Recent reviews by Hori

I want to scream at someone about how cool this game is.
An amazingly crafted world and artful story, it's a real labour of love.

A game that hates being played. Worse in every concievable way compared to the first super hot. I regret buying this creatively bankrupt waste of time, you should buy something better.

The absolute best character action/spectacle fighter/whatever you wanna call it game out there.
It's not even an argument.

I love this game, well, I love about 70% of this game.
I can't say i like the bullet hell sections at all but that's just me.
It's hard to find a way to compliment the combat since the game IS just combat, the parrying, the dodging, boosting, slashing and even gunning are all at the peak of feeling good.

Killer is very flawed.

This game has a lot of style, being a Suda 51 game and all that, but thats about it. The gameplay is absolutely depressing.
Doing a burst dodge feels nice because it's a different animation for mashing X compared to your usual animation for mashing X, despite that the game sometimes thinks you did a parry for no reason or some enemy attacks just seem to hit you right through your dodge animation. There's also a gun thats terribly overpowered but clunky to aim.
This game feels, looks and plays like a PS Vita game that somehow landed on the PS3 instead. At certain sections the game seems to stutter and the resolution scaling is wack.
And I almost forgot to mention, this has some of the worst, most gimmicky missions and bosses in an action game ever that absolutely destroyed my motivation to play it.

It's great. Probably the best Terraria type game out there imo.
Building, crafting and exploring all feel super nice and kept me entertained for a long time.

OOOH you people aren't even ready for this game. Let me tell you how this game that technically robbed an entire state is still regarded as one of the best hidden gems that the last generation of gaming has to offer.

Story
Now I can't say that the story of this game is anything spectacular, BUT, the lore and the universe of this game was created by R.A. Salvatore who has too many notable fantasy works for me to list. The main story is there but honestly, I was much more interested in the side quests. Restoring a keep, taking over a school of magic, turning a wolf turned man back into a wolf or making a pact with a demon lord and betraying all of your friends, it's all there. The story always feels right with the world that it takes place in. Besides the main story there are 3 major factions that have their own story and questline. In my last playthrough I had completed around 140 quests and while not all of them had a noticeable impact on the world, they all added to it in one way or another.

The world itself is massive, and this being an open-world RPG you are free to explore every nook and cranny of it. Each location is unique in its own way and you are always rewarded for exploring the paths less traveled. And when I say there is a lot to explore and a lot of rewards I am absolutely not kidding, like seriously, its ridiculous how much there is. I reckon I could spend well over 100 hours and still not see everything there is to see.

The characters are nothing to write home about either but once again, they are consistent with the world they live in. There are some odd and colorful personalities here and there but that's about it.

Combat
This is the one thing that most people praise this game for. The combat of this game is rather unique, between 9 different types of weaponry and 3 entire skill trees the combat of this game never gets boring. The game itself is colorful and it strays from a more realistic fantasy world like The Witcher, this is reflected in the high-impact, fast-paced combat. You can have 2 different weapons equipped at all times and you can freely change between the during a fight, hell you can even change them during a combo. This opens up so many ways to murder your enemies and it makes you look badass while doing it too, it is not as combo oriented as a game like Devil May Cry but it does just enough to make combat encounters feel fun, unique and rewarding each time.

Music
The music was composed by Grant Kirkhope, yes really. Add that to the list of remarkable individuals that worked on this game. There is not much I can say about the music except that its amazing.

The sound effects add to the impact of the combat and besides that one time my hammer made a slashing sound there is nothing to complain about.

Visuals
This game looks the way it sounds, now I know that doesn't make much sense but you have to trust me on this one. The visuals are pretty "high fantasy-esque", very reminiscent of something like World of Warcraft. The graphics themselves don't look bad, but even at the time of this game coming out there were games that looked much better.

However, while the graphics are mediocre, the artstyle of the game is what makes it still look good. The world is painted in vibrant colors that make it feel alive but the lighting dulls the colors just a bit. And if you haven't guessed it by now, Todd McFarlane, another very talented man, was in charge of the art.

And that's about it. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a game that does a lot of things right and an oddly small amount of things wrong. And all they had to do to achieve this was sacrificing an entire game development company, the life savings of an MLB pitcher and a lawsuit regarding an itty bitty $75 million loan .

Great game please give it a chance.