Thanks to the efforts of THQ Nordic and Kaiko Games, Big Huge Games’ 2012 RPG — the excellent but underrated Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — gets a second lease on life as of today, with the release of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. Hokey title aside, this is a welcome thing to see indeed.

To briefly recap the events of the last eight years, the original Reckoning was released in 2012 under the EA Partners program, to modest success. EA, for their part, were more than satisfied with how the game sold, and per a conversation I had with Ian Frazier — he of Ultima V: Lazarus fame, who began as the combat designer for Reckoning before taking over as its lead designer (he even managed to slip in a few Ultima callouts!) — the team at Big Huge Games were already laying the groundwork for a sequel when disaster struck. Because, you see, Big Huge Games had been acquired by 38 Studios some time prior to Reckoning’s release, and 38 Studios ended up filing for bankruptcy after failing to meet some repayment targets on a massive loan given to them by the state of Rhode Island.

And when 38 Studios closed, Big Huge Games was closed as well. And when the state auctioned off all of 38 Studios assets in 2013, the Amalur IP didn’t sell. And so it seemed that this excellent game and its amazing setting were fated (I use the word advisedly) for the dustbin of history…until, that is, THQ Nordic swooped in some years later and bought up the IP in its entirety.

It was great to hear that THQ Nordic had enlisted Kaiko Games to handle the remaster of Reckoning, and that they had even hired one of the former writers to work on the story for a new piece of DLC for the game (which will launch some time next year, apparently). Re-Reckoning is a remaster, which means that it is primarily a graphical and performance-related update; the game’s systems and overall design are mostly unchanged. But then, Reckoning didn’t need much of a design overhaul; it was already an amazing and highly enjoyable game.

You can grab Re-Reckoning on GOG or Steam, and if you own the original game on Steam, you can pick up this version of it for a significant discount. To say that I highly recommend that you grab it and enjoy it — especially if you missed checking out Reckoning eight years ago — would be a bit of an understatement. But I do indeed recommend picking it up.

And here’s hoping that this remaster will sell well enough that THQ Nordic will think about teeing up a sequel. The game richly deserves one, and its setting and established lore would give any potential developer plenty to work with.