12 Hugely Underrated Open-World Games You Totally Missed

8. Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning

Some games - regardless of having the budget or will to succeed, the talent behind them or the appropriate release window - just completely fail. In Kingdoms of Amalur's case it was budgetary, and despite the team putting years into creating what would've been a landmark MMORPG with the help of author R.A. Salvatore, they ended up having to scrap the whole thing and release a fairly by-the-numbers (yet still supremely polished) third-person action RPG instead. Naturally it tanked, releasing in 2012 as what appeared to the uninitiated as a random Fable clone - a label that belied some supremely satisfying combat mechanics that let it play like an over-animated God of War. You weren't forced to stick to just hacking and slashing either; stealth, crafting various items and spells all came seamlessly, the story giving you enough leeway to keep exploring whilst slowly drip-feeding the notion that things would move forward considerably whenever you wanted to. The levels/world itself came across from the original MMO design, benefitting from being absolutely humungous thanks to originally being intended for hundreds of players at once. This helped give Amalur a pretty unique sense of scale, whilst reigning it in with solid third-person action-heavy controls - a spectacular combo that'll swallow up hundreds of hours if you let it.