Hands-On: Honor of Kings World is an impressive looking online action RPG from the world’s biggest mobile franchise

Visually at least, Honor of Kings: World looks every bit an instalment in one of the most popular game series in the world.

An online action RPG spin-off to TiMi’s phenomenally successful Chinese MOBA, which has over 100 million daily players, World is set to expand on the universe and characters featured in the mobile game with spectacular-looking combat, a big world to explore, and a large number of unique classes to choose from.

After years focused mainly on the Chinese market, then with triple-A calibre mobile spin-offs for franchises like Call of Duty and Pokémon Unite, Honor of Kings: World is TiMi’s attempt at expanding its flagship original IP to other gaming audiences, starting with PC and mobile.

Meanwhile, for those hundreds of millions of players familiar with the original Honor of Kings, it says World will provide an opportunity for them to discover a much deeper lore and story than is offered in the MOBA game.

In Honor of Kings: World, players take on the role of a new student at Jixia Academy, which is sort of like a Hogwarts for its roster of anime Jedi, each of whom can utilise a mystical energy source called ‘the Flow’.

As you’d expect from a series that’s generated billions in revenue, the Unreal Engine-powered environments and cinematic presentation of World – running on a high end PC, at least – is every bit as good as the biggest budget console games of today.

TiMi says the game’s environments and creatures are deeply rooted in Chinese mythology, which can be seen by the appearance of creatures such as Bi Fang, the one-legged bird from a real 2000-year-old text.

Chinese mythology has no shortage of suitors in modern video games, of course, but there’s also evidence TiMi will utilise fantasy elements to come up with more fantastical weapons and items than in other genre entries, and the art implementation here is so beautifully done, it’s going to stand out either way.

Aside from its expanded lore and sweeping, triple-A vistas, the main way Honor of Kings: Word plans to stand out from its roots is in its flashy real-time combat which, while impossible to judge fairly from a short demo, suggested a lot of variety and some nice ideas.

In the multiplayer boss encounter we were able to try, each player class had their own unique real-time attacks, dodges, and ultimate moves, such as the ability to throw spells, cast an ice freeze, or a flurry of melee attacks, as we worked together to bring down a large mythical beast.

Combat feels somewhere between a Devil May Cry-style action game and modern, real-time Final Fantasy games. Potentially enhancing that fluid action feel is the ability to switch between two different classes on the fly, mid-battle, which TiMi compares to a tag team system in a fighting game. Although our time with the game was too short to uncover much beyond basic techniques, it’s easy to see how this could be implemented in a way that promotes deep combinations.

Though we weren’t able to see much of them, TiMi also promises a suite of shared world gameplay experiences with other players, such as exploration across the continent of Primaera, including PvP and PvE, and activities like crafting and house building. Alongside this will be a narrative story in which players join up with heroes from the original Honor of Kings, it says, to go on adventures and solve an overarching mystery plot.

TiMi has taken its time with World – the game was first announced in 2021 – which suggests it’s prepared to put in the work to ensure it’s competitive in a genre already stacked with quality contenders, like Genshin Impact and Tower of Fantasy. Based on the short demo we played, should it stretch this level of polish across the entire game, it certainly has a good chance of replicating some of that mobile success in a new arena. At the very least, good looks will take it a long way.