I struggled initially to come up with a way to accurately state how liberally Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lifts ideas from other games while still managing to feel like its own distinct title. I was ready to cite Igor Stravinsky (or Picasso, or T.S. Eliot, whoever you prefer to attribute this to) when he said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal,” or even serve up that trusty chestnut about how Steven Spielberg compressed every pulp adventure he loved into Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wasn’t until I perused my music collection that I found a contemporary artist who gleefully takes the music of others while using that work as a solid foundation to add his own distinct style that results in something that can only be attributed to him: Kanye West.
If you abhor my taste in music (or simply Kanye in particular), feel free to substitute any sample-heavy artist, like early Danger Mouse or Endtroducing…-era DJ Shadow, instead. Either way, I use those analogues to express this basic point: Sure, Reckoning takes a lot from pretty much every other game you care to name, but it does such a good job of it that the mixing of borrowed elements and layering on of new ones coalesces into a damn fine action-RPG.
