FireFall offers one last tease of the gameplay and backstory before next week’s open beta!
Yearly Archives: 2013
Mabinogi Aria Saga Episode 1: Fate’s Origin
Mabinogi introduces a new themed story quest involving escaping from your fate before the demonic aura of the abyss possesses your soul. Players will battle dragons, ally with shamans, and encounter unknown foes in their quest for redemption.
Kingdom Conquest II Trailer
SEGA brings the loved original back with new and improved features in Kingdom Conquest II.
Kingdom Conquest II
Kingdom Conquest II builds on the success of the original Kingdom Conquest be expanding the already established lore as you wage war to claim an empire that spans across the land. Participate in action combat scenarios, empire building, and global war as you expand your armies, build your castle town, and prove yourself to be the strongest conqueror in the land.
Features
Mobile App: Whether you prefer Android of Iphone, Kingdom Conquest II is fully available for play on either operating system.
Multplayer Action Combat: Team up with up to three other players as you tackle dungeons to claim the ultimate loot and build the strength of one of five conqueror classes.
Build an Army: Collect and level cards to use against your foes in the contest for global domination
Story-Driven: Complete quests to learn more about the world of Magna and the story of your reign.
Kingdom Conquest II Review – The Conqueror the World Needs
By: Vincent Haoson, OnRPG Mobile Guru
Kingdom Conquest II is the direct sequel to Sega’s hit mobile game of the same title. KCII takes place almost a century after the first KC game and you have been chosen to bear the mantle of the conqueror once again.
The game meshes in three types of gameplay much similar to its predecessor. Changes include a new set of avatars, new monsters to acquire (and use) and a new monsters to acquire and new skills to use.
Your Avatar
Your Avatar in Kingdom Conquest II can be considered like your avatar in every MMORPG out there. It has its own stats, equipment and skills that you can acquire and customize depending on your playstyle.
For KCII You have the Saint, Mage. Swordsman, Warrior and Ninja job classes to choose from. They are gender locked and lack any customization features present in other MMOs.
Attack pattern and character growth is highly dependent on the chosen character class and each class has its own unique set of armors and skills.
Action Phase
KCII has three phases of play including the action, city and map phases. The action phase uses the third person perspective and gives you a chance to battle through various dungeons to unlock monster cards for your army.
This phase allows you to team up with up to 3 more people in instanced challenges with an easy, normal, and hard difficult available. If you’re looking to acquire the best rewards though, you’ll need to take on the toughest challenges.

Aside from unit gathering, this phase of the game also opens up options in strengthening your current avatar in-game so that you can get into higher, stronger dungeons for more loot and monster mobs.
City Phase
The Game’s second phase is the city phase where mostly you’d concentrate on enhancing your city’s resource gathering to further your army’s capability against mobs and human players alike.

The city phase feels more akin to a simulation empire builder. As I mentioned earlier, this basically is the resource management segment of KCII. In this phase you get to create structures that give you resources (wood, iron and stone) to further increase the resource output of your city.

This phase also allows you to setup your various commanders in preparation for the map phase of the game. Hopefully in an attempt to expand your city’s influence beyond its standard borders.
Players will find the majority of their time spent in this phase because the bulk of your empire management (aside from the resource and military aspects) are also done in this phase.
Map Phase
The final phase focuses on conquest and land acquisition. Using your “commanders”, you send out sorties to either conquer land for your kingdom, or reinforce owned property so that your enemies won’t be able to take it away from you.

KCII’s map phase is basically the “world map” section of other similar online games. In this phase you’d get to see the areas around your kingdom so you can plan for potential invasions or enemy targets.

Expect to make some rivals while meddling in this phase. Territory battles are common place and once you become a competitive player, you’ll find yourself spending most of your time here rather than in the city phase.
Conclusion
I’d like to say that Kingdom Conquest II is one of the best smartphone games I’ve played as of late. While the graphics aren’t on par with similar combat system titles like, shall we say, Infinity Blade, the various game elements mesh so well together that it more than makes up for it. The overall package is pretty overwhelming for mobile. SEGA really aimed for the stars and succeeded on KCII.
The variety of the things you can do in KCII gives you enough variety to keep you preoccupied for a long while. The game sets you up to consistently pursue one goal after another. Thankfully this is just to get your feet wet as there are plenty of times when you’re left to fend for yourself and choose your own path, as a competitive title should.

