Epic Games has shaken up its company quite a bit. It’s removed the flagship franchise, Gears of War, for free-to-play titles built on their latest Unreal Engine. This is Epic’s new business model and Paragon fits right in.

Paragon is Epic Games’ take on MOBA’s. The most noticeable difference is the camera. Unlike the helicopter views of League of Legends and DOTA, the camera is set in third-person perspective. To give you a better word picture: If you were to play League of Legends and move the camera from the helicopter view to a third-person perspective, you’re basically playing Paragon.

But don’t mistake Paragon for a shooter with MOBA elements. This is a MOBA to the core and heavily influenced by League of Legends. Movement speed, fire rate, jungles, inhibitors, fog of war, three lanes, minions, super minions, bosses. You name it, it’s there. Epic did their homework and so far, it’s a MOBA that has promise.

What makes Paragon unique compared to the most recognized MOBA’s is the obvious camera angle, but also its choice to use cards as the method to increase the strength (or defense) of your hero. Each hero has a deck you build with various cards that increases strength (physical or energy), attack speed, critical hit chance, bonus critical damage, etc. Minions and enemies drop Card Power and once you’ve earned enough, you earn three card points. From there you spend your points on cards and you can upgrade cards you’ve purchased to make them stronger. It’s a system not completely unlike League of Legends but once you explore deck building, you’ll find it has its own metagame.

Paragon will be free-to-play but Epic promises what you pay for will not affect gameplay. You cannot purchase cards with real money. You cannot buy individual cards. Cards must be earned by playing the game and when you do earn enough Reputation to buy a card pack, what you get is random. Now, you can buy boosters that increase the amount of experience you get which helps you earn level-up rewards faster and a reward might be a card pack. But those packs are random also. So if anything, if you’re that desperate for card packs, you’re paying for more chances to get a card you want.

Gameplay

---

If you’re a MOBA fan, Paragon won’t throw much of anything different at you. It plays just like any MOBA. There are five heroes and three lanes. The goal is to destroy the enemies core but you have to get through two towers and an inhibitor in order to reach it. While trying to destroy the towers, you’ll want to move through the jungle which has its own metagame and strategies. In the jungle you can hide from enemies, kill bosses for power-ups and “gank” (taking players by surprise) players in nearby lanes.

While gradually pushing forward in a lane, you’ll take out minions. Minions are the way to attack enemy towers without taking damage from their laser shots. This is also where you’ll get the bulk of your CP (card power). And you’ll need that to purchase cards to increase the strength of your hero. Once you destroy an inhibitor, super minions will spawn and rush the enemy core for a limited time. If the core isn’t destroyed when time runs out, the inhibitor will re-engage forcing your team to take it down again.

Without a good set of cards to level up with, you will not be an assistance to your team. Thankfully, Epic gives every hero a starter deck that helps you understand the strengths of a given character. But you’ll want to customize your deck to maximize the efficiency based on your playstyle. When I say deck, you might think a card game. That’s now how it works. You don’t draw randomly. It’s a system that allows you to access whatever card you want when you want it (as long as you can afford it). There is no store. Whenever you return to base and want to upgrade, everything you’ve chosen before a match is there. It’s a matter of what order you build your character and when.

Paragon is very early access but it plays competently. Any MOBA expert will see there is some deep metagame. Thankfully, you can play bots to help acquaint yourself with your character and the mechanics. Because of the type of characters available and the current balance issues, Paragon has its own style of play compared to a DOTA or LoL. But Epic is taking the time to fine-tune mechanics and ultimately, the game will be finalized when its ready.

Character Classes

---

Since Paragon is in early stages, there aren’t many characters to choose from and some classes are more common than others, but just like any other MOBA, they have certain roles they specialize in. Each character has three special abilities, one basic attack, and an ultimate. Here’s a look at the classes, the characters, and one of their abilities.

Caster Class:

Let’s start with Casters. There are 14 characters and five of them are Casters. These are characters that cast long-range area-of-effect attacks. These characters are Dekker, Muriel, Gideon, Gadget, and Howitzer. Dekker casts a bubble that slows the enemy tremendously before it bursts for damage and that slow allows for other friendlies to lay damage. Gideon casts a powerful rock slide from thin-air that does desirable damage, especially late game. Gadget has a robot that locks in on heroes and explodes after six seconds dealing nice damage. It also works very well for crowd-controlling minions. Howitzer fires a long-range missile that also has splash damage.

Tank Class:

Tanks are the next most common class. There are three of them. There is Rampage, Steel, and Sevarog. Tanks typically have a large amount of health and are very difficult to take down one-on-one, though it’s not impossible with a good carry. Rampage has a boulder throw that reaches quite a long distance with a slight homing ability. On contact it stuns and deals good damage. Steel has a charge attack that knocks the enemy back and has a slight stun when landing, leaving your target vulnerable to other allies who might be in the area. Sevarog has a nasty ability that roots an enemy for a moment, causes damage, and slows the enemy for a time after the root is released. I’ve been on the negative side of this one. Not the way to start a fight with Sevarog.

