By now, it's been eleven years since developer Blueside announced a promising mix of MMORPG and real-time strategy with Kingdom Under Fire 2. After some complications including changes to the platforms and various shifts, the game has finally made it to the Western market. Whether the damn long wait was worth it?
At this point we do not want to go into the development confusion of Kingdom Under Fire 2 too much – we'll talk about that later. Instead, we focus on the actual game at first. It definitely deserves our full attention because it comes with an unusual as well as interesting genre mix.
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In the initial phase, it feels and plays like a classic MMORPG: You first select one of five character classes, all of which have special abilities and various advantages and disadvantages. For example, there is the sword-shooter, who goes into battle with both pistols and a blade and thus plays very dynamically. The battlemage, who uses her elemental spells to deal a lot of damage, but who can not take too many hits, gets even more offensive. The berserker, who has more health points, is much more resistant. Then there are the huntress as well as the elementalist.
After you have prepared your heroes in the quite extensive character editor, it immediately goes into the well-made tutorial. In the midst of a neatly staged battle, you'll learn how to move your heroes in the third-person perspective, perform first combo attacks, and do other things in the game world. In the introductory phase you already complete the first MMORPG-typical quests and even have to master a small boss fight. Thanks to atmospheric cut-scenes and some in-game events, you always have the feeling of being in the thick of things right from the start. The developers of Blueside have solved this great.
Everything is listening to your command
After the acclimatization phase in classic MMORPG style, which incidentally reminds strongly of the beginning of World of Warcaft & Co., additional spice and thus the actual fascination comes into play. At this point in time, you learn that you can not fight alone, but together with big troops. For this purpose, it is possible at the touch of a button, in a kind of tactic perspective to command up to three types of troops at the same time – in the manner of a classic real-time strategy game.
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To give you an idea, here's an example: In the course of the adventure, you will encounter, among other things, a huge scorpion that you could never single-handedly conquer. So you quickly switch to the tactics perspective and command your foot soldier to attack the legs of the monster as the archers fire their arrows from a safe distance. Once you've done that, return to the third-person view to re-engage with your hero in battle.
This dynamic interplay is probably the biggest attraction of Kingdom Under Fire 2. This is mainly because the described change of perspective works as quickly as easily, so it never tears unnecessarily from the flow of the game. It is incredibly fun to take on the role of the commander as well as the main fighter at the same time. In addition, the effective staging always contributes to an extremely intense battlefield atmosphere. While it is a pity that you are limited to only three out of more than 70 types of troops per mission, on the other hand, this design decision avoids too much clarity. Already with three companies it sometimes happens that the orientation is temporarily suspended.
The ravages of time
There are even some missions or raids in which several players at the same time with their troops to fight. Particularly challenging in this respect is a 16-player instance, at the end of which you face a giant dragon and can pocket corresponding valuable loot. However, during our testing phase we seldom had the opportunity to work together with other players. Either we did not find any suitable teammates or technical problems thwarted our calculations. The same applies to the PvP battles, which, however, also promise a lot of potential.
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Speaking of potential: This keyword inevitably leads us to the criticisms of Kingdom Under Fire 2 – and there are, unfortunately, some of them. The blessing of the game is at the same time its curse. Because as great as the mixture of both genertenelt works, so average they present themselves in the individual consideration. This is especially true for the MMORPG part: The long development time is clearly to be noted. Many advances in the genre over the past decade have left the Kingdom Under Fire 2 untouched. The quests seldom go beyond the standard mesh travel to place X or defeat the number Y from the creature Z. This is neither very exciting nor motivating.
On the occasion of the announcement of the release date, there are also new game scenes from Kingdom Under Fire II for you.
In addition, the game world off the missions and raids is not very lively, interactions with other players are limited to a minimum. Viewed separately, Kingdom Under Fire 2 has just a "MMORPG light" with some long overhauled mechanics to offer. Overall, the RTS part works a bit better, but also lacks depth. How great it would be if you had more options to be more tactical with your troops on the battlefield. In addition, there are currently some technical problems: Our test version was always plagued by stuttering and in the worst case even crashes.