While I can keep on singing high praises on the game’s seamless flow, the game’s weakness however is obvious once you analyze each game feature on its own.
Dungeon running on one hand relies heavily on a player’s equipment rather than skill. This then makes dungeon running quite boring in the latter stages of the game. The game’s AI is dumb at best, and the only change they’d have on harder difficulties would be either that the mobs are more numerous and that they hit harder (when they actually do hit you).

The City Building phase of the game on the other hand isn’t something to write home to. In fact it’s pretty staple except for the fact that for an OC like me, seeing a lot of unused spaces within my city walls irks the hell out of me.
As for the Map phase my only complain is that I wished there was something more visual present in how battles happen instead of the battle reports the game sends.

With my complaints set aside, I’d highly recommend Kingdom Conquest II to anyone looking for an iOS/Android game to sink their teeth into. The game’s campiness mixed with the occasional overly serious tones can be easily ignored because of the stellar gameplay it has as a whole. Those complaints I mentioned were in fact just nitpicks; mere minor inconveniences that I experienced along the way through a superior package as a whole.
If you can overlook the individual weaknesses of each mode and see yourself as someone who enjoys the gameplay style of all three stages, then Kingdom Conquest II won’t disappoint.
OnRPG Shotgun News 7/2: Guild Wars 2 and Defiance
By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG News Monkey
Guild Wars 2 Announces Intense Update Schedule
In an intense update schedule more akin to something out of a MOBA than a MMORPG Guild Wars 2 players will get to experience new content every 2 weeks! The first of which was announced earlier today. Bazaar of the Four Winds is due to release July 9th. Included in the event will be exciting activities like Belcher’s Bluff Mini-game, an all new permanent mini-game. There will also be a new race, and a scavenger hunt. Players will be able to get new back items, a Personal Quartz Node which allows players to grow quartz in their home instance to complete new crafting recipes. The new achievement reward system will be put in place and a new pvp map will be introduced. Check out Colin Johanson talking about the future of the living story in GW2 below.
Defiance Introduces the Volge
You may have seen them in the Defiance TV show, well now you can expect them in the MMO. The Volge have arrived, even the raiders are afraid. But its up to the players to take part in the events which will hopefully push them back and make the area a little bit safer again.
Age of Wushu First Expansion Arrives August 8
Snail Games is proud to announce August 8 as the official release date
for Age of Wushu’s first North American expansion, Legends of Mount
Hua. Players will be treated to several exciting new features with the
expansion’s release, including the Mount Hua Competition, Yanmen Pass,
Youyun Sixteen Prefectures Battle Arena, Martial Brothers System,
Jianghu Status System, Jianghu Heroic Playstyle / Treasure System, and
Jianghu Gratitude / Revenge System.
To give readers even more of a glimpse at the upcoming content, the
Age of Wushu team has released new details and assets highlighting the
Jianghu Status System feature. Through this feature, players find a
new way to measure their relations among the world’s NPCs / Factions:
Jianghu Experience. Further details on gaining experience and
resulting rewards are as follows:

Faction Challenges – Successfully challenge and defeat the many
Factions in the world to rapidly increase your Jianghu Experience
Changing NPC Relations – Improve or worsen your relationship with
NPCs, both common and higher ranking, to increase Jianghu Experience

Unique Rewards – Build your Jianghu Experience to become renowned
amongst your peers and earn:
Items, costumes and titles
Quests, public events and world events
Single and multiplayer dungeons
Special battlefields

