Recent reviews by Devilesca

This is an in-depth review of RoK as it currently stands in Alpha, and it cannot possibly compeensate for future developments.

The Good:
-The concept of a survival medieval player-driven environment is appealing and it is a niche that definitely deserved exploration. The politics-driven, savage medieval open world opens up many options for social interactions that can make this game very interesting with each play experience being unique. Whether you want to RP or simply go through the game with your own play style, the freedom is interesting. This is literally the only thing I can think of that is somewhat decent (Your social experience in this game can be both positive or negative, ultimately making this part subjective anyways.).

The Bad:
-The optimization on this game is poor which leads to constant crashes on many servers, meaning you will be plagued by rollbacks and item losses.
-Official servers are completely unmoderated, free-for-alls. This would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that there are hackers ready and willing to grief you unprovoked. All those high-tier items and blocks you put down on your fortress? You better hope you don't get spotted by the hacker that can just one-shot you and destroy your entire building with a basic hand club.
-The above statement applies to most player servers as well. Hacking may even be more rampant of an issue with player servers.

The Ugly:
-Let's say you get past through these service pitfalls and you get to the actual game: You have to contend with the mechanical issues; A combat system that is clunky, laggy, and ultimately unrewarding. This in combination with severe server optimization issues, despite having decent connection ping and FPS, will often end up with visually stuttering character animations that make combat less about skill and more about sheer annoyance.
-This doesn't even account for the multitude of in-game bugs with VOIP, crests, item crafting, item placing, environment clipping, immersion-breaking ragdoll physics when swimming, and too many other nonsensical things you'll have to compensate for on a regular basis.
-And this last one is purely subjective from my experience and you may feel free to disregard what I am about to say as it is extremely biased, but the players I have experienced in both lawless and rule-bound servers is beyond abhorrent. It is one thing to savage someone's property as it is a part of the game and no one should complain about that, but it's another thing to be absolutely toxic while doing it. This game hosts people with both the kick and the spit in the face after and with (barely functioning, mind you) VOIP, exploring the baseness of some individuals through hearing their toxicity can destroy any and all experiences you may have playing RoK.

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If you can still get past all of this and wish to play, I would highly recommend coming into this game with a decent group of friends. This should maximize your experience if you can get past how buggy this game is while mitigating some of the toxic community you'll encounter while playing this game.

In my opinion however, Reign of Kings, while having much potential in it's concepts, falls short of being a good game for the listed reasons which make this game virtually unplayable and ultimately unenjoyable.

Cheers.