Lineage 2: Revolution hits Europe and North America

Lineage 2: Revolution has finally made its debut in North America and Europe, quite a few months after this medieval fantasy MMORPG became available in Japan, South Korea, and China. This game joins NCsoft's Lineage franchise that has been around for almost two decades, starting with the game that arrived in 1998 as "Lineage" and targeted the Mac OS X and Windows platforms. Lineage II arrived five years later, but it is only available for Windows PCs. Its successor, known as Project TL (The Lineage), is currently in the making.

A direct sequel to Lineage II, Lineage 2: Revolution has the story set a century after its predecessor and 50 years before the first Lineage game. This MMORPG for mobile platforms has been developed by South Korean company Netmarble Neo. Right after going through a short tutorial (or choosing to skip it), the player gets to choose one of the four available races: human, elf, dark elf, and dwarf. 

For each race, there are three base classes: warrior, rogue, and mystic. After spending some time playing the game, the user gets to choose one of the two advanced specializations for each class as soon as reaching level 31. In most cases, a choice must be made between a defensive (i.e. paladin) and an offensive (i.e. warlord) specialization when using a human character.

Since this is an MMORPG, the player evolves by completing quests and killing mobs. The game is powered by the Unreal Engine 4, looks great, and requires at least iOS 9.0 or Android 4.4 KitKat (and later versions of both, of course). When it comes to the hardware requirements, these are the official details:

• minimum: 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, 1 GB RAM (at least a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or iPhone 5S)
• recommended: 2.3 GHz quad-core processor, 2 GB RAM (Samsung Galaxy S5/equivalent with Exynos 5422 SoC, Snapdragon 801 with 3 GB RAM, or iPhone 6)
• not supported: Asus ZenFone 2, Asus ZenFone 5, Samsung Galaxy S4 with PowerVR GPU (South Korean models SHV-E300K/GT-I9500)

Lineage 2: Revolution is free to download and play, but there are various in-app products to buy. The game is rated PEGI 12, containing moderate violence and, depending on the platform, it needs about 1 GB of free space. When I installed it on my Android phone, after the initial download of about 80 MB, it had to download almost 1 GB of additional files before starting up for the first time. According to Apple's App Store, the iOS version of Lineage 2: Revolution has 1.28 GB in size.