Hurray, I can finally ***** about my experiences with demo version
I'm really grateful for
Reckoning demo because it showed everyone how demo is supposed to be made. Hour long, giving you a small taste of everything. Nice job.
On other hand it was buggy - I couldn't even start the game before playing with settings a bit. Crashing, freezing, getting stuck in world geometry, sound skipping happened way too often for my taste (then again it's only a demo). Overall (very) weak graphics can be somewhat ignored because art design is good. As @vansau said it's reminiscent of WoW and
Reckoning itself has this MMO feel to it (it started off as an MMO after all).
However, my biggest problem
was the combat. Swinging your weapon around is responsive, sure, but blocking and dodging is a completely different matter. Before you can dodge, previous animation has to be completed, and blocking is even worse, because your character has too sheathe his weapon and pull out his shield (!?). Seriously, who at 38 Studios thought parrying is such a bad idea? Having my mage character constantly roll around like a hyperactive armadillo is really annoying. Also, it has QTE finishers which (thank God) don't have to be done very often. Right mouse button is by default
use selected spell/ability. That means you first need to select that ability (keys 1-9) which is a real flow-breaking pain when you're surrounded by enemies. Perhaps different approach wouldn't work well with their automatic lock-on system.
One of the few games I was looking forward to this year, but from what I saw, I won't be getting it immediately. Perhaps when (if) they iron out a few of these flaws. At least they provided a demo letting us try it before purchase. Thank you 38 Studios.