Honor of Kings: World is an open-world fantasy game that surpassed its MOBA origins – here's why

If you haven't heard of Honor of Kings, you're probably not alone, even if at its peak it attracted over 100 million players per day. Those figures, however, were for China alone, while attempts to localize what's essentially a League of Legends clone, but with heroes drawn from Chinese mythology, haven't had the same impact.

However, it's been an interesting few years as games from China that are also distinctly culturally Chinese have captured a lot more Western attention than previously. It probably helps that the production values have also soared, with titles like Black Myth: Wukong, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and Infinity Nikki holding their own against the efforts of AAA in the West.

Publisher Tencent (that is making waves with its AI world-building tools) and developer TiMi have also been riding that wave by giving Honor of Kings a proper global release last year. But there is clearly room to appeal to an even broader audience, as much as I could learn from representatives of TiMi at Gamescom, where Honor of Kings: World received its first public hands-on.

"The original Honor of Kings was a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game, but it's a very big IP with great potential so we want to expand this IP to be more diversified and more unique for all the players and fans, which is why we decided to choose a new genre that can appeal to all kinds of players," TiMi combat designer Big Huang tells me via his translator Cole Zhang from the game's localisation team. I can understand the appeal myself, having sunk hundreds of hours into another Chinese breakout hit, Genshin Impact. (Read our feature on the art of making open-world games.)

Hyper-real art direction

Rather than sharing Hoyoverse's cel-shaded anime aesthetic, Honor of Kings: World opts for a fantastical hyper-real art direction powered by Unreal Engine. While I'm given a hands-on with a PC build, it's also been highlighted as a visual showcase during last year's Apple Event, where it was announced it would feature an 'ultra graphics mode' optimised for iPhone 16. But it's ultimately a change of genre that I find more important. After all, the best I've ever found myself caring about League of Legends was through the Netflix show Arcane rather than trying to comprehend the play-by-play of an actual MOBA match (I can admit that sitting through the Worlds championship final in London, where the crowd and spectacle of the arena did the heavy lifting).

It also helps that rather than having to rely on teammates, even though Honor of Kings: World is still a multiplayer action RPG, it nonetheless feels as solid and fluid as a single-player action game like Devil May Cry, while the prologue boss battle feels like the kind of OTT arena boss fight from Final Fantasy XIV but with the cinematic action of Final Fantasy XVI. Even without teammates or the Genshin mode of switching between party members, it still feels like you have your own party due to a dual combat system, which essentially allows you to change between two different classes, like going from melee to ranged combat or from tank to support. It almost has the feel of a tag-team fighting game.

"As a gifted student of Jixia, you can learn abilities called Flow, which are combat styles based on and adapted from the original Honor of Kings, but this original dual combat flow-style system means players can activate and switch between two different heroes, so that they can have very strategic options that are very unique to our game," Huang explains. "The design would not serve mainly for the switching between characters, but we want the combat mechanics of each flow style of each hero to be very unique."

Character design based on history

Even though Huang assures me that World does take inspiration from the original design of Honor of Kings heroes, a newcomer is not going to have to be acquainted with the 120+ heroes from the MOBA before jumping in. "We've made some adaptations in this new action RPG genre so that players will see that our heroes are actually based on the original heroes, but we can also make more innovations to better suit this action RPG."

The more crucial visual pillar here is that the key inspiration is Eastern fantasy. While a marketing rep clarifies that this won't limit the game from expanding to new regions and cultures down the line, the initial impression of the subcontinent of Primaera where Honor of Kings: World is set, certainly leans on East Asian aesthetics, from the zen-like water, mountains and trees that surround the starting area of Jixia Academy, to the sweeping majesty of Springbook Plains.

It also means it takes a lot of elements from thousands of years of Chinese culture, notably in its grand boss fights. There's one that translates the traditional performing art of puppetry, and Huang says is actually based on a hero from the original Honor of Kings. Then there's Bi Fang, a mythical one-legged bird, which first made its appearance in a seminal text of Chinese mythology from more than 2,000 years ago, the Classic of Mountains and Seas.

But there's also a bit of a twist to this aesthetic, as there's also the presence of ancient technology, albeit a trope we've seen in the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is a convenient excuse to embed a little more sci-fi influence, to the extent where casting magic spells feel more like it belongs to sci-fi rather than fantasy. Coming back to Bi Fang, when you do fight this mythical bird, you may also notice that it actually has a more mechanised appearance. Even when it comes to traversing the open world, you can opt to get around on a kind of hoverboard.

Chinese mythology re-imagined

"We want to base our foundation on Eastern culture, but also on top of that, we want to create something unique to our players, and that's why we get a bit more creative and imaginative," Huang explains. "So Bi Fang is a creature based on traditional Chinese mythology, but we are also incorporating a mechanical structural design to bring out a more unique experience for the players."

Ironically, while the original Honor of Kings released at a time when Chinese games were at best a niche concern in the Western consciousness, World has got its work cut out competing with other popular Chinese games, with already many gunning for Genshin Impact's position, such as Wuthering Waves, Tencent's own Tower of Fantasy, and even from its own company HoyoVerse. But by pursuing a more hyper-real high-fidelity visual style, while also being from an already hugely established IP, I can see Honor of Kings: World sticking around for years to come.

Honor of Kings: World is coming to mobile and PC in 2025.