Kingdom Rift Review

 

This week we checked out Kingdom Rift from R2 Games, their newest release. In the first place, we wanted to know if this new MMORPG would offer anything different from their catalogue or if it would be another re-skinned version with similar features (something extremely successful for their audience, we must say).

 

Upon logging into the game we were greeted with a screen that offered three different classes, a melee, a ranged and a caster… instantly our first thoughts were that “yeh, pretty much looks like we were going to get the same type of game as we usually get from them.”

The game was, as ever, a pretty automated affair with your character running from NPC to NPC picking up quests, fighting their way through entire hordes of enemies that can barely put a scratch on you, looting dozens of items that we had no idea what they were for and burning through levels like they were going out of fashion. Again, tried and tested and oddly extremely successful.

For Kingdom Rift the developers had gone down the route of it being a more Diablo style combat mechanic, cutting through NPC is in the live open world as opposed to instanced based battles using formations, etc. However, the standard “BR” score was still largely dominant where every item you gain, level you acquire, skill you unlock, amount that you upgrade or Goddess that you rescue works towards increasing your BR rating.

 

 

In our 20-ish minute play through we managed to get through 25 levels of content (though what the actual cap is we don’t know) which had, one by one, unlocked a variety of features, reward pop-ups and other mechanics. As ever this always begs the question why do they even bother doing this? Levelling up is so quick why not just give every access to the core features from the beginning as are still going to be busy questing to release the first hour in the game before really exploring these other features anyway.

The game revolves around the classic realm being in peril, you being the chosen one and the only person that can save the kingdom from absolute destruction. In all honesty the story driven elements don’t seem all that bad, the dialogue is at least translated well (which we can say for all of R2 Games’ titles) and the overall look of the game is, as ever, pretty stunning with imaginative and immersive backgrounds and environments. For all is the issue is never with the actual RPG element of the game, throws its more the AFK/automated features that we feel really detract from the game.

 

In this instance our main character (a warrior by the way) ran from place to place automatically, killing enemies by the score and the only interaction we needed was to click the Accept button to claim I will rewards which will literally thrown at us with pretty much everything we did. Players are able to turn combat off, but as we said in our video it just seems pointless to do so because combat isn’t particularly challenging or tactical or, if we’re honest, fun… so why bother? It always feels like the early levels of the game as there simply to be burned through while people grind levels, to the point where there is a fully AFK feature for your players to stand in the middle of nearby spawns killing them over and over and over and over and over until you turn the AFK feature off. Most enemies around your level will be all to do enough damage to be a threat, but your AFK feature allows you to set when to use heal and magic MP renewing potions. Question is... where is the gameplay?

Nevertheless, in our opinion, it is probably up there among the better MMORPGs that R2 Games have published. And you'll love it if you like these automated MMO games. Soon enough we'll publish a detailed profile and a first look commentary video, so stay tuned if you wish to know more.