Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
What It Is: Whereas The Witcher 3 is a dark fantasy setting, Kingdoms of Amalur is on the other end of the spectrum. It’s all very bright and colorful in a Fable kind of way, with a cartoonish art style. Even though it doesn’t have the richest amount of backstory to work with like The Witcher does, the lore here is still pretty interesting. You play as a warrior who dies and then is brought back to life with the ability to change their destiny. But before you can go on and demand your money back from those fake fortune tellers at the carnival, you have to deal with the Winter Fae who want to wipe out the other races of Amalur. You know, usual Thursday.
Why You Should Play It: Despite its typical fantasy setting, Amalur does add some new wrinkles to the formula. Yes, the story is pretty generic, but the environments look great and all the key characters are doing what they can to immerse you in the world. The combat system is more reliant on swipes, parries, and combos than some other games in its genre that all flows quite well, and the different weapons and buffs are fun to experiment and mix with. If nothing else, the ability to pick a class and then go through different subclasses through skill trees encourages you to find a tier and stick with it to its full potential or experiment all over the place. While Amalur may not have the luck to follow up on its ambitions like The Witcher does, that doesn’t mean you should turn it away.