Rage of Mages II: Necromancer Hits U.S. Retail in September

Monolith Productions has put a date on Rage of Mages II: Necromancer. The sequel to the Russian RPG/strategy hybrid Rage of Mages reaches U.S. stores this September, having recently entered beta with a gold date expected shortly.

The feature list runs long. 43 non-linear, branching missions march your party through desert cities out of the Middle East and tree-shaded druid villages, with over 200 new weapons, armor pieces, spells, objects, and buildings along the way, plus 52 additional races and 14 new monster types to put down, from skeletons and zombies to shamans and the Necromancers themselves. You can ally with Orcs and Trolls this time, not just other people.

Multiplayer gets the smartest upgrade: new arenas support up to 16 players, a full map editor lets you build worlds and hand them to other gamers, and character data now lives entirely on the server so nobody can cheat their way to a maxed-out party. More developers should steal that last idea.