Kingdom Under Fire II suddenly sparked back into life recently with publisher Gameforge announcing the game’s release on PC in Europe and North America. Many considered the game dead after its announcement in 2008 and then sudden silence for years. Although it did spark back to life at E3 2010, it disappeared again leaving fans to contemplate if it will ever be released.
The game is a Korean-made persistent online game in which you play as a powerful hero who can carve through opponents while still controlling your army. You can combine your army with other players to take on the games more significant challenges giving it an MMO kind of feel without being a true MMO.
“We’re very excited to partner with Blueside to continue this epic saga and finally bring it to Western markets for the very first time. We are determined to help Blueside realize their vision of the ultimate MMO, launching Kingdom Under Fire II for Windows PC in North America and Europe later this year,” said Gameforge’s chief product officer Tomislav Perkociv. It is a little early for this game to be calling itself the ultimate MMO as its once thriving and excited community has gone silent.
It is understandable with the wait that fans have had that they are not exactly ecstatic about this release. For many fans, the game was good as dead due it its delayed status. Gameforge seems to think that there is enough of a community left to build their game into a sustainable experience and although a release date has not been set it is at least in the hands of a responsible publisher.
There is no pricing model released as of yet, but Gameforge specializes in free-to-play games. Releasing Kingdom Under Fire II as a free game might be a smart move on their part as it would overcome the reluctance of fans to pay for such a long awaited product. Prospective buyers would be a lot more interested in paying slowly throughout the game experience rather than dumping money on an already disappointing experience.
The game, for those who might have forgotten, continues the story following the events of the first game Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders and explores the wars between the three main factions. The Human Alliance, Dark Legion, and Encablossians struggle for control of the continent of Bersia. The idea behind the game was to combine the elements of an action RPG with a real-time strategy framework, and in the first game, it generally worked. Fans were pleased with the results.
This game has been a long-awaited title for many years, but many are expressing feelings of confusion as to whether or not it should be bought. The general idea of Reddit is that many are willing to give the developers another chance.
