Platform Previewed: PC
Ever wonder what League of Legends, Battleborn, and SMITE on Unreal Engine 4 looks like? Well, Paragon is the answer to your wonders.
With games like League of Legends and Dota 2 dominating the online PVP landscape, and games like SMITE adding in a different taste in the MOBA field making the genre an inevitable trend, and its only about time that Epic Games has come out with a beautiful creation of its own, and what makes it even better? It’s free-to-play.
Paragon is an upcoming multiplayer online battle arena game developed and published by Epic Games. It is set to be released for Microsoft Windows and Playtation 4 in mid-2016. The game features a third-person view similar to games like SMITE. Having developed games like Unreal Tournament 3 and Shadow Complex, Paragon brings to its table a mix of beauty and explosive action making a game a fun experience even in its alpha phase.
Everything you’d expect from a MOBA game is definitely present in Paragon. It features a map that has three lanes with an objective that’s similar to League of Legends where each team has to push their lanes to destroy the enemy team’s tower, destroying their inhibitor (yep it is there) to spawn super minions which would make the main objective of attacking their core a lot easier. Paragon, however, makes this a bit more challenging by developing a huge map with lots of openings, making unaware enemies vulnerable to ambushes almost all the time. Taking advantage of the map’s terrain is one of the key elements of achieving victory.
In regards to their characters, Paragon currently has 12 characters in its roster, all of which, are free. All you have to do is simply level up your profile level which reflects your performance either of a beginner, intermediate or an expert player.
Another key element to winning is your control over your character. You navigate your character through the battle field with W, A, S, D and you can use the shift key to sprint. The combat is quite easy to understand enough. If you’ve experienced SMITE, then combat in Paragon is nothing quite new to you, however if you haven’t, it isn’t that hard to get the hang of combat as its pretty much straight forward. You can access skills through your Q, E, R keys and the Right mouse button, with the Left mouse button being your attack key. Equipping your character with the right items is one factor to winning a game in MOBAs. Paragon makes this little feature different, you use card packs which consists of two types of cards, active and passive. Active cards consists of items like mana potion and HP potion, mainly utilities for you to sustain yourself longer in a lane. To make your characters stronger, you buy passive cards which consists of items that you can upgrade to make the effects even more deadly. You can buy these card packs through reputation points (the game’s in-game currency) in the game’s store. You can also customize your card decks in your profile.
As it is now, Paragon presents a fresh take on the MOBA genre especially with its explosive combat. Even in its alpha phase, just experiencing the game’s map and experimenting on building your card deck, Paragon presents a fun and challenging experience as you learn the ways of the game and incorporate new strategies. Surely, we can expect Paragon to improve itself to greater heights in the near future but as it is right now, as we wait for its official release, Paragon is a great game for players who seek the thrill of PVP combat.
This preview is based on the early access provided by Epic Games.