Anyone else think the UI looks like crap for a $60 game? It's only a shade better than Mount & Blade's UI (don't get me wrong, M&B is an excellent game but the UI production values were a six pack of beer and a weekend with MS Paint).

EA puts quite a lot of resources advertising and promoting this game, but I think it does not seem to reach the hype EA trying to make.......

the game hasn't been on my to-buy radar until now. played the demo yesterday. now it is.

made by Big Huge Games? great! rich background lore? oh dear god yes! a lot of loot and deep character customization? you betcha. immersive mood and and a game world you just don't want to leave? yes sirree.

might actually pick this up at full price on release.

BTW: AFAIK the Origin requirement (the account, not the client) is only for the cross-game promotion between this game and Mass Effect 3. in both games you can unlock bonus items by playing each other's demo and by buying both games.

when Oblivion came out I used to make fun of it by calling it "Fable scrolls" because it basically was a fable-afacation of TES.

KOA is essentially the inverse of that: a TES-afacation of Fable and I'm loving it!
(and not Oblivion / Skyrim era of TES, I'm talking about Daggerfall/Morrowind TES)

the game (or at least the demo, but with the game shipping in less than a month it's probably gonna be in the same state) is far from perfect:

turning on post processing causes my HD4850's to vomit up a completely black screen.

trying to trigger combo moves with the mouse is hard as the system seems to have been setup for mashin button on a gamepad (but that's just the combo moves, the other controls are surprisingly good, except for aiming with a bow which is stupid).

the NPc interaction system is flaky in that most of the time your just picking dialog options from this little generic box, but then every so often you will get a conversation that uses this Oblivion-esk dialog wheel .... it's kinda obvious that the game design isn't quite finished, but that's to be expected since the -intended- finished product is the MMO.

so yeah: it's not a compleetly done game, but it is a compleetly fun game ....

I have to say that this thing is probably the polar opposite of the Witcher 2, but it's still just as good in a completely opposite kind of way.

as for elements from other games: so far I have spotted TES, Fable, Divinity 2, Zelda, Allods, and Dungeon Siege 2 ... but the game doesn't feel like it's ripping those games off, probably because the guys who worked on this project aren't hacks with no clue how to build a game, so everything comes across more as an homage.

Honestly, until a thread popped up on Steam General and a few days later this game came out I had no clue about this game, and it's not like I don't visit a random selection of sites about games. That said, Adblocker and Noscript may be the reason behind that though ^^

Is the demo repeatable? Or you're just given 45 mins to play and once it's up you're no longer able to play?

It has a bunch of freebies for both it's full version and ME3, oh and you may well have an origin account as all Bioware, EA, etc etc forum accounts were converted to Origin accounts last year.

As for the game it runs well on PC though in many cases if you don't want just a black screen you have to turn off post processing effects -.-
replayable at will it even lets you choose to restart it when your time is up (note the 45 minutes does not include time paused or talking i played for nearly 3 hours in total)

Thanks for the info. I love no ending games.

I played yesterday the demo and I am not sure if I like it.
First I had to disable post processing to be able to play it, but it was easy fixed by searching their forums.
It looks good, kind of WoWish with epeen swords and it is too generic fantasy compared to other titles like Skyrim.
Movement is the same like Fable, which was good years ago, but now... not able to jump, climb, swim is a big minus. Same goes for fighting, one doesn't have much freedom, but just click, click or dodge with space key. The hero moves on his own, because he is always facing the enemy.

I don't think I will buy it on release. I should wait and check reviews, how much content is inside, what other stuff besides fighting will be.
If the world is comparable to Skyrim, with lots of activities, housing, factions, I will give it a chance. :)

That's true, you can replay it, but I question why they did that at all given that you couldn't move between zones and were confined to a rather limited portion of the open world environment. It reeks of odd annoying choices. I won't be buying this until I see the reviews and have time to hear any bitches surface on the internet, because, frankly, as much as I want to like this (with the whole cool faction concept and stuff) too many alarm bells are ringing in my head.

I don't so much object to having an Origin account, btw, as I do to being asked to log into one from my XBox 360, generally when I play my 360 it's to get away from all the bullshit that PC gamers have been conditioned to expect. I'm not thrilled to see the bullshit show up on my console as well.

there is probably extra (full game) unlocks hidden around the demo, if not right now then I expect that they will add stuff in later after all their is still plenty of time before the game ships ... the whole Origin tie in is to track your unlocks, I'm pretty sure that the items are not platform specific so even if you play the Xbox demo you would still get them in the PC version if you opted for that instead of a console.

at least it seemed that way to me.

Anything I can find in 45 minutes can probably be found faster my second time through.

Okay, guys - yes, merely playing the demo gives you freebies, but they DO unlock on an Origin account if you're playing on the PC. I'm on a PS3, so all that was automated (although I think I accidentally gave EA my PSN account info, yeesh).

I enjoyed what I got to play of the demo (had to go pick up supper). I got to the introduction of the magic system. I would say it is far less Fable: TLC / WOW / Elder Scrolls and far more Darksiders / Torchlight / Gothic. The art design is fantastic, the writing's decent enough so far, and the voice acting's quite good. Controls are a bit floaty for my taste on the PS3 - combat's fine, but archery's a bit of a mess (auto target, ehhh) and lacks any kind of 'punch' whatsover. Definitely "pew pew" instead of the nice meaty "Twang-thunk" I prefer from Skyrim. Stealth and magic are delicious, though.

I'm not canceling my preorder - definitely a first-day purchase for me - but I'm not expecting miracles, either. Solid storyline and gameplay with a Diablo-like lootgrinding aspect and I'll be happy. I don't think it's the messiah of RPG's I was hoping it would be either, though - it could definitely have used some refinement. For instance, the inventory - I haven't really investigated most of the UI, but from what I've seen Dungeon Hunters Alliance had a better UI, and that is not a complement.

Oh it's in no way the best RPG out there but it's good at what it does. you could have just paused the 45 minutes don't kick in till you leave the training zone (complete with onscreen warning it's about to start) and pausing and talking to people don't count against the timer anyway you can spend a happy half hour in the first village just talking to everyone you can...

Oh and you get another stack of items at the end of the time

Oh, wow, thanks! I hadn't bothered going back to the demo - I thought it was over when you finished the tutorial :P

Now I have to go back and try it again! With any luck I'll have picked my class by the time the real game gets here ;D