Honor of Kings World Alpha Hands-On Preview – Yet Another Sincere Form of Flattery?

Most people outside of Asia may not know of Timi Studio, but they’re a Chinese studio funded by Tencent to make mobile games that are similar in scope to their console and/or PC counterparts. Call of Duty: Mobile is essentially multiplayer first-person modern shooting on your phone, while Pokemon Unite is just another MOBA but with Pokémon. Let’s also not forget their slew of Dota 2/League of Legends-like money makers: Arena of Valor and Honor of Kings, with the latter establishing its own fantasy world not unlike Ionia but with a Chinese slant. And they did do the mobile MOBA idea first before Moonton, by at least a year.

So what to do with all this rich lore that is heavily inspired by Riot Games & others before it? How about an action-adventure role-playing title in an open world? Can you say “Genshin Impact-like”, boys and girls? That is Honor of Kings: World in a nutshell and with a good amount of hours spent on the closed alpha, I can safely say that this one’s probably getting lost in the sea of other similar titles.

Globetrotter

Let’s be fair: There are a few key gameplay bits that sets Honor of Kings: World apart from other action-adventure role-playing games made by MiHoyo, Kuro Games, and Gryphline. For one, you don’t collect a bunch of heroes to gacha, at least not in the way like those other games. You create your own character in HoKW and have them play as a student under the tutelage and questlines set by the Honor of Kings MOBA copycat’s heroes who play similarly to other past MOBA archetypes, though not as legally distinct compared to Mobile Legends Bang Bang. Yes, those heroes all pop up and have their own side quest lines where they reward you with their Flow Styles. And loads of dialogue and production value in the cutscenes and talking head bits; Timi and Tencent spared no expense here.

Flow Styles are fighting techniques you can change on the fly on your OC; you can only equip two at the time, but you can mix and match with no restrictions. So far, we have access to Sword of Stars (melee sword attacks), Grace of Lotus (ranged spells), Primal Flow (big sword), Demonbane Arrows (bow and arrow), and Novar’s Flow Style whose name escapes me because this hero is about as cookie-cutter as the IP itself.

Regardless, switching between different Flow Styles while fighting the many, many fantastical creatures and bosses is really fun and adds a lot of variety to your combos and strategy. For instance, I can use Grace of Lotus’ specials to group enemies together and do great Area-of-Effect damage, and then finish them off with Demonbane Arrows’ special “artillery mode” that adds more punch to my ranged shots at the cost of movement. You can mix and match styles that suit you best, ranging from counterattacks in one-on-one skirmishes to just ranged-and-melee gap-closing wombo combos.

Speaking of fly, your OC can jump, glide, climb, double jump, and air dash to get over obstacles and climb over mountains (as long as you have enough stamina meter). Unlike other Genshin-likes, the stamina doesn’t drain super-fast and gives you ton of leeway. On land, you can summon a “hoverboard” that lets you traverse the world faster. There is really no reason not to use this every single time you’re on the ground; it’s just fun to blaze through the land with this and jump around like you’re in a hover-version of a Tony Hawk PS1 game or even that Back to the Future sequel sequence. At the very least, Timi Studio have been generous in dishing out ideas to make the action and traversing a lot more fun, dynamic, and flexible.

Duplicated or Imitated?

While the world & lore on tap is essentially a Temu version of League of Legends (appropriate, given the original game’s clear inspiration), Honor of Kings: World does have a few good qualities going for it. It’s not going to stand out among the many Genshin Impact-likes out there, but its individual hero-focus and Flow Styles-collecting is at least fun to experience. Plus, its world has a ton of discoverable secrets and boss fights waiting to be challenged, with lots of activities in tow even if most of them have been done before in other similar games of this genre. The gacha system here is all about clothes and fashion for your OC; either you grind for premium currency or use your own money to gacha for single clothing pieces, hopefully completing a set to make your hero look fashionably appropriate and gaudy in this fantasy world like any other. And as I’ve said earlier. the game’s giant production values and voicework helps. For an alpha, this title is polished as all heck.

Still, you can’t shake the fact that there’s a lot of free-to-play China-made action RPG-borrowing going on to make this upcoming title, let alone alpha. But this is Timi Studio we’re talking about: old habits die hard. Oh, and also having lots of many via Tencent as your publisher can help.

Honor of Kings: World has no release date yet, but it will be out for PC and mobile devices.