A Medieval Siege Warfare RTS
This game initially went on my wishlist because of the description. Massive sieges and survival, along with zombies. I’m a sucker for zombies. During the Christmas holiday, one of my Twitch viewers, Destructum, gifted me this game after he spotted it on my wishlist. The kindness of strangers surprises me every time. So one day I played it on stream, and it was a big hit. Lots of people showed up to watch, and starting asking all kinds of questions. I sunk about 4 hours into this game, playing through the singleplayer campaign and the multiplayer. I have a broader experience than usual with this game.
General Information
Kingdom Wars 2: Battles retails for $18.99 on Steam. It was released in March of 2016, and received an update as recently as December of 2016. It is a real time strategy game in a medieval fantasy setting with an emphasis on castle sieges. You can play as humans, orcs, or elves. There is both a singleplayer campaign, and a multiplayer portion. The multiplayer portion has talent trees and crafting you use to buff and construct your units. What sets it apart from other RTS games is the implementation of the zombies. The zombies essentially come from the corpses of fallen units, both yours and your enemy’s. They act as a neutral third party, and will attack either side. Kingdom wars 2: Battles follows the standard RTS base building gameplay, along with peons to gather resources. There are various resources, and the do run out, so you have to manage accordingly.
What Makes It Fun
From a wide angle, this game’s visuals look very familiar. The art is stylized very much in the vein of Warcraft. Orcs, Humans, it’s all very reminiscent of the old Blizzard RTS games. Next up is emphasis on building up your walls. Despite my aversion to long drawn out games, the siege gameplay is very well done. It makes early rush attempts nearly impossible. The wall building animation reminds me of the old Castles games. Nostalgia! And finally, what I think is the most interesting about Kingdom Wars 2: Battles is the zombies! The neutral third party mechanic is fun and unpredictable. In one of my multiplayer matches, my enemy ran up a squad of peons against my wall an then lightning bolted them. I couldn’t figure out why until a giant zombie abomination spawned and started attacking my wall. That’s when the lightbulb turned on. “Ohhh….”
What Makes It…Not
I only have two complaints about this game. The first is that the aforementioned siege gameplay can make for a tedious game under certain conditions. While you are safe inside your citadel, you still have to venture outside to gather materials to train more troops. If you don’t play smart from the beginning, you’re simply delaying the inevitable. You’ll be stuck in your base with a finite number of troops, while your enemy is free to roam and take their sweet time raising an army. The second complaint is purely personal preference. Base management just isn’t my thing. Buildings and peons and resources, ugh. It feels like it just gets in the way of the action for me nowadays.
The Bottom Line
I want to mention the graphics in this game because they are confusing. I managed to play them on high with no problems, but…I don’t know. I want to say they look cutting edge, but sometimes they look like they are a generation behind. They are very hard to describe. Now, on to the big question. If you’re a regular here, you should know by now that I don’t like RTS games with base building and peon management. That’s just a personal preference though, and I don’t expect my audience to have my exact tastes. This game gets a solid recommendation from me. I’m told the last Kingdom Wars had a persistent world. If something like that was in a future update, it might be something that I could overlook. That’s my biggest hope for this game. In the meantime, if you enjoy base management in RTS games, Kingdom Wars 2: Battles is for you!