Tiger Knight: Empire War

Tiger Knight: Empire War
Developer(s)	NetDragon
Publisher(s)	Oasis Games
Composer(s)	Hitoshi Sakimoto
Engine	Unreal Engine 3
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, OS X
Release date(s)	WW: October 24, 2016
Genre(s)	Real-time tactics, Action role-playing game
Mode(s)	Multiplayer, Cooperative

Tiger Knight: Empire War (虎豹骑) is massively multiplayer online game that mixes real-time tactics and action role playing in a large-scale wars primarily from the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China. It was created in 2014 by Chinese developer Netdragon via their wholly owned subsidiary TQ Digital.^[1] The game was Greenlit on Steam in March 2014,^[2] and was released on Steam as free-to-play (and shortly early access) in October 2016.^[3] The game is being developed to be compatible with virtual reality (VR) platforms.^[4]

Each player leads an army, and while the focus is on player versus player (PVP) gameplay, the game also features a player versus environment (PVE) mode. Battles take place between hundreds of player-controlled units. The game focuses primarily on unmounted combat at lower levels, and mounted combat at higher levels, with simultanious focus on the communication, strategy, tactics as well individual performance.^[3][5]

Gameplay

Each player make customized character, and learn to master parrying, attacking, and shielding in four directions.^[6] Weapons and armor have different protection attributes (cloth, iron, leather) and damage types (chop, crush, pierce), bringing the different restraint relations. Adjutants (well-known Chinese generals) have different capacities, special formations, skills and different levels of loyalty.^[7]

Factions

Currently there are 3 main factions, all based on the Three Kingdoms of the ancient China - Shu, Wei, and Wu. The Kushan Empire, Parthian Empire, Roman Empire among others are under development.^[3]

Each main faction has a specific soldier class with unique features. Players choose which class which subsequently contains a type of soldier the person can utilize during battle.

1. Shu - Infantry / Crossbowmen: Have good defense and middle range, but poor attack range and speed. Mainly use short swords, axes, and shields. The crossbowman have mid-long range accuracy, long range defense, but slow load speed. They can be upgraded to ranged cavalry with mid-long range and good close combat.
2. Wei - Polearms / Cavalry: - Have high health, defense, and anti-collision, but poor mobility and close combat. Mainly use pikes, spears, and halberds. Mostly used for anti-cavalry. Cavalry have strong assault and collision, but are not flexible in prolonged close combat. Mounted Archers have good middle range, view and mobility, but poor accuracy, damage and defense.
3. Wu - Infantry / Bowmen - Have high attack damage, attack speed, movement, but lowest health and armor-defense. Mainly use large wooden "Paddles", short weapons (like swords) and shields. Bowmen have very long attack range, good load speed (rate of fire), but poor melee and anti-collision capabilities.

Modes

Command Mode: PVP Mode (with soldiers) with 10-14 players, who individually command 1 adjutant and up to 40 soldiers at most to defeat enemies. This mode supports a 200 VS 200 battle and includes two sub-modes, Conquest and Siege.^[3][7]

Duel Mode: PK between generals (without soldiers) supports a 16 VS 16 battle and contains six sub-modes. Players can fight individually or in teams. Each bout lasts for about 15 minutes (or 80 kills).^[3][7]

Epic War: PVE Mode (cooperation between teams) players join as a team to fight with the AI in realistic simulations of famous battles from the Three Kingdoms Period. The difficulty of PVE mode is divided into three levels: easy, normal and hard.^[6][7]

All the modes give a combination of main general experience, troop experience (except Duel Mode), copper (basic currency), prestige, and exploit (only Duel Mode).^[7]

Development

The game uses the optimized Unreal Engine 3, as well as the PhysX physical engine and HairWorks hair dying skills and advanced action motion capture skills so that every element of Tiger Knight restores the true history. The game restores numerous famous battlefields during the era of the Three Kingdoms, and each piece of weapon and armor is made according to antiques.^[1] The music of the game was composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto with ancient musical instruments.^[8]

Reception

The game received positive early reviews. They praised the combat system, various modes and music, while noted poorly optimized graphic quality, English translations and latency issues which could be fixed in the future patches.^[6] It was considered similar to games like Mount and Blade, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and Dynasty Warriors.^[9][10]

References

External links

• Official website