Kingdom Conquest, a MMO of sorts for the iPhone, has been a very pleasant surprise. Its part resource sim (build a city, city produces resources, spend resources to improve city + army), part card game-style combat, and part beat-em-up mini-game. All of this wrapped around a world with other players all vying for control, with multiple RPG-ish (leveling, stats, items) systems for various things. The game has a lot of ‘stuff’ going on, and so far all of it works well. Toss in the price (free), and it’s hard not to recommend anyone interested giving it a shot.

Let’s break this down into the different parts that make up the game, as they are somewhat distinct.

The easiest to explain is the beat-em-up part. There are three classes; warrior (melee dps/buffs), wizard (ranged dps/heals) swordsman (tank/melee dps). Depending on your characters level, you select a dungeon to attack, and each dungeon has four normal rooms with the fifth being a boss encounter. The rooms are always squares, with 3-6 monsters inside. Sometimes a second wave will spawn. Up to four people can enter the dungeon at a time (queue up from a pre-dungeon lobby), and with four they are rather easy. Total time to clear a dungeon is about five minutes. It’s fun yet mindless action, although the bosses do require more strategy than just find mob + smash. Not much more, mind you, but at least something.

The reason you do the dungeons is because they are the source of new monster cards, which I’ll explain later. You also get gear here, which you equip to make yourself stronger for future dungeon runs. The ratio of gear to monsters is something like 9/1 gear/monster, and as you can’t sell gear, you end up trashing a ton of it (there are only three gear slots). For an iPhone game, and for this being a side-system, it’s good enough to entertain for the 5 minutes or so that it needs to be, plus every few levels you move to a new dungeon with a new look and new mobs, so that’s not bad either. You can only queue for a dungeon run so many times per day.

The city building is your standard Farmville (I think, never actually played) deal; select a square, select a building, spend resources, wait for it to build. You build lumber mills near a forest, a quarry near stone, etc. You can level buildings up, which makes them produce faster. Along with resource buildings you also have monster-related buildings, which do a variety of things. Some will give you more units, some will allow you to use different monsters, some will allow you to increase a monsters stack faster. Daunting at first due to the number of options and functions, after a day or so you should figure things out and ‘get’ how it all works; plotting out a course to reach certain goals and grow your city/army based on what you have available.

The monster cards you get from the dungeon are used to form units; up to three monsters can be placed in a unit (the third slot has to be unlocked through buildings), a leader, a rear guy, and a front guy. Each monster has a range, which determines who they can hit and from where. Most monsters are melee (range 1), so monsters with range 2 or 3 are valuable as a unit only has one front monster. The leader stands in the back. Each monster has stats such as attack, defense, speed, and intelligence (which determines how often and successfully they use their special ability). Monsters can level up, and when they do you can increase their base stats. Monsters can be synthesized to increase or change their special ability (this consumes one monster to buff the other). It’s not the deepest system in the world, but it’s actually very decent for an iPhone game, and so far is my favorite part, as mixing and matching monsters together to create a solid combo is an entertaining puzzle.

The over-world is a very large place, made up of squares with various neutral monster strengths plus the cities of other players. You dispatch your units to conquer said squares, and if successful, you gain that territory, plus a resource bonus. The longer the travel, the less effective your unit, so eventually you need to construct bases (mini-cities) to let your monsters rest and fight more effectively. The ultimate goal is to capture Towers, which are special squares found around the world. I’ve yet to see this happen, so can’t comment on what exactly that does, but that is the stated ‘end-game’. You can also raid other player cities, but as far as I know that only allows you to steal crystals (currency used to buy monsters/gear, you get crystals from doing dungeon runs) if you are successful. I’ve only done this once, so I’m not exactly an expert here, and perhaps you can do more.

Everything in the game runs in real time, and this is where Sega (the publisher/producer) is hoping to make some money. Using cash you can buy special currency, which can then be traded for monsters or to speed things up. So far, I’ve found this to be 100% unnecessary, although I suppose if someone was hell-bent on winning, they could spent a ton to get way ahead. If this was a $50 + $15 MMO, I’d take issue. As a casual iPhone game, meh, especially considering how expensive it is just to get some small boosts ($5 for 7 days of +15% gains in one resource? Yea, bad deal.).

Two final points.

Quests in the game are a sort of extended tutorial, and the rewards are usually very good. Following the quests as they are given is a very good starter guide, and highly recommended.

The UI is also worth mentioning, as it’s very obvious it’s a ‘built for iPhone’ UI that really works. Initially it’s a little overwhelming due to just how much the game has going on, but once you figure stuff out you realize just how quickly you can access everything, and how slick the info is presented. Top notch for a game, iPhone or otherwise, and makes managing everything much more enjoyable.

As I originally stated, Kingdom Conquest is a very fun game if you are into this sort of thing. It also seems to be rather popular, as new, fresh worlds are constantly opening up. I don’t know how many readers here have an iPhone, or how many would be interested, but if we get 5+ people (the amount needed to complete the quest of joining an Alliance), I’d be up for starting on a fresh world and playing. With an in-game message board, co-op dungeon runs, and a ‘live’ over-world that has alliance-wide goals (Tower capturing), this game is more MMO than some PC titles, so I could see it being very entertaining if played with others. Check it out, and if you think it’s something you might be up for, post here and let me know.