I just tried the demo.
From what I've seen and done:
PROS
º Great animations (especially for combat, obviously), one of the strongest aspect surely.
º Good art style, colorful and vibrant environments.
º Good combat system, but nothing revolutionary, reminds me a lot of Dragon Nest's.
º Good/decent voice acting, nothing bad at all.
º Good sounds.
º Good soundtrack.
º Good visual effects, especially from magic spells.
º Story/lore seems to be well fleshed out and detailed.
º Your character has some nicely done facial expressions during some cut-scenes when talking to certain NPCs or when seeing something bad happening nearby as the conversation occurs to convey some emotions. I believe it's a nice little touch for attention to details. It reminds me of similar facial expressions from some cut-scenes in Dragon Age: Origins. One example from the demo (which isn't much of a spoiler) is when your character finally meets with the scientist (Hugeus I think is the name?) in his lab, and as the conversation progress another character bursts inside the room alarming the scientist that the enemy has breached the walls and are coming, your character then clearly shows facial expressions at some point during the following dialog (panic/surprise/concern).
CONS
º Camera is too close to the character when out of combat (for my tastes), can't seem to be able to zoom out nor in at will, seems to be set like that forever (using mouse wheel changes weapons rather than zooming in or out like in most other RPGs or MMORPGs I've played).
º I don't like how the camera "steers" left and right when you turn in addition to the character looking at where you turn (positioning the character "out of screen center"), difficult to describe in words for me, but I felt dizzy for a moment because of it. I got used to it after a short period however, but I still don't like it, can't seem be able to disable it.
º Exploration barely exists as far as the demo's content is concerned. Additionally, we almost never jump, jumping does exist but only at scripted locations where you have to press "F" to make the character use a scripted jump animation at that specific location (when available) to reach a lower or higher platform. That in turn seems to have limited the map's very layouts in favor for a more linear approach rather than being able to "really explore" environments on multiple platforms within the same map.
º Related to the point above, overall it seems that even though the environments can be "large enough" at times, there's still not much to do in them. A lot of what you can interact with glows from a short distance (such as glowing chests, glowing plants that you can harvest, etc.), which indicates that the game was "simplified", which in turn contradicts the notion that we are to explore our surroundings and discover things by ourselves. That may be true to some extent, but it doesn't hold a candle against the likes of Elder Scrolls IV/V or Fallout 3, or even GTAIII/IV.
º It seems that sometimes hostile groups of bandits spawn pretty much in front of you as you jog or sprint around as you "explore" the map. I've seen that happen during my playthrough of the demo on numerous occasions. Some locations on the map such as pre-set bandit camps have the bandits already present there as you approach which is fine. But occasionally some mobs seem to be generated in front, or around you as you move around. I'm not sure if that was intended or not, or if there's any form of "randomization" system in this game, creating some sort of "random encounters". If that's the case then they need to make that obvious as part of the game's features, because right now I'm considering that annoying more than anything else.
º Related to a part of the point above, regarding mobs spawning suddenly near you as you explore the environment. It makes stealth obviously useless in such circumstances. I wasn't playing a rogue in my demo playthrough (was playing as a mage), but I can certainly imagine a rogue sprinting around only to stumble on a suddenly-spawned group of bandits only to be "forced" to use brute approach in combat rather than going for a stealthy approach.
º The environments feel as though you'd be part of an on-line MMORPG, mostly in the sense that outside of the content coming from the quests and the occasionally spawning mobs (out of nowhere), there's not much to look at around you. The maps doesn't give the impression that it is a living, breathing world. I might have missed a few things but from what I've seen there's no "wandering" neutral adventurers around, there's no merchants that seem to travel from towns to towns. There's no seemingly innocent things (even non-interactive) such as birds flying around or butterflies... generally speaking the maps seem rather bland.
º The content is mostly related to your quests, very similar to MMORPGs where you can see plains after plains and hills or rivers or caves after caves in which the only things there is to see and do are the same. For example, seeing exactly identical mobs that only ask one thing, that is to grind them until you're exhausted, or only kill 10 of them because some NPC asked you to do that from that last boring town you've just been in. The only thing that seem to make this game different from generic MMORPGs is that it's off-line.
º Character customization is very limited to pre-sets, without sliders to "exaggerate" or "re-adjust" the body or facial traits applied by the said pre-sets. It's not a big issue, but what makes good RPGs (read "Role-Playing" games) in my opinion is often that you can customize "your" character to your tastes, rather than being imposed a character look, size and general allure from the tastes of the artists whom worked on the pre-sets during the game's development. With this in mind Reckoning's character customization reminds me a lot of many "failed" Free-to-Play MMORPGs out there in which the only thing you can change to your character's appearance is one out of no more than a dozen pre-sets for approximately the same low number of character shapes and traits.
º A lot from the GUI sucks, simply said. Many menus are indeed buried within layers of them, only making various items management troublesome. That part of the game alone does remind us that it is a console port.
º There seems to be visual glitches when turning the camera fast, especially during combat. I'm not sure if those issues are only related to the game, or graphics drivers, but I know for sure that my GPU is not over-heating and that none of my other games have any similar problems. One of the "common" issue I've seen occur in my playthrough of the demo is that sometimes water is simply not drawn at all. It might be due to the fact that it's "just a demo". Time will tell once the final game is released and technical issues on forums start to be discussed.
Well, overall it does feel a lot like the game is just an off-line MMORPG. It has its fare share of goods and not so goods, some of that being kinda bad. I really don't like the camera movement and angles, nor the GUI, or the lack of actual true exploration. But with that said and all things considered at least from the demo, I think that it's quite a solid game. I am interested and I think I'll buy it, but I don't think I'm going to pay $60 for that. I'll wait until the game's price goes down in one of many inevitable sales that's bound to occur within the next two or three months, if not before that.
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