Predecessor Review (K I T T Y)
We knew it would be an asset dump, I have been supporting it since day 1 and even used to join the streams with their lead dev doing tutorials for how to use unreal, even their whole scrapping and retooling of the game.
This game is going no were, they did a full release because they are scared of deadlock and smite 2, they should be. This game is going away soon and its not because the market was unfair or a company putting resourced into a game with bigger margins (paragon and unreal being killed for fortnite's dev team to grow)
This game is dying because it hasn't changed in over a year, just shifted a couple problems. They still have not finished the game or even polished anything, the game looks worse then paragon, plays worse and they stole mechanics from league that frankly are bad design like a universal flash. I played during 1.0 excited for the new map but they just added some shitty meshes and specular effects.
The only good looking map is in training and it is a full rip, if you don't believe me go watch wukongs initial announcement. I once believed this game had a future and once they released all of the original heroes they would polish and then full release, we are still missing a important portion of the cast; Yin and Wukong and have not even started to polish. Instead they added their own designed heroes whom no one plays and no one likes. They are ugly and unlike the rest of the game is not fueled by nostalgia.
I purchased the game and supported sergeant smokie a long time ago. I do not expect a reward, but they said they would when it went f2p. I got 650 premium currency; long story short that buys nothing. to unlock a hero it takes an insane amount of time. Games give from 35 to maybe 200 orange shits (amber) from my experience and characters cost 12,000. If you play f2p this is the longest grind to access content I have ever seen and I played battlefront 2 on launch. It is outrageous.
The dev team is pretty small and I believe is still hiring. They have a skin team that only now is starting to make decent skins that are some what worth the money depending on commitment to the game. My question is why as a small developer would you hire so many for the skin team instead of engineers for an unfinished game? The training mode uses shaded capsules, a unreal engine "asset" that is just a placeholder instead of using an actual menu like dota 2, league or any other competitor, you have designers so use them you incompetent sorry excuses for awful game designers with no prior experience.
A bug on Crunch has finally been fixed where every time he dashes it lags the users game and made people like me sick, it took a year. This team has zero competency and should not be this successful on their first time ever even seeing a game engine. This is a asset dump with awful stitching in between and holds no value as a product.
The balance solutions are always terrible and make no sense either. Countess had a cool interaction of healing from even item magic damage, it was super cool and made her have multiple builds and playstyles. within a week they got rid of the interaction because it was OP. then next patch gutted the tank items that caused it because they were actually OP and a problem. Since then countess has been unplayable and awful. There is too much cc and lock down and too much get away so she cant touch people or live anything.
The map is confused and ugly not taking advantage of verticality at all in any way except for jumping over some annoying walls only accessible by a quarter of the characters. Paragon was beautiful and your first 10 hours were spent in awe just walking around seeing the gorgeous lighting and flora. It was breathtaking and amazing. In pred the only time i stop to look at the map is when something looks awful or stands out because its dumb or makes me upset. They tried to make the map a league of legends map instead of looking at the genre they were in and exploring what they could do that is new like paragon did. It is what made paragon special the amazing detail and levels of the map, running under lanes and over them. Seeing amazing breath taking gorgeous flowers overhead to block view in a way that made sense working as an effective fog of war that you didn't see as a sore but instead a gripping showcase of lighting and colour science making you want to explore the dark forest below. In predecessor, uh yeah its a fucking grey wall.
The game is a terrible try at some idiots dream of making a moba while taking assets to do it and trying to be faithful enough for nostalgia. It isn't paragon and doesn't have the direction to even get close. It is league with paragon characters(half brutally reworked and identity ripped until they are a league character ) but balanced some how worse and designed somehow worse. It is league without the pretty girls or characters so cool you want them on your wall. League started really rough but fun and then got polished until it was good, greed ruined it. This game is not even out of the rough and is already showing greed even while backed by epic games.
I would give this a pass, it is bad and will make you feel bad. Wait for valves new game, I have been playing that and smite 2 a lot and yeah, this game is going away soon. They both fix issues with the genre and have way more content with better monetization.