Last week a new mobile MOBA game was released worldwide and it's called Paladins Strike. This is mobile MOBA version of the PC game, Paladins, which has been around for a couple of years now. While this Paladins Strike is a mobile MOBA play style, the original Paladins game is totally different. It is a 5 vs 5 first person shooter that comes in a various modes for the player to play. It's no surprise that Hi-Rez Studios doesn't make the mobile version of Paladins original game because they probably need to tap on the current trend of mobile MOBA games. Also, creating the mobile version with the same play style as the original version will be very difficult and not fair for mobile players if they made it a cross platform game as well. So, mobile MOBA version is a way to go.
I'm not a very big fan of mobile MOBA game. I'd rather play it on PC like Dota or LoL all due to the difficulties in its control. The same happened to this Paladins Strike as what I expected. But because I'm a big fan of Paladins and one the its early supporters, I gave Paladins Strike a try. Been playing it for almost a week now.
In this game you will be playing or controlling characters called champions. There are four classes of those champions, damage, flank, support and front line class. Damage class is the attacker and front line are the tanks. Currently there are 24 champions available but when you first started you will only given 5 champions. They're Viktor and Cassie (damage class), Buck (flank class), Grohk (support class) and Makoa (front line class). The rest of the champions have to be unlocked through various methods or you can buy them using the in game currencies called tickets or crystals.
There are three in game currencies used in this game. Gold is earn from playing the match and other activities in the game. Next one is call tickets which you can earn from various activities that you unlocked through things like achievements and quests. The last one is crystals and this you have to buy using real money through the in-apps-purchase. Each currency can be used to buy different things. Gold is pretty easy to get but tickets is quite hard but if you play long enough, you'll enough to buy a couple of new champions.
For those that played the game with the same concept and play style, such as Mobile Legends and Vain Glory, you know what to expect of this game. Generally, it is pretty much the same 5 vs 5 fight but specifically the game mode is a bit different. Instead of Dota like game mode, Paladins Strike main game mode is something call "Siege". Players from both team will be fighting to take control of a mid point in the middle of the map. When they did a cart call payload will appear. Next thing they have to do is to push the payload to the opposing team's ground or end point. The opposing team on the other hand have to try to stop the payload from reaching that point. If the payload reach it the team that push the payload will win. If the opposing team managed to stop the payload from reaching their point, the game will go to a tie-break round.
The siege mode is actually of the modes in the original Paladins game but there, it is played in FPS play style. You can watch my old video of me playing the original Paladins game at the end of this post below. I'll post my First Play video next to it so you can compare the difference between it and the Paladins Strike.
In the tie-break round, both team will restart and again they will fight to take control of the mid point. At this point, the fight normally get very intense because the team that get the control of the point will win. This is when the perfectly balance team between the champion classes will have a little of the an advantage to win. Of course, teamwork will play a big role as well. Individual skills might get you a lot of kills but this game is not all about how much kills you get. That's another different of this game from other mobile MOBA games.
The map for this main game play mode is very small compared to other mobile MOBA game's but because the concept is different, it's fair enough with such way of how this game is played. I mean pushing that payload along a longer route (if the map is to be bigger) will be very difficult. That size of map is just nice for the siege game mode.
If you're curious about how the game play is, read through and watch my First Play video below at the end of this post.
There are also three other modes aside for the main one. The first mode is Summons mode where you will play 5 vs 5 match to capture the three points to get Juggernaut to assist your team in attacking and destroying the opponent's base. Juggernaut is a massive golem-like creature and it has a very high health and attack damage but it move very very slow. Your team's job is to protect the Juggernaut from being destroyed before it reach the opponent's base. If your team failed to get the Juggernaut, you have to attack the Juggernaut trying to kill it or at least reduced its health before it reach your base. This is when it get very tricky, you have the choice to attack the Juggernaut or the opponents and while you do that the opponent will surely attacking you to protect the Juggernaut. The more your team reduced the Juggernaut's health the less damage it will do to your base because when it reach it, you base will automatically attack it with things like a laser beam. If you get the Juggernaut, the more health it has the more damage it can do to the opponent's base.
