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More like Kingdoms Fall, AMIRITE?
I’m not going to waste your time on this one. Kingdoms Rise is unfinished and generally abandoned. It once held the potential to be an exciting PvP Sword/Magicplay combat game with an emphasis on melee combat. It has a slew of weapons, spells and skills and enough depth to be regarded with some interest by PvP enthusiasts. While the graphics are unpolished, they’re quite pretty in their raw form and feel big. Character creation is fun and you are able to customize a lot of pieces of your character’s outfit–including things like right and left shoulder pads individually and even the codpiece.
So why the bum review? Well, there’s a couple different ways to approach it, but here’s the list: 1. Early Access. 2. Nature of PvP. 3. Microtransactions.
- Early Access: at this point we’ve probably all been burned by Early Access games on Steam. We’ve all felt like we’ve been scammed, tricked or generally had our money taken and not given something that was promised by a game. Kingdoms Rise is one of those games. It’s been in “Early Access” for 4+ years, but the devs have been largely inattentive of the product for the last 2. While it should be on the buyer’s shoulders to understand that if if they pay money for an early access game that they are not guaranteed to have anything more than what is present in the game when it is purchased–but it still sucks that the product seems to have no intention of being finished.
- Nature of PvP: Player vs. Player games are tricky business for both the player and the creator. In my opinion, they are the hardest games for the devs to make and the most risky games for the players to invest in. If a dev makes a PvP game, they must be willing to constantly upkeep the game essentially until the end of time–if they don’t the game will die. Likewise, the player base must be willing to play the game and invest in it (both time and money) continually, or the game will die. Kingdoms Rise seems to be a mix of both–a stagnant player based combined with devs who have left the game. As it stands, there are no available games being hosted for Kingdoms Rise, essentially making the game completely unplayable.
- Microtransactions: the most sure-fire way to tell if a PvP game is failing is the introduction of heavy microtransactions and “Pay to Win” bonuses. It’s a sign that the game owner is trying to squeeze the last cash (and life) out of a product when they are willing to accept bribes to let another player win. As I read up on the game, I came across the somewhat frequent comment that “pay to win microtransactions are ruining the game.” It’s hard to determine the accuracy of these kinds of statements since oftentimes they are made by an ignorant player who is just upset that someone beat them with a tool that they don’t understand. What I can tell however, is that there is a DLC section for this game. DLC. For a game that is unfinished. That feels icky just saying it.
Also, I don’t know what “Event Begins” in 6 days and at this point I’m afraid to ask. Maybe it’s like the Midnight Channel in Persona 4?
Sometimes good PvP games fall flat and it’s not really anyone’s fault. Sometimes there just isn’t a big enough player base to support the game. In the case of Kingdoms Rise however, records seem to point to a large part of the blame being on the shoulders of the devs. This disregard for the spirit of gaming as well as the player base itself angers me, and would normally lead me to relegate the game to Tier 4 except… I just can’t. What’s present in the game is really cool. The customization (both visual and combative) seems like it had a lot of potential. At some point in this games development, someone must have been putting their heart into the content. I’m not sure why they stopped. Motivation is a hard thing to maintain; that I understand. I lose passion for many of my hobbies and it becomes difficult to continue them. However, when a product is being sold, it must be treated completely different than a hobby–it becomes a job. It was the dev’s job to keep up with this game. It was their job to ensure the game’s success, for better or for worse. In light of this, Kingdoms Rise barely escapes Tier 4 by the skin of its teeth and nestles in the dredges of the Tier 3 category.