Ranger Class:

Another class is the Ranger. There are three so far. Rangers tend to be heavy damage dealers but have very low durability. Murdock is the character I spent the most hours using, while Twinblast is a great first character to try out. Muriel, however, I found to be difficult to use though others have used her to positive effect. Both of them have extremely strong basic attacks. Murdock has a shotgun with small AOE that deals decent damage and depletes energy shields. Twinblast can increase his attack speed for a short time dealing more damage per second and with a strong basic attack, the damage can be devastating late game. Muriel shoots arrows and if her Piercing Shot hits you, you’ll be slowed. That can work with her slow activating Bow Shot to do some nice damage.

Fighter Class:

Fighters are powerful and will not hesitate to get all up in your face. They tend to have extremely quick basic attacks that do a lot of damage-per-second but can easily get overwhelmed by characters with long-range attacks, especially late game. Grux and Feng Mao are the Fighters. Grux has a distant attack that does damage and launches the enemy back towards him allowing him to deal heavy damage close-up. Feng Mao can shield himself from major damage for a short time allowing him to get up close without losing too much health.

Assassin Class:

Kallari is the last hero and his class is Assassin. Kallari only dedicated Ganker (though Grux works well as a Ganker, also). Kallari is the character that can turn invisible and take you out when you least expect it. But once you hit him, you can see exactly where he’s at. You can also see him in ally turret zones.

At this point, no character is absolutely dominating anymore. Grux and Rampage were the most powerful characters but Epic recently nerfed them. The characters aren’t totally balanced but it seems it’s closer to competitive parity than before. But any character used in the right hands can be deadly.

Modding Support

---

Epic has not mentioned anything specific about modding. This will be a free-to-play game, so likely any service offered will be to the benefit of making money for Epic as it’s not a pay-to-win game. That means costumes for characters will probably require a fee, which means no player created customizations. However, I do see an opportunity to make map mods, if at least for visual candy, without affecting the gameplay and strategies.

System Requirements

Epic has not stated what the system requirements are to run Paragon. Currently, their solution is an “Ideal Settings” button that changes the games’ settings to approximate the best way to run the game with your computer specifications. I run an i5-3570k, 8GB RAM, GeForce 660 Ti. I can run Paragon at 1080p and the framerate hardly ever dips below 60 FPS and typically runs above 70 FPS.

However, Paragon will be a showcase of Unreal Engine 4. This game will be the most graphically demanding MOBA on the market and is currently CPU intensive. Very rarely the game freezes for a half-second and returns to normal. Most times it’s lag. Other times it’s the CPU. As Epic allows for more graphical options, it will be interesting to see how any mid-tier machine responds but for now, you don’t need a monster to run it.

Release Date

---

Epic is taking the “release it when it’s done” approach. But as with any Early Access game, you can buy into it now. There’s only two games I’ve ever been okay with buying Early Access: Cannon Brawl and now Paragon. Epic came out of the gate with a very well-functioning and optimized MOBA. Of course, I recommend waiting until the game is very close to being finished or until it’s done but you also wouldn’t be sorry for jumping in now.

Additional Thoughts

---

Epic is off to a good start with Paragon. The MOBA fundamentals are there and you can tell Epic has done their homework to make sure they’re not trampling on the premiere eSports genre. At this point, it’s about balance and making a free-to-play offering that will make them money while providing a fun, competitive experience that players who are jumping to a MOBA for the first time can enjoy, while giving MOBA veterans something to sink their teeth into.

Paragon is being positioned as an eSports game, as well. Epic is not visibly doing much to get it into the ESL or have its own eSports league yet, but that is a goal. As of now, Paragon is very much like LoL apart from the perspective, the cards, and aiming. Is that enough to make it unique? It doesn’t feel that way, so far. Heroes of the Storm took very different approaches, especially in terms of bosses, and that has paid off. Perhaps the visual entertainment provided by Paragon’s perspective will be enough to separate it.

Epic has also implemented a replay system and a way to watch live matches in an effort to help people get better, or make YouTube videos and GIF’s. There are tools built in for that, though they aren’t up and running yet. But it’s also a testament to how serious Epic wants people to take it.

Most Anticipated Feature

---

The replay system. It’s not just YouTube videos. There’s a zillion ways to do that for free at this point. For me, it’s the in-game GIF maker. I think that’s a pretty unique addition and am looking forward to other tools they will add to the replay system. It’s also nice you can watch live matches already. Epic recently patched in some categorization options for live TV but it’s still in the baby stages. Regardless, it’s a nice way to kill time.