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Post Date: 21:55 16-10-2009
Rating: 6
Author: shugo
Comment: Utopia Kingdoms is a new game that I've been playing for a few months now. Jolt the owners of both Utopia and Utopian Kingdoms labelled it as the successor of Utopia. I've played Utopia for almost 4 years and I very much like Utopia despite the fact that I've stopped playing it, I have some very fond memories of it. Utopia was one of the best and most unique free online game ever to have come online, but it is an old game and it's playerbase is dwindling. In short I feel that Utopia is a game that is nearing the end of its lifespan, unless drastic measures are taken, so it is not surprising that the owners of Utopia sought to try out something new.
The problem for Utopia Kingdoms is that even though it is called the successor of Utopia, it is in fact a far cry from being anything like Utopia. Utopia Kingdoms resembles Khan Wars in more than one way, in all truthfulness it is a somewhat Utopian-like clone of Khan Wars. There are many references both on the pages and in the code to tell you that the creators of Utopian Kingdoms harvested Khan Wars code and simply gave it a new look. The wizards of Utopian Kingdoms for example are the siege engines in Travian and Khan Wars, there is no denying that.
That said Khan Wars in turn is a clone of Travian and I really do not like Travian, because Travian offers such poor gameplay. The trouble with Travian is that armies are wiped out at an instant if you lose a battle and it takes you ages to build up your village, let alone to train an army. Utopia Kingdoms unfortunately suffers from that same unbalanced gameplay. I think the problem in the gameplay is caused by the fact that an unlimited amount of players can support another player's castle, which means that the gamecode has to loop through an unlimited amount of armies to calculate the defensive strength and that unfortunately is the cause for armies being wiped out completely, because scripts can't handle it both ways. It is the one or the other. So alas I fear there are technical issues as to why the gameplay is bad.
The graphics of Utopia Kingdoms I feel are more unique than the generic uncreative graphics you see in Travian, but they aren't truly splendid graphics either, so in that aspect Utopia Kingdoms is doing better than say Travian. Gameplay of Utopian Kingdoms can be boring, frustrating and repetitive (especially if you need to rebuild your army from scratch), but there are some minor tweaks made to the code of the game, that makes Utopian Kingdoms not a 100% clone of Khan Wars or Travian. For example there are walls that offer some defense for new players who are just starting and below level 10 these walls can't be leveled down by the wizards (or siege engines).
Despite the fact that the game is free, there is some sort of coinage system that offers bonuses such as decreased building time for players who payed for a premium package and it has to be said that this coinage system does alleviate part of the frustration.
In conclusion I give this game a 6, though it barely gets that 6 from me. It's a decent game that will keep you entertained for a while, but it does not shine in any aspect. It's not a terrible game, but it's not a good game either. With some more tweaks to the code of the game things could be improved, but as for now it is a poor successor of Utopia.
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