Paragon (MOBA by Epic)

[K9]

Website

So I'd seen adverts for this on Youtube but hadn't given it much thought until it popped up on Playstation Plus. Apparently if you've got a PS+ subscription you can get into the early access beta for free. Cue a load of griping by existing players about 'console peasants'.

Anyway, I'm in and playing it a bit, only bot matches for now but it's pretty fun, if a bit bland. It's much more LoL than DoTA. I've never played Smite so I can't give a comparison there, but it uses a similar over-the-shoulder FPS style. The game is really pretty and runs without issue on the PS4.

Mechanically there's no denials, very few on-use items, and the entire itemisation system is built around a secondary card-collecting minigame. This has it's ups and downs, as ever the collection aspect is fun, but on the downside it means that it's not always possible to itemise your hero how you'd like right off the bat. I've played most of the heroes so far and there's not a ton of variety there yet; most of them have a basic attack, some sort of ground-targeted AoE, a jump/blink/mobility move and then pick one of a steroid/stun/nuke. There's some interesting abilities which involve more careful placment, but there's nothing along the lines of some of the more out-there DoTA heroes (e.g. Invoker, Rubick, Furion). There's also a hard cap on scaling since every hero is limited to 60 points of itemisation, which you can hit at around 20mins of ideal play.

There are a limited number of skins, but they're all just alternate-colour palettes of the standard hero model. I don't know if they plan to mix this up at all, but if they're hoping for people to buy them I think they need to make the offerings more interesting.

Overall though, it's solid, stable, decent fun and not too hard to get into - the main difficulty is figuring out the itemisation card game, but it's fairly intuitive once you've played a few games. Since it's free on PS4 some of you might enjoy having a look at this.

[Nija]

I played it for about 4 minutes. I just don't understand this entire genre. Maybe it's the old man in me.

There is SO MUCH going on, yet you have VERY LIMITED abilities. Why am I this macho gun toting dude who can't shoot at targets more than 30 feet in front of me? I understand  game design, I just don't understand why the gameplay portion of these kind of games is so limited. I don't care if there ends up being 200 heroes to use. Having to deal with complexity of the game combined with the simplicity of the gameplay is a huge turn off.

Hard no, in other words.

[Falconeer]

I love the hell out of Smite but this, which I was eagerly looking forward to, felt not-right from the moment I fired it up. I am willing to try it again in six months or so to see if they nailed down what made Smite so good, but so far this felt very clunky and unsatisfying to me. Also, HORRIBLE character design although that might be a matter of personal taste.

[K9]

Also, HORRIBLE character design although that might be a matter of personal taste.

Think this might just be a taste thing, for all it's faults I think the game is really pretty. The character models are top-notch

[koro]

I think it's a testament to how overdone this style of game is that I:

a.) Initially thought this was a completely different game that is the exact same style of third-person MOBA-ish thing, and

b.) When I realized it was not that other game, I had no idea this game even existed, let alone was far enough along in development to be publicly available

[Falconeer]

Also, HORRIBLE character design although that might be a matter of personal taste.

Think this might just be a taste thing, for all it's faults I think the game is really pretty. The character models are top-notch

Oh the technical quality is very high. It's just the creative aspect that I don't like. Maybe I exaggerated a bit but yeah, it certainly is a taste thing. Howitzer, Iggy and Scorch, Grim.exe, so meh.

[Nija]

I think I gave up on this one too fast. I gave it another shot over the weekend and now that I have figured out the ground rules, it's pretty fun. I like the fact that you can dodge things.

It's cross platform, at least I assume that's what the PC icon means with most of the players. Add me to friends - epic account handle is Nijasan.

[Cadaverine]

I've got a friend key for this if anyone is interested in giving it a try.