MOBA. Shooter. Deck Building. Free to Play. Early Access. Not On Steam. If any of these words or phrases scared you away from this game, perhaps you should try it anyway. Yes that means installing the Epic Games launcher to in addition to Origin, Steam, Uplay, and Gog Galaxy. Hell you should do that anyway and start messing around in Unreal 4, its free you fools!
Anyway Paragon is a third person MOBA, much like Smite. Another third person take on the genre that will never die (which I’m personally okay with.) Unlike every other MOBA however, Paragon offers an important sense of verticality in it’s level design, and is much more focused on your aiming skills.
Yes there are still three lanes, jungles, and 5v5 multiplayer matches with leveling and gear, but again the game offers something pretty damn fresh in a few key places. Leveling is still fairly standard. Kill minions, heroes, and the like to earn xp that levels up your hero and your abilities. Gear on the other hand is maybe the most unique thing about Paragon.
Instead of having a store of Gear all players can access, each player brings a unique deck filled with up to 15 cards that represent gear. These cards are what would normally be items in any other Moba. But in order to purchase these cards you’ll not only need gold, but also points in a stat.
The gold you collect during a match is what you spend to buy points in a stat for your character. Those stats are what you use to take cards from deck out on the field.
When you “buy a card” during a match it is taken from your deck and added to your inventory, taking up the use of your stats. The catch is you can only equip up to three cards at a time in a match. However, when you unequip an item to replace it with something better, you are refunded every stat point that was used when you first equipped the item. The result is a strangely well thought out balance between strategically deciding which stats to purchase with gold, and also encouraging players to mix and match cards throughout a game.
That system does also however, bring up some pretty obvious concerns about power levels between players. Since you can buy these cards in random packs and build your own custom decks, this does have the potential to punish newer players for not having the more powerful cards found in a pack.
That significant worry aside, and hopefully players more qualified than me can raise concerns should they arrive, Paragon has been an absolute blast for me these last couple of weeks. When I don’t have the time for a round of Dota, Paragon really does scratch that moba itch for me. While still feeling like a fun action game.If you are not into Mobas but really like Third Person shooters, I’ll be honest and say this still probably won't win you over. But if you’ve always been curious about Mobas and you’re more used to traditional third person action games, this may be a good stepping stone into that genre. If this article didn’t scare you off, I highly recommend giving it a try.
