JC Entertainment has announced that it will bring its MMORPG/horror action hybrid Priest for PC to North America later this year. The fallen archangel Temozarela and 12 of his companions were banished centuries ago for challenging God. Now the fallen angel is back again and with the 12 sacred sites under his control, he plans one final assault against Heaven. Obviously one brave man will do his best to prevent the evil forces from achieving their ultimate aim: The disgraced priest Ivan Isaacs has been secretly setting up an army of warrior-mystics for the final showdown between good and evil.

Priest allows players to side with either group, thus fighting as either Heretic or Templer. There are a total of eight different character types, each featuring distinctive fighting and special skills as well as upgrade trees. While all these features sound familiar to MMORPG veterans, the game's battle engine will rather resemble the real-time fighting familiar in survival horror titles such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. By defeating enemies, players gain experience, which allows them to unlock more powerful skills and weapons. A total of 48 different environments will be available and players can choose among three different modes: single player, one-on-one, and group combat. The latter revolves around the control over the 12 sacred sites. The faction of players which manages to take over one of these sites will be awarded with special bonuses.

The minimum system requirements for Priest are a Pentium III 600MHz or equivalent CPU, 128MB RAM and a graphics card equipped with nVIDIA's GeForce 2 MX chip.

The North American version of Priest will be available sometime in the second half of 2003.