A shooter-ish MOBA of Pantheons - first look at Smite

I saw Smite a while back, about a year ago, when we were having a jovial discussion on the most epic and badass of mythologies. And now, short of a year later, as my friends kept pushing me for it, I guess it's OK to give something like this a try. It looks like good fun (and it actually kinda is!). So how do you short-hand the description of Smite?

A Call of Duty of DotA? Or a BO3 of League of Legends? It's actually MMO-TPS-MOBA-thingie. In short - a MOBA with a very refreshing angle - third-person 3D.

You've got to admit, they at least managed a slick name.

Unique, yet oddly familiar.

In essence, Smite follows the MOBA core to the teeth. Tiny guys that you won't control, spawning sporadically? Check. A basketball-team-sized fight of players? Check. Lanes, towers and an important thing to beat? That too. Don't forget the items, the spells and the dozens of characters now. Everything from CC, last hit, skill shots, upgrades and gank, push and the likes apply. If you have ever known anything about MOBA, be it the casual yet fast-paced League of Legend or the winding and more complex DotA, you'll get used to the goals of Smite quite quickly.

A cartoonish ragtag group of characters, as expected of MOBAs. Doesn't feel that odd now does it?

But the first thing that set Smite away from the likes of DotA, League of Legends, the upcoming Heroes of the Storm and Heroes of Newerth (do they still play that game?) is pretty clear. The difference that the third-person view set out is immense, yet easy to get used to. Being an old player of 3D MMORPGs like Tera Online, this clicked quite nicely. A ton of other WASD-to-move-and-mouse-to-shoot games should make this MOBA experience both novel and familiar.

MOBA-centric interface, but everything from scale to style is very MMO-ish. That's me and my dragon!

Similar to these 3D MMOs, Smite lets you see your character from behind as the fray unfolds in front of you. There is a cursor to aim, as usual, and a ruler maybe enabled to make rangefinding easier. Spells are put in small icons in the middle, and are bind by default to number keys. A term that Smite uses is "skill shot" - with which most of the active, offensive skills in Smite are coined. While "skill shot" in MOBA is a small group of skills that cannot be 100% accurate and require skill to land perfectly (thus the name, "skill shot"), in an MMO control style like this, it doesn't feel like the MOBA "skill shot". It feels very much like the usual MMO skills of old, which explains my relative ease in getting used to - from the AOE rangefinding to the line-casting.

Aiming a nasty AOE skill.

A nice package of MOBA that you can actually digest,

Smite touches on the MOBA core with a forgiving curve - ease in use, ease in learning. The hardest thing about MOBA is the learning curve - there are items to remember, functions to learn, character to utilise. Smite takes out two prongs of the equation - the item and skill hardship. New players to Smite have the auto-skill and auto-item on up till level 6 automatically, and you can even customize it so you don't have to worry much even later on. The tutorial is just the right pace, and the voice aid is genial.

Items in Smite are put in a large table with great big letters. While a DotA veteran will find this like going from Hemingway to the ABCs, it is actually making the game very newbie-friendly. After all, a pro is only someone who knows their items, and few better way than making them all bright and bold.

As mentioned above, skills in Smite use a very MMO-like mechanic, and requires much aiming to be useful. You cannot aim vertically, however. Auto-skill makes life easy, as it takes the hassle of skill builds away. Later on, as you get more proficient, you can turn it off to level skills as the situation calls it. Just like with the items, you get a very detailed, big-letter-style skill table once you activate it.

Opening skill tables for Ra, the Egyptian Sun God. Big letters.

The fall is also not as hard as DotA, or even League of Legends - you don't lose money when you die, and you don't get that much money when you get a spree either. The phoenix (similar to the rax, give your team better creeps/minions if killed) respawns much in League of Legends' manner, but quicker and more dangerous, as they can deal significant damage, unlike their other placid MOBA counterparts. Gold is shared in last hit, there is no creep block mechanism or deny mechanism, and you usually full-slot your inventory quite quickly if nothing bad happens too often. Smite lets you focus on being an action hero - and it tries to do so in haste. And boy did it work.

The action and the camaraderie...

The MMO skill style means you can miss all the time. Hitting small things feels awesome, and landing a slow, charged ultimate, is glorious business indeed. Many a times me and my friends grunted in dismay as we missed our chance to land a good hit, and there are instances when the sole greed to kill someone alone lead us into very precarious positions. The action value of this play style is, however, immense. There is a mode similar to ARAM in League of Legends only with nothing to protect, nothing to push and everything to kill - the Arena. It's like Gladiator on steroids - everyone just fight and fight and fight, God powers burst around like fireworks and heap upon heap of death. It's morbidly gratifying (for a game).

Didn't buy anything, but this should serve to show the chaos...imagine when your friends join in!

There is also Joust, a 3v3 mode with only one lane, Conquest (the classic MOBA mode that takes tryhard players), and even the new Siege mode and more. There are many things to try, always.

The friendly system...

Smite uses a decent system of freemium game. You can get everything by playing, or unlock Gods as you choose with real money. There is no way the payment interfere with the game in terms of giving anyone an unfair advantage, and there is also an option to buy all the Gods now and in the future with a discount. There is not that many Gods yet, and they are always on rotation (similar to League of Legends), so you won't miss out on much. DotA players will have to get used to waiting, however :(

However, the gem of Smite system is the care they give to the players in experience. There is no all-chat in Smite, and it did a great job of canceling out the flaming your own team to the other team, game-breaking trolling, or just plain old bad mouthing. There exists also a system of filters to filter out those horrible words - and it's enabled by default.

...and the verdict.

As you can tell, so far, my Smite experience has been a good one. With the exception of bad teammates that refuse to cooperate, the game is a fluid, easy-to-grasp yet challenging-to-play kind of feel. The ease to get used to Gods and the eagerness to get a new one is stronger than that of League yet not too much to discourage DotA veteran. Give it a shot!

Lend me a hand!

Click HERE to try Smite and I'll get some Favor to buy Gods. Help me :)

Find me on Smite, as incendior. Team up some time and maybe we can even do a stream for fun!