Kings and Heroes is a classic MMO ARPG style game, with solo or co-op available. It left early access last November, but saw a very rocky start with frequent server restarts and such. As such, I decided to wait and see if fixes were forthcoming. There has since been one update and one hotfix, the latter happening January 5th. Since that day, the development team (Industry Games) has gone silent and the community fell all the way to the point where today, I was the fifth person to log into the game. For a game where being an MMO is a central theme to the dungeon raids the game features, that isn’t so great. So, with all that said, how is Kings and Heroes as a gaming experience?
Story
I haven’t really experienced any story in the game outside of the standard one or two liner set ups for fetch quests. This is very much a “make of it as you will” type game as far as story goes. I won’t rate this category as a result
Gameplay
The gameplay in Kings and Heroes is not too dissimilar to MMO’s as a whole. If anything, the gameplay mechanics in Kings and Heroes are much easier to grasp, and the gamepad is even a viable option, which is nice.
Annoyingly however, this game opens up by fetch questing you to death. Go here, kill “x” amount of this creature, bring back proof or body parts, rinse and repeat. It really doesn’t give you a lot of reason to keep on until you are ready for raids. Playing solo, this ends up being quite boring. I imagine that playing with friends or even other randoms would elevate the experience, but you know when there are only two players on at any given moment, your odds of playing with others are slim to none.
Overall, there isn’t really too much to say about gameplay as a whole. Combat is simple and efficient point and attack style, interactions are at the click of a button, and so on. I did get stuck on a couple objects that forced a restart, but fortunately, wherever you left the game is the same general area you will spawn in when you restart the game again.
All told, this is a 5 out of 10. Functional and approachable, but nothing out of the ordinary
Graphics
The graphics in Kings and Heroes tend to vacillate between standard MMO fare and stuff a bit more Elder Scrolls-ish in appearance. There is some very nice use of color and such in this game. However, character and enemy builds and animations definitely hearken back to days of old in appearance and aren’t so stunning.
All in all, this is a nice looking game. 6 out of 10
Audio
There was really nothing about the audio in Kings and Heroes that I found noteworthy, and I struggle to even recall any specific sounds.
5 out of 10
Multiplayer
What is an MMO without players? Exactly. I have no way to really take advantage of this key feature and it doesn’t appear as though anybody else does. You really would need to coordinate with people you know to make this work, and given how many other options there are for people’s attention and time, I haven’t found that option to be viable either.
0 out of 10
Verdict
Typically, this is the part where I would say that the game is raw but shows promise and just needs a player base, because that really is what you get with Kings and Heroes, except for the fact that the game has seemingly been abandoned by its developers, who have moved on to another project, which pretty much guarantees that there will never be much more of a player base than there is now. Additionally, the game is really still in an early access state in many ways. I can’t recommend this until or unless the development team shows back up, addresses the myriad issues reported on their Steam forums, and then do something to attract new players. If that happens, I will revisit this. Otherwise though, Kings and Heroes is a stay clear for now.
4 people playing today out of 10 that possibly played yesterday. That does about sum up the community presently as well.
