Review: The Legend of Dead Kel – Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

A long dead Pirate captain has returned and is ruling the sea, and it is up to you and a curious captain to take care of him.

The story begins with you receiving a note from the Alfar Navy, regarding a legendary pirate, Dead Kel, who was killed by them hundreds of years ago.  However, he has now returned from the dead, and is sinking almost a fifth of the shipping in the Frostbrake Sea.  They are having little luck in finding someone to attempt to destroy him, the few that are brave enough (or crazy enough) to volunteer have been usually disappearing in gruesome ways.  However, as the one who follows no fate, you should be able to handle the job, right?

I found the main story in the game to be well done, no where near the scope of the main game’s story, but that is to be expected as this is DLC.  It definitely had some interesting twists.  Basically, the Island is ruled by a somewhat mysterious god, who was somehow involved with the return of Dead Kel.  You go off to try to speak to this god, and eventually take on Dead Kel himself.  But Kel is not as simple to figure out as he seems, as there are some interesting motives to his madness.  Along the way you end up encountering his 3 shipmates, and ultimately engaging them.  It took me about 7 hours to beat the main quest line, which is not to shabby for any DLC, and that was just the main quest, and one not very long side quest I tackled.  There are number of other quests to do, as well as exploring the world, including concurring and rebuilding a place called Gravenhall Keep, so I can easily see spending at least twice that amount of time in the DLC, if not more.  The only major gripe I have with the story is that then ending was a little on the lackluster side, the build up was great, but it just wasn’t completely satisfying for me.

The gameplay is pretty much as would be expected for DLC, nothing extremely major changed that I noticed.  I did notice one neat new move however, when I would go to perform a stealth kill with my daggers on a brownie, before I would spin it around and stab it, or a similar kill to that.  Now, when I go to kill it I grab its leg, lift it upside-down, and then kill it.  There are a few new enemies, including a large golem creature, and a new yellowing glowing creature called a Scav, sort of like a small Niskaru, but different.  I’ve also come across more Flawless Components on the Island of Gallows End than any other location in the game thus far, and  I’ve also come across some very nice rare equipment, as well as what could turn out to be some very good armor sets.

Overall, I would say that this is definitely worth picking up if you have the game.  An fairly interesting story, some great characters, and more of the same great gameplay makes this an excellent play.