Players who are familiar with MMORTS releases such as World War Rising, Mobile Strike, Game of War, or Final Fantasy XV: New Empire will have no troubles adjusting to Game of Kings. GoK is built on the same exact game engine, while the progression, events, and even troop types are analogous.

On the one hand, this does present players with a familiar set-up. You don’t really have to learn new things in order to play the game and you just know, intuitively, what needs to be done and how. On the other hand, if you’re somebody looking for a novel MMORTS experience, this is definitely not it.

In this BlueStacks game review, we’d like to share our impressions on what it means to play Game of Kings in 2019 so you can get a good grasp of whether the game is worth your effort and/or money.

The Premise: Dragons and Medieval Armies

Unlike World War Rising, which relied on WW2 themes and troops, Game of Kings takes us back to a fantasy medieval time of ballistae, cavalry, and hoplites. What we do like in GoK is that, much like in a true strategy game, the initial phase is pretty hard. True, you do have some materials at your disposal to have fun until your Stronghold gets to level 7-8, but things get much harder afterwards. Nothing good ever comes easy.

As we found out in our second full day of playing the game, it’s not necessarily the lack of materials, but rather the eternal waiting times for upgrades that are going to get you. That’s why we quickly decided to write up a guide to help new players grow their base as fast as possible. In it, you’ll find everything you need to know to get off on the right foot.

Resources are the name of the game in RoK. To get further, you need to produce them, farm them, and even steal as much as you can from enemy players. If you don’t like PvP, that’s tough luck. There’s a reason they called it Game of Kings: The Blood Throne and it’s not because you’ll be making friends with everyone you meet.

As you might have intuited, the tutorial will have you join an Alliance early on. Our advice is to avoid pulling the trigger on that for now. Try to see who is active before you press the join button because an important reason to join a guild is the fact that they can help you grow. However, if nobody’s around to lend a hand, either because the Alliance is deserted or because they are from a different time zone, then you won’t be getting much aid.

For now, we managed to find a guild specifically made for new accounts. It’s not much, but everyone helps reduce everybody else’s time, so it’s right up our alley. As you grow your base, you’ll notice that your army is led by a hero – Judy, in our case. Through her abilities, the hero can contribute to all aspects of your GoK kingdom, from producing resources in your base, to farming them off of neutral nodes, and attacking other players.

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Same Game, Different Name

Aside from the theme, not much is different in Game of Kings. Similar to what we’ve seen in WWR, there is a treasury (Coffer here) where you can deposit gold and collect it in a couple of hours (or more) with an interest. Unlike the Warehouse, which is meant to protect some of your goods when you get attacked, the sole purpose of the Coffer is to help you build your gold reserve. We’d be more excited about it if the interest rate was higher or if we could upgrade it without paying cash.

The war zeppelin from WWR is now replaced by a bestiary which, unfortunately, you have to unlock with real currency. Regrettably, this only tips the balance between F2P and P2W players in favor of the latter.

If you’re a fan of sneaking through dungeons, you can always go down in the underground and see if you can get any loot by defeating the monster. It’s definitely not as advanced as we’d like it to be, but it’s something. We feel that the devs behind Lightning Studios could have done more to give players an exciting, rogue-like minigame within GoK. Sadly, we were left wanting something more than yet another way to spend our money.

The problem is that the core elements of Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, Mobile Strike, and World War Rising were transferred to this game without being elevated or used to create something better. We’d have liked to see a better balance between the F2P and P2W styles of play and we’re not the only ones. One thing we can guarantee, though, is that playing Game of Kings on BlueStacks will definitely make things better.

Good Potential

With that in mind, it might be that future patches will see the devs at Lighting Studios introduce new mechanics to balance things out, especially through events. As it is right now, you might start to feel frustrated once the game proper begins and you want to attack others.

One thing that might help is to know your way around the battlefield. To get you started, we have planned a guide to warfare in Game of Kings. You might not always be able to beat those P2W players, but you can definitely give them a good run for their money. After all, some of the greatest battles in the history of warfare were won by underdogs who used tactics, rather than brute force and sheer numbers, to overcome their adversaries.

We’ve yet to evaluate all aspects of GoK simply because we like to see how things unfold over several days’ worth of playtime. What we can say for sure is that if you love base building, coordinated attacks, and medieval kingdoms, this game might just be a perfect fit for you. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a new type of strategy MMO, you should probably look elsewhere.

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