izigame.me

Kingdoms of Amalur is a game I've always looked back on fondly, and I find myself feeling rather bitter towards this DLC for souring those fond memories.
The base game is not, I think, some spectacular masterpiece, but it's a solid RPG with some engaging combat design, a varied and rich aesthetic (as someone who never could gel with Skyrim for the endless drab tundra and caves, the richness of colour was a real treat), and some narrative themes and setting elements that worked for me. I'm a sucker for Fair Folk stuff and destiny-defying heroism, sue me. That's part of the problem, actually.
So, first off - the Fatesworn DLC takes you away from the Faelands that all of the base game took place in, to a new locale. This is par for the course; both the Legend of Dead Kel and the Teeth of Naros DLC's did so as well. But where Dead Kel had Gallow's End with its warm colour scheme and a kinda fun salty cove pirates kinda vibe going on, and Teeth of Naros had its own engaging thing of flying cities populated by stony-skinned giants channelling a Rome/Greece aesthetic, Fatesworn brings us to Mithros, and it's just... Kind of a letdown? It's supposed to be an ancient land full of history and myths and the birthplace of one of the setting's races. Mostly it just put me in mind of the standard northwestern european fantasy milieu, some mountain valleys, some icy foothills, all par for the course. Crownhold feels less 'ancient cradle of civilisation' than it does a regular fishing town. One of the new quests had me touring the base game's areas again, and the difference was striking - some of the DLC dungeons are neat-looking, but overall? Meh.
Gameplay wise, it's more of the same, taken too far. When you're questing through Mithros it's alright. It lacks the flair of what came before, but that's the disappointing setting souring things for me. The nuts and bolts are still there. I like Amalur's combat system; it's not spectacular, but it's got enough going on with active abilities and special attacks and whatnot to still be engaging. No, the problem here is the new Chaos Realms mechanic; the central threat of the DLC can functionally only be harmed by a new, special class of weapons, which you acquire and power up for the final showdown by clearing dungeons. There are 25 of these dungeons, they're mostly identical to each other, and none of them have anything special in them besides a few you have to run for the main quest that have the parts of a unique, plot-required set of armour - yes, the story hits the old cliche of needing to assemble the McGuffin to beat the BBEG's otherwise-invulnerable barrier of Plot Fiat, it's whatever. Regardless. You don't HAVE to clear all 25 dungeons, but you're encouraged to in order to power up the Chaos Weapons you need to beat the primary threat of the DLC, and again, there's 25 of them and they're basically all identikit experiences of jogging through the same spooky tunnels, fighting the same beasties, looting chests and rocks for regular gear. None of them are all that lengthy, and I like Amalur's gameplay, but this felt like it was spreading itself too thin by dungeon 7, never mind 25. By the last dozen or so I was just sprinting through them to kill the dungeon heart and cross it off the list, ignoring all the enemies and loot. That... really doesn't recommend the experience, y'know?
Some people are complaining about the difficulty, but I can't really comment on that - by the time I finished Naros I'd abused the game's crafting system to the point of being nigh-invulnerable and doing stupid amounts of damage. I also can't really join those complaining about bugs; I ran into a few quests that lacked polish, sure, but nothing unplayable or crash-causing, just sound effects recurring, unclear quest descriptions, and one occasion where I might have sequence-broken unintentionally.
No, my last complaint is the ending. This will be spoilers, naturally, but we should be well below the read more by now, so this is your warning if you care.
As I mentioned back at the start, I dig destiny-defying heroism, and Amalur plays into that. It's kind of the central conceit of the game; you are the Fateless One, empowered to rewrite the course of destiny which binds everybody else and overturn the order of the world. At the end of the base game you've slain an incarnate god and set the great tapestry of fate unravelling entirely. It's not a wholly triumphant ending - the future is uncertain now, and that uncertainty is worrying. But the alternative was everybody's destiny being 'stabbed to death by angry faerie cultists', and now the future is in our hands. There's hope, along with the worry; your introduction to your power, after all, was averting the destined demise of an old hero who becomes one of your boon companions.
Until Fatesworn, when suddenly the Tapestry of Fate unravelling is unambiguously a bad thing, so obviously a bad thing that its badness can be taken for granted without any need to discuss why, and your existence is a necessary evil to fight the threats your actions have unleashed on the world by inviting Chaos in. In the end, after you've saved the world and defeated a second god, you have to leave, to go into exile far away, and never come back so that destiny can repair its hold on peoples lives. This is... dissonant with what's come before, to say the least.
It's doubly frustrating because there's the seed of a more interesting and acceptable ending in there, as people acknowledge that you have grown so mighty that it's not altogether clear whether the world can survive you - how many times will you grapple with gods before the land buckles under the strain of your struggles? Perhaps you should go, venture out into realms unknown. What is left for you to do here, after all? Considering how wildly overpowered I was by game's end, I'd have agreed with that.
But we didn't get that, instead we got a betrayal and an invalidation of so much of what has come before. A great shame.