Kingdom Under Fire 2 - The culturally-adjusting MMO
KUF 2 will be tailored to each region based on OBT feedback.
I’ve played KUF 2 as extensively as the game allowed over 4 days, and I’ve reached level 24 out of their current 27-level cap. The game provides a satisfying single-player experience, with some party-walls (mandatory party missions due to the sheer number of enemies) serving as speed bumps in an otherwise smooth journey.
There is a LFG system where you can freely join listed parties which makes the process easier but the LFG system still provides little to no information except for the party title, which makes asking an AFK leader about what the party is for and waiting 5 minutes for an answer frustrating at best. Most people simply list their party at the mission window and wait for people to join up since the mission is easily completed so long as you fulfil the recommended party size requirements.
The leadership system allows you to participate in roughly 10 battles each day (each battle taking 100 leadership away, less if you fail the mission) with a 20% accumulation rate if all leadership is unused(ex. you didn’t play the game yesterday, so today you can play 12 battles instead).
You can have double leadership points when playing from a PC-cafe as seen from the Korean version of the game, but this system hasn’t been implemented in South East Asia yet. Anyhow, There isn’t much of a PC-cafe culture in SEA outside of competitive MOBA games like DoTa 2 and LoL and leadership might just outright be removed from the SEA version of the game, as evidenced by a thread on the official forums.
When lighting strikes, it strikes really, really hard in KUF2.
Most of the combat mechanics are reminiscent of its predecessors, but the MMO angle of this game introduces an entire hotbar of skills for the hero as well as troop skills into the mix. This makes the hero feel much more impactful rather than mashing the same multi-hit combo, but eventually distils down into the same “most efficient damage-dealing combo” for each hero class.
Troop skills need more balancing against A.I. opponents, with the game’s most efficient DPS setup involving 3 mortar troops with your hero as a tank, with the mortar troop’s skill insta-killing all enemy troops in a rather large area in they stay in it for only 2 whole seconds. Hardly a challenging experience as you can use this tactic to clear most party missions as long as the mortar troops are high enough level.
It’s good to have variety in the game. However, the options are hardy rewarding. The problem this game faces is similar to many other online games: There’s a way to “figure it out”, there’s a “best way” to play the game. A game like Kingdom Under Fire 2 has the potential to break away from this routine due to it’s strategy aspect, but as long as it’s strategy view is a simple top-down view that allows you to move your units here and there and use their skills without any other dimension of reward or complexity, KUF 2 will simply be an alternative MMO with the same flavour as other fantasy MMOs.
The hero levelling and customization mirrors most other MMOs with gear grind, bad drop rates for rare loot and even a crafting grind (you have to critically succeed in crafting materials to obtain the materials necessary to craft your own rare grade sword) which isn’t rewarding as the loot grind gives you heroic items, a grade above the rares you can craft.
It’s a 7 year old game-in-the-making, which makes me hope they can still change since they are patient. Please change and innovate the grind process we are already all-too-familiar with. Guild Wars 2 eventually devolved into a grindfest( you literally cannot have end game gear without grinding) despite promising the latter, newer games like Wildstar fall back into the same tedium.
Please, please, just let this be the game that changes something more than just porting Kingdom Under Fire into the MMO-scape. Kingdom Under Fire 2 will be released in Europe, USA and Worldwide in 2015.
