Rise of Kingdoms just got a Lord of the Rings makeover | First Impressions - Call of Dragons

From the makers of the popular strategy game Rise of Kingdoms, comes another similar game with a new fresh coat of paint, Call of Dragons.

Featuring Orcs, Humans, Elves — Rise of Kingdoms just got a Lord of the Rings makeover. These three races have been at war for the longest time, until the arrival of a universal threat. The invasion of the Darklings.

Call of Dragons has a lot going up on its plate, starting with the city building aspect. At the outset, players have to choose between three main factions representing the three main races aforementioned above.

The main gameplay loop focuses on upgrading the City Hall. Upgrading such buildings will require the prerequisite building and levels, plus a specific amount of resources. And these resources are in turn generated and rewarded by the game through various production buildings and tasks. 

Of course, with the city building aspect comes the need to defend it and attack others as well. That’s where the army management aspect comes in. Different structures can train different troops, and you can assign heroes to lead them.

Heroes come in many forms: mages, warriors, etc. Coming from across all races and can be leveled up in an RPG fashion, complete with a skill tree and talent system. Heroes can be obtained in a gacha manner by either grinding or in-game purchase to open chests .

The battles play out automatically with minor interventions, mostly in the form of moving units and activating skills. Troop composition and strength is what mostly matters.

At first, there’s more than plenty enough of everything to get players started, it will feel like you’re on a cheat code with unlimited resources and currency. For now, everything is just a time-investment, with all the timers players wait for upgrades are in progress. The timers start out pretty generously, only taking a few seconds, then eventually minutes and hours.

The online world map is so big, and I mean big. It will take players literal months, or even years, to even get to the farthest points, and I’m not even talking about fully exploring it, which is just basically impractical. There is a story that players can follow, which picks up where the introduction left. From what I can see, it’s a pretty standalone experience from the rest of the gameplay, one that is optional.

Multiplayer is also highly integrated within Call of Dragons that takes the game into another level of fun. Players can form alliances and participate in alliance research, wars, and team ups with other co-members. Players will also receive various alliance bonuses such as additional resources and donations/helps. If you have friends to play with in this game, the fun factor is easily doubled.

As for the presentation, the voice acting is top-notch, everything in this game speaks high production values, including the CGI-looking in-game graphics and cinematics. You can tell that the developers and artists took great care in crafting this beautiful game.

So far I've had an amazing first impression of Call of Dragons, even at its fresh state, the game already packs a lot of content that can keep players busy for a long, long time. It's a highly promising game that I hope gets even better as it ages.