Hello everyone and welcome back to Kralizec Gaming.Today we are going to take a look at Gigantic. This 3rd person view MOBA game promises the strategy you love from all the top-down MOBAs combined with the action of 3rd person view action games. It is available for free either on Steam or the Arc platform.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.
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Video Review
Text Review
During a recent steemtrail podcast somebody suggested this game to me as I was talking about Paladins as he said people were comparing this to Paladins. I can understand why some people might feel that way, but I don’t think they are that similar. But one thing is for sure, they will both be competing for the same crowd of people who want to play a free2play game that is action packed and includes a real targeting system.
Gameplay
So let’s get straight into the review. First of all, let’s talk about what makes people draw a comparison between Gigantic and Paladins. They are both games that take an inspiration in MOBA games. But Gigantic takes a much larger inspiration from these games. Paladins is more sort of your generic team based shooter with a few abilities sprinkled in, while Gigantic takes the MOBA formula, strips it to its very core and gives you that experience from a 3rd person view.
So let’s talk mechanics. The basic premise of Gigantic is two teams of five fighting for the control of an area, with the end goal being the destruction of the opposing team’s guardian. Now, this does sound pretty simple, doesn’t it? That’s where the rest of the mechanics come into play, making the game much much more complex. Because if you want to attack the enemy guardian, your guardian first has to have enough power to pin the opponents guardian, exposing it to attack.
The way you gather the energy is done in several ways, you can focus on killing your opponent, map control or killing their creatures. And because killing your enemies is pretty straight forward, let’s talk about the map control and the creatures first.
Each of the teams has points on the map that they directly control and then there are a few neutral ones, that both teams might try to claim. On these points, you can summon creatures. These creatures can either heal allies that are near them, build walls making the access to them much more limited or just can just be primarily focused on fighting. These creatures then collect energy as they are alive (but someone still needs to run to them and add the energy to the main pool. These points are the main places where conflict arises because killing the creatures of the enemies provides your team with 20 energy of the 100 total energy needed.
So the general plan is to control the points, kill your opponents and their creatures, but to do that you need quite a few ways to kill them. And that is where your character comes in. Currently, there are 18 playable characters, with 7 melee based and 11 ranged characters. These then later get divided into categories like tanks, bruisers, assassins, shooters casters, control, and healers. There are also two additional characters coming in the future.
Each of these characters has 5 abilities, one of which is always you basic attack without any cooldown, so you always have something to do, even if you just used all your cooldowns. The rest of these abilities always have some sort of cooldown attached to them, but there are different characters with different lengths of the cooldowns. On top of that, each of these abilities has a way in which they can be upgraded. Each ability can be upgraded two times, each time giving you two choices in which you can make them more to your personal liking.
The thing I like the most about the upgrade system is the fact that you can start upgrading the abilities in the order you want to, so if you want to focus on your primary attack at the start you can do it, but if you want to focus on for example your Q ability from the very start of the game or on any other ability. But over the course of the game, you are very likely to upgrade all of the skills fully as there are only ten levels.
Okay, I think now I’ve described the basic mechanics of the game and now it’s time to talk a bit about how they feel during the actual game.
So first of all, how does the combat feel. It feels really really fast and action packed. To be honest, it feels quicker and more action packed than combat in many first person shooters. This is due to the fact that there is always something happening somewhere at the map and with a decent chance, once you get there a fight is already on its way so you just join it.
It’s not quietly waiting for a chance to strike like in tactical shooters and at the same time. it's not just frantic running from one spot to another hoping you will spot someone along the way you may try to kill like in arena shooters. If there were games I’d compare this to in terms of how the action feels – I’d say it actually fits somewhere between Paragon and Overwatch. It's quicker than paragon and a bit slower than Overwatch.
On the other hand, it combat does feel confusing at times – actually being somewhat similar to Overwatch again, because the amount of visual clutter can easily get pretty ridiculous. Though here I see a pretty simple fix, just make the enemies and your teammates a bit more visible in this clutter and suddenly all the stuff that is happening on the screen doesn’t feel so bad because you can still know where your friends and your foes are.
But in general, I really like Gigantic’s gameplay, the fact that the PvE is reduced to only killing creatures who essentially work as towers from other MOBAs and trying to deal the damage to the opposing team boss completely changes the dynamics of the game. Instead of spending 20 minutes in game farming and getting ready for the actually exciting part of the game, here you go into the team-fights straight away. And that fact alone makes this a MOBA I can actually enjoy.
Graphics
Okay, now we should take a literal look at Gigantic. The visual style of Gigantic is probably the reason people tend to compare it to Paladins. They both go with a style that is very much colorful, cheerful and tries to make you feel good even in situations where your team is losing. Though I’d say that Gigantic style is a bit more comic like compared to Paladins.
This style allows the textures to look really good enough though they are a bit flat compared to what people consider HD textures these days. Luckily it doesn’t take away from the fidelity of the game.
I already mentioned the amount of visual clutter that happens when you’re in midst of a battle and that’s really my only complaint about the graphical side of the game.
Music
When it comes to the music, I’d say it isn’t bad. But at the same time, it isn’t excelling in any particular way. Though, you guys should keep in mind that I’m also playing Pyre right now a game with exceptional music, so my current standard might be a bit higher than usual.
The sounds on the other hand are exceptional in my opinion. I specially loved the voices of the bosses as those sound just epic.
Performance
Performance wise Gigantic fared very well, the game ran like butter and the net-code also worked well. The only issue currently is the waiting time for a match. But hopefully, that will improve as more and more people pick up the game and isn’t really something the developers can influence that much.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion: Gigantic is certainly an interesting new contender on the field of MOBA games. For me personally, it might probably be the most fun of them. Paragon is probably the closest contender and that one is out there for those who prefer a bit calmer more strategic game while Gigantic is there for those of us who prefer more action right as they get into a match. Either way, if you are a fan of MOBA games and the prospect of playing one in a 3rd person view is something that interests you, giving Gigantic a try is certainly a good idea as it is completely free and if you don’t like it, you can easily just uninstall without paying a single buck.
So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.
disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page
Cool! Thanks for the post, a new genre I've learnt today: Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA)
This post received a 2.2% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @kralizec! For more information, click here!
Very nicely done review , I will give it a try.Is it kind of like Smite ? Thanks for sharing with us . Followed and upvoted
It is somewhat similar from what I know about Smite
Really good review. Not a big MOBA player though I do play League of Legends sometimes, but only ARAM. There are so many MOBA's out now. Hard to pick which one I should even try. Overwatch, psychonauts, LOL, DOTA, or this.. Which is the best?!
Try Overwatch, I think you'll like based off your background. You could also give Paladins a try, its free to play I believe if you want to experiment with a similar game.
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I was in the alpha testing for this game... 2 years ago? Developers were too obstinate when it came to feedback (that simple fix you mentioned for example they would just shrug off in a conversation... clutter was brought up). I wasn't impressed with the game but I'm sure it will find a niche in the smite sphere of mobas.
All that said, you gave the game a great comprehensive review. Did they ever get around to creating a tutorial and making the game easy for people who are just jumping in to understand it? It felt quite confusing at first.
yeah, there is a pretty good tutorial there right now
This post has received a 11.23 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @kralizec.
Great review, I will say I did try it a bit and I didn't really enjoy it that much, @telsalifestyle hit the nail on the head when he said this is more for the smite/paragon moba style while I think I can't step away from Dota haha.
I am the exact opposite, I don't like the the control scheme behind traditional top down MOBAs
This game looks pretty cool!