Please note that having enough Jianghu Experience is only the first
step, however, as players must also meet the individual requirements
for each NPC / Faction on the Jianghu Status screen. Conditions for
ordinary NPCs are relatively simple, while much more difficult for
world-renowned NPCs and Factions (yielding far better rewards).
Guild Wars 2 Living World July Overview
Guild Wars 2 Game Director Colin offers a look at the rearranging of teams working on Living World updates and the future of content expansion for the game.
Elsword Infinity Sword Evolution Demo w/ Mikedot
Mikedot and DizzyPW met up with Kill3rCombo’s PvP Savant, GM Crow, to get a feel for the newest class releases for Elsword, Eve, and Chung.
Starforce Delta Review – A “Next Gen” Browser Game
By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist
Starforce Delta is a new browser-based sci-fi game brought to us by Pro 3 Games. It is described as “next gen” and promises a high quality gaming experience like nothing you’ve seen before. It has intense, action-packed space combat coupled with character and ship progression. On top of this, the game requires no extra browser plug-ins to play. All of this combined should help Starforce Delta give its competitors a run for their money.
Customization
There isn’t too much to talk about. You get to choose your ship, which is nice. You can also choose to level up your ship. Most of the customization comes from picking and choosing components for your ship. That’s not to say that more customization options won’t be added to the game later on (they might), but that’s about all I saw in my time playing.
Graphics
The graphics aren’t amazing, but they are certainty impressive when you consider that no extra plug-ins are required to play the game. A lot of graphical browser games will ask you to download some plug-in to be able to play. With Starforce Delta, you just load up the webpage and enjoy some 3D space combat. But like I said, the graphics aren’t really anything to write home about – they get the job done and are decent looking if you don’t focus in on them. When you combine the lack of an extra plug-in download along with fast load times and the fact that I can play it in the browser, I am happy with the graphics.
Controls
Controlling the User Interface is done completely by mouse. Flying your ship, on the other hand, is done with a combination of keyboard and mouse. WASD is used for acceleration, and shift for boost. The mouse is used to point your ship in the right direction. Mouse button one and mouse button two are used to fire your primary and alternate weapons. Very simple, and quite effective.
I was impressed with the highly intuitive controls that Starforce Delta offers. They complement the fast pace of the game immensely, making it some of the most intense space combat I’ve experienced to date. It’s rare that a game has such a great control scheme that you seem to pick it up as if you’ve been using them your whole life. The only issue is, if you’re not using full-screen mode, it is very easy to accidentally throw your mouse out of the game window and click on something you didn’t mean to. Besides this minor issue, I had a blast with the controls.
Community
Starforce Delta has your typical online community that is a bit on the small side. It’s a new game that is very fun, though, so I’m not sure how long that will be accurate. Especially since it’s free to play. I never ran into a negative issue while playing. However, I never ran into any good or pleasant encounters, either. It was a bit of a dull environment.
Gameplay
I’m a bit torn on my opinion of Starforce Delta’s gameplay. While I do enjoy what is available, I can’t help but wish for what is not there. A majority of the game is centered around mission running and offers little more than co-op play in terms of multiplayer. I imagine how amazing the game would be if there was an EVE-like scale. I feel that it would have been a much grander game.
However, like I said, what is in the game is quite fun. The game has a rich lore that makes missions a bit more interesting. You will be completing objectives that are important to the mission objective, so it won’t always be “kill every wave of enemies until we say stop.” Sometimes it’ll be protecting freighters under attack, or hold your ground at a beacon while you wait for a friendly armada to warp in.
The combat is done in a way that will keep you enticed. Maybe after an extended amount of playing (as with every game) you will get bored, but I didn’t get the impression that it would get boring anytime soon. It has a similar feel to some of my old favorite space-fighting games, while still offering a new experience. As I mentioned in the “Controls” section of the review, the controls really help with making the combat as good as it is by being intuitive – often it almost feels like the game knows what you’re trying to do and your ship will just do it.
One of the more interesting features is the Frigate Defense. This is where you customize and upgrade a frigate, choosing its loadout. As far as I can tell, this never really comes into play for you, but is instead an objective for other players to attack and destroy. You can go to your scanner and scan for other nearby players to attack their frigate, which will reward you with experience, cores, and maybe some other goodies. It’s kind of a tower defense-type mode.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a fun sci-fi mission runner, you should check this game out. It has a lot of promise. There is mission running, a bit of quasi-PVP, an interesting lore, character (ship) progression, and more. However, even though the game is as fun as it is, you can’t help but wish for what it isn’t at times (A full blown MMORPG). It has been wonderful spending a bit of time in Starforce Delta and I look forward to seeing how it evolves in the future.
Features: 2/5 – Not much.
Customization: 2.5/5 – There was an OK amount of customization.
Graphics: 3/5 – Impressed with what was available in the medium it was being played in.
Controls: 5/5 – Rarely am I this happy with the controls in a game.
Community: 2/5 – Nothing negative about the community, but there just isn’t many options for interacting with other players.
Overall: 3.5/5 – While there is a lot to be wished for, I had a great deal of fun playing.











