If you want an RPG then Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is really good. In terms of story it's your usual RPG fare, nothing amazing, but it's not "bad". The gameplay is really good and the world is really engrossing, and pretty enormous too. People have criticized it a lot, especially on these forums, but I don't think it really deserves it. It's true the side quests are pretty boring, but they're easily avoided, and there's a huge quantity of faction quests which are good. Not all the side quests are that bad anyway, some of them are pretty interesting even if 95% are just "go in to that cave and kill that monster/get my maguffin back". The combat in the game is great. It's kind of a Devil May Cry super-lite system, but with a really wide variety. There's not many combos but there a huge amount of different weapons and magic to mix things up. It's really good. It's not perfect though, there's some problems with interrupting combos, but they're usually nothing to worry about if you just pay attention in combat.
I'm playing Darksiders 2 right now, and it's really awesome. It mixes loads of different genres and does them so well. The game is structured mostly like a Zelda game, in that there's a big overworld (actually there's several) and the main objective is to go through dungeons, solve puzzles with items, and beat bosses. It's probably larger in size than any Zelda game though, and there are countless dungeons of loads of different sizes. There bigger ones are the critical path dungeons and the smaller ones are for side quests and such.
The combat is also pretty DMCish, but it's quite a bit deeper than Reckoning. There's a lot of combos and it takes skill. If you don't pay attention to timing, dodging and what combos you use, you will die pretty quickly. It's not quite on the level of something like DMC or God of War, but it's probably the deepest and best mechanic of that type that you will see outside of the genre.
There's also RPG style leveling up system complete with stats, and a loot system too. They aren't really a main focus of the game though. You can't choose how to upgrade your stats when you level up, and your gear selection doesn't matter that much. But it's nice to have a progression system in there. It helps you feel like you're getting stronger. When you do level up you are able to spend skill points though. The skills are all active or passive combat skills, so you can choose a specific play style. There's two separate skill trees, one for offensive skills (special moves and berserker mode type things) and one for defensive skills (summoning minions and shielding spells).
There's also a little bit of light platforming in the game. It's kind of like Enslaved or Prince of Persia '08 in how it handles. It's mostly about traversal than any test of skill. Very rarely a jumping puzzle will come up, but so far I've only come across something like that once or twice. Sometimes you will have to time a grabbing move properly, but it's pretty forgiving. It's well done and feels very fluid, But it's not really a gameplay mechanic in itself.
The characters are all pretty well voiced, even if most of them are pretty melodramatic. I think that fits the style of the game though. It's pretty melodramatic in it's setup. It is high fantasy after all. Death himself is a cool character with lots of personality. He has this kind of cynical edge to him. Like early on you meet a character named Karn. He introduces himself by saying "Most people call me Pup, but my friends call me Karn." to which Death replies "Pup it is then."
But the bottom line is that it's loads of really fantastic game styles put together and mostly done really well. It's massive and enthralling. I highly recommend it and urge you not to be put off by the marketing campaign or people just calling it a rip off.
![Fr]anc[is](https://eg-forums-escapist-data.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/l/93/93202.jpg?1620797781){kind=avatar}