The other mode is 5 vs 5 deathmatch but it is currently not available yet. The last mode is of course the practice mode. If you first started, it's recommended that you spend some time in practice mode to master the champions' ability. It is also good to find the class and champion that you can play well. Don't try to master every class or every champion, start with one or two classes and champions first. I normally play the damage class and front line class but in the original Paladins game, I can play all classes because, you know, it is much easier to play it in FPS than MOBA.
When you play the main mode, if your team win you will get rank points which will be accumulated to determine you ranking in your current tier. There are seven tiers for you to climb up, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master and grandmaster. You will start at the bronze tier and your next tier will be determined after a week. Players will compete on a 200 person leaderboard within their tier. Top players will move up to the next tier and lower ranked players will be demoted to the lower tier at the end of the week. At each tier, the reward will be different, the higher the tier and the rank, the better the reward. But to climb that tiers in this game is not easy because this is not a solo game and you win or lose will also affected by your teammates. The tricky part is, if your team lose a match, certain amount of points will be deducted from your accumulative rank points. If you keep losing, it's very bad to your ranking because it will be very hard to get the points back. So this game will need you to play well as a team but your luck will also be determine by how other players play as well. I've came across players who play this game like Battlefield and they don't even understand their role as support, damage, flank or front line with some even busy chasing kills but doesn't even care to capture the points or pushing the payload.
This game is not bad but I believe the developer will make a lot more improvements as it goes along. They've even already has plans to add new map and new champions. Pretty sure that we will be seeing all those champions in the original Paladins game will be made available in this mobile MOBA version.
Generally, I'm enjoying this game so far. I only have a few complaints about it. Like most mobile games, control has always been an issue especially if you play on a less responsive screen or a small phones. It's even very hard because there's not physical button for you to press so you have to look at the control areas to be able to press them precisely or else you end up pressing the wrong one. Another thing about this game that irked me a bit is the aiming system or mechanism or method, whatever you want to call. It's just very very difficult. As you can see from my First Play video below, you will noticed how skeptical I was with the aiming and the movement.
Another thing that this kind of game always have issue is the server and connectivity. I was playing on a high speed wifi and the game said I was on a slow and unstable connection. I'm not sure what's their recommended speed but I was one 100mbps internet and it worked well so far. Sometimes the game lag and/or freeze and I'm not sure what's the cause.
The last thing that the developer could improve is probably the matchmaking. I take quite a long time to get a match, the longest I've waited so far was almost 10 minutes and shortest was more than 1 minutes. Not sure if it is because of the low number of players or the stability of their server. Hopefully it will be improve in the next few weeks.
Despite all those, this game is fun to play. It's different from those typical mobile MOBA games that emulate Dota play style. It's kind of a fresh concept and it might be able to attract sponsors for them to create a league or a championship for this game.
If you're a fan of mobile MOBA game and willing to try something a bit different, try this Paladins Strike. If you're a long time fan and player of the original Paladins game, you might be a bit disappointed with this game in one way or another. I don't have much disappointments of this game so far but I find it's very hard to compete once I reached the silver tier. I have the feelings that some people were already cheating here, not sure but I saw a few weird things happened in some matches I played these few days.
Anyway, give this game a try, it's available for free download in the Play Store and if you haven't play Paladins original game, get from Steam. It's free to play and the game is much like Overwatch. Some people said it's a copy of Overwatch but I don't think so because Overwatch cost you too much money and Paladins don't... LOL!
Note: I just realized that the videos above doesn't have any sounds. This is one of the bugs that occurred in this game. When you have notification coming in while you're playing this game, the sounds will be off. Not sure what actually caused this but it is still happening even after the recent update.
So, upvote if you like this post, resteem as well if you love it. Game on!
