Kingdom Under Fire II - 7 years in the making

Upon seeing the Kingdom Under Fire 2 trailer at E3, I was instantly convinced. The opening minute of the trailer was in-game combat at a scale unprecedented in an MMO, especially a Free-to-play one. I expected my weakling PC with a AMD Phenom II x4 955 Processor and AMD Radeon 6850 graphics Card to die to the game, and I was not disappointed.

Contributing to the death of my PC is the Blueside Engine, a coded-for-purpose engine that can express up to “10,000 units in a screen with 30 fps with 3,000 – 5,000 polygons”, as Sang Youn Lee, Executive Producer of Kingdom Under Fire II said in an interview with mmoculture. Many other games have attempted to replicate the feel of mass warfare, but fall short due to engine limitations: most models are either props or simply animated background.

With KUF 2, all the models are fully realized in the game, which makes most computers tear themselves apart at later levels. As long as your computer can support it (with maybe the top of the line GFX card or a casual Nvidia Titan), you can play the awe-inspiring invasion mode featured in the trailer, which allows 16 players to participate a grand battle with their armies (up to 5 troop slots for each player!) and who knows? This could just be the tip of the iceberg for this mode!

If you’re a fan of hack-and-slash (like Dynasty Warriors) mixed with a bit of micromanagement of your own personal army, this is just the game for you. Bundled with the unit progression system of its predecessors, KUF 2 allows you to upgrade and customize your army to suit your own playstyle. With the inclusion of multiple usable races such as Elves, Orcs and Humans, you’ll definitely find the right army for you.

Kingdom Under Fire 2 is available in English based on your locale, and will be released for the PC as well as PS4. Open Beta for South East Asia has already started since 22^nd May 2014, with North America still waiting for the game to reach their shores.

For players in UK and Sweden, there looks to be no release yet, but since this is a licensable game, look to your local MMO publisher to bring it to you soon enough. Personally, I’ll be experiencing the game for myself with MMOG and I’ll report back with my thoughts on the direction the game is being monetized and how it will affect your own gameplay experience.