even in its side quests. Consider these optional missions: While traveling in Klurikon, a region under the Tuatha’s rule for a decade, you meet a bard. He’s the bastard son of a great lord, and his mother met a tragic end. He wants you to prove his claim. As you make your way to the lord’s keep, you meet a woman, the daughter of the same lord. She asks you to clear her ancestral home of the Tuatha who killed her father. As you clear the Tuatha, you find diaries that chronicle the relationship between the lord and the bard’s mother. It’s too bad that the writers didn’t take this further by weaving these quests together: it would’ve made the story even more poignant.

Gauging the timing of traps can be hard.

Amalur’s second greatest joy is its freedom. The game has three main “Destinies”: fighter, rogue, and mage. You can commit to one path or dabble in each. Just like in The Elder Scrolls, this system lets you determine your playstyle. You can use a primary and a secondary weapon: our mage may lean on her staff, but she also throws around a mean set of chakrams. The Destiny system allows you to mix-and-match these abilities and weapons as you mix-and-match your Destinies. A fighter-mage can erect a protective shield while bashing foes with a warhammer or great sword, can heal himself as needed, or even summon a skeleton to fight alongside him.

Combat is action-based, and it offers more options than The Elder Scrolls or most MMOs. You gain different attacks as you put points into certain skills: staff attacks, all based on the elements, can deliver a blast of ice or fire, while bow users gain more arrows. As you defeat enemies or pull off weapon chains, you fill the Reckoning meter. When it’s full, you can go into Reckoning mode, where everything slows down, allowing you to knock out your foes. If you hit button-prompts to deliver an ending attack, you reap more experience (and yes, you can KO multiple foes before executing this move, which kills all of them). Combat in Amalur does harbor one drawback: you’ll sometimes feel like you’re repeating the same attack routines over and over. To be fair, if you play anything for more than 20 hours, it’s probably going to feel somewhat repetitive.

RPG veterans may appreciate how many of Amalur’s enemy names evoke memories of poring through Dungeons & Dragons monster manuals. The game’s baddies show more variety than what we’ve seen in recent RPGs. (Think about the lack of variety of goons in games like Dragon Age or Skyrim.) This diversity helps give Amalur its old-school feel.

Amalur’s flaws mainly come in trying to fit too much into its package. You can fill points in the Alchemy, Blacksmith, and Sagecraft skills to make potions, armor and weapons, and crystals that give your items bonuses (such as boosted mana and damage). But it takes a great deal of points to raise your Blacksmith skill to where you can make items as good as or better than what you find from loot drops or vendors. Moreover, some quests grow tedious, especially those that involve fetching “x” of this or killing “y” of that. Encounters can feel like they’re right out of an MMO, with several weaker monsters accompanied by a stronger one. And the story, while enjoyable, also tends to hold back the game. A hero with amnesia? Even if that hero has come back from the dead, it’s a cliché best avoided.

These few soft spots are what keep Kingdoms of Amalur from being truly dazzling. It’s a great RPG — one that gives you an almost Bethesda level of freedom — and it has so much content that you could be playing the game for a couple of months (thankfully, you can continue adventuring after the credits). It’s a fantastic first effort from 38 Studios, and it’d be a shame if we didn’t get a return trip to Amalur.

PUBLISHER: EA  •  DEVELOPERS: 38 Studios, Big Huge Games  •  ESRB: Mature  •  MULTIPLAYER: None  •  ACHIEVEMENTS: Plentiful and descriptive  •  COST: $60

On Xbox 360

+ Amalur is a huge world, full of adventure and interesting locations.

+ Your destiny is yours: you can mix-and-match the game’s three classes.

– Blacksmithing isn’t very valuable; some repetitive quests; good story that could’ve been better.

? Why does the game’s exaggerated character design look so much like World of Warcraft?

8.0