Today marks the beginning of the Early Access season for Epic Games' new MOBA Paragon. This means that anybody willing to pay at least $19.99 can get access to the early build of the game without having to hope to get lucky and receive a Beta invite. As a long-time fan of MOBAs, I was excited for the release of this game from the moment I heard about it, and naturally grabbed a Founder's Pack the moment they were available on the 13th of March, and after a few days of waiting, I finally got to sign in and play.
As an Anivia main in League of Legends, I've always had a fondness for mid-lane mages in MOBAs, and so I decided to begin my Paragon adventure with the hero Gideon. He's mana-hungry lane-pusher with a lot of utility in his kit. He can call down an AoE meteor shower for wave clear, a skill-shot slow, a short-range teleport that can get him in and out of fights, and his ultimate creates a black hole that sucks in and continuously damages enemies, making him excellent for initiating team fights. I played a few AI co-op matches with him to get the basics of the game and to understand how to utilize his kit, and then went in to PvP once I hit account level 3 where I played a few more matches and saw a lot of success.
The game is fairly straight forward and instantly intuitive to any MOBA veteran. You've got your 3 lanes, with neutral camp populated jungle in between. A marskman and their support go in one of the side lanes, a tank goes on the other, a mage with pushing power goes in the mid, and a high-mobility assassin or crowd controller wanders the jungle to ambush enemies in their lanes. Two towers are placed in each lane and must be destroyed to go after the inhibitors, which allow the team who destroyed one to begin spawning super-powered minions in that lane as well as gain access to the core which must be destroyed to win the game. If you run out of mana or are low on health, you can recall back to your base to heal up and purchase upgrades before heading back out in to the fight. All standard stuff that every MOBA has, so Paragon is not unique in that sense. However, it does add its own flair to things with the gorgeous scenery, unique hero design and aesthetics, and the card system. Which, I suppose the card system is really the only thing I can think of that Paragon does differently, and even then it's just a spin-off of the standard item-purchasing system that you see in other MOBAs. But, it is a neat idea. Basically you play games and level up both your account and heroes to get rewards, all while obtaining Reputations points. These rewards can be card packs, or you can purchase card packs for 10,500 reputation (not with real money, that's the important thing to note here). These packs contain 5 random cards that you build in to decks. These cards contain items such as equipment of various stats, potions, wards, activated items, and upgrades. You then create a deck to suit your favorite heroes and then take them in to battle. The cards you pick will represent the items you can purchase with card points, which are earned alongside xp. These items are added to your slots, and then you can add upgrades to them as the game progresses by spending more card points. On Gideon, I frequently upgraded my items with the Caster upgrades, which increased my Energy Damage output, as well as the Mana and Health upgrades which increased my maximum mana and hp respectively. There are also items I've obtained that provide stats such as attack speed, physical armor, energy armor, life steal, critical strike, and other basic stats that you find in other MOBAs. The idea behind this card system is that the more you play, the more cards you earn, which in turn gives you better items and more options for builds. This is a unique take on things that might make some people angry due to a potential advantage somebody might have over a player that doesnt have as good of a deck, but the fact that you can not get cards by spending real money means that the only way to get cards is to play the game more and more, which equalizes out. A player with more cards than you has probably played more than you have, which means they are probably more skilled than you are which means they have an advantage any way.
All that said, the game boils down in to a stereotypical MOBA that doesn't do a whole lot differently, but manages to execute the traditional mechanics perfectly. I wouldn't recommend purchasing a founders pack to anybody right now unless you REALLY want to get started, as there really isn't anything Paragon offers that any other established and free MOBAs offers already, but it is still a gorgeous, smooth games that I will be sinking a lot of hours in to. The game will be going free to play when it finally launches, and new heroes will be released for free every few weeks, so there's a lot to look forward to.
All in all, Paragon is well worth it if you're looking for more of the same in a very pretty Unreal Engine 4 powered dress.
(If you are interested, a Paragon Founders pack can be purchased for $19.99 here:
https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/founders)
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