Smite

Genre: MOBA

Players: 10 Team Competitive (Online)

.

Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND LOOTBOXES

Smite is a free-to-play MOBA that was originally released on PC in 2014, later being ported to other platforms, with the Nintendo Switch getting a version in 2019. One of the things this game does to distinguish itself is to have a healthy roster of playable characters in the forms of various gods and other mythological characters ranging from Thor, Poseidon, and Ra to Baba Yaga, Baron Samedi, and Amaterasu. And by “healthy roster”, I mean this game has literally over 100 playable characters at the time of this writing, all of them unique.

Despite being over a half a decade old, Smite still looks pretty sharp, with a good resolution and a solid 60FPS framerate, as with Hi-Rez Studio’s other major online multiplayer game to hit the Switch, Paladins (they actually have quite a few at this point, but Paladins is still probably their biggest). And this comes with some excellent, detailed characters with some fantastic character animations. And while the various attack effects range in visual splendor, overall everything looks very good on the Nintendo Switch, even after all these years.

The gameplay here holds up very well too – the massive variety in characters means players are likely to find numerous ones they like (I tried about 50 characters and found myself liking about 20 of them before I decided to just stick with the ones I already liked). However, bear in mind that many of these characters are locked behind the game’s microtransactions – you’ll need to unlock most of them either through play or simply by buying the one-time purchase of a character pack to unlock the lot of them. Given the huge wealth of them that are available, including some of the high-tier characters included in the starting roster, this seems pretty fair, especially as it doesn’t seem to take terribly long to unlock these characters.

While I’m on the topic of monetization, the game has plenty of it, but aside from the aforementioned character unlocks, everything else seems built around different non-gameplay aesthetics (the game has tons of these). When it comes to free-to-play games, I tend to find these one of the more forgivable forms of monetization, and again this game keeps progression steady so you continuously feel like you’re making progress even if you don’t spend a dime.

Beyond that, this is just a decent, good-quality MOBA, although I will say that the game’s brief tutorial doesn’t really go over all of its rules, making this game a bit unfriendly to newer players. It’s still definitely a game well worth checking out, but I’d suggest to look up a guide before you do, just to get a feel for the basics of how the game works.

Ah, and on that final note, how the game works, I’m sure many are wondering how the game works on the Nintendo Switch specifically, and the answer to that is mostly “about as well as could be expected”. In about a dozen or so matches, I had one with lag problems so bad I needed to quit, and a few where one of the other players abandoned their controller and doomed our team to lose, but for the most part the connection here was good by Nintendo Switch standards. Don’t expect any Switch-specific features though – there’s no gyroscopic motion control or touchscreen to be found here.

All in all, fans of MOBAs looking to get something decent in the genre on the Nintendo Switch should find Smite to be more than up to the task. The gameplay is good, the visuals have aged very well, the monetization is pretty fair, and the number of different available characters is absolutely mind-boggling. And for those who haven’t tried MOBAs but think they’ll enjoy a good strategic action game, this is a great one to start with… at least, as long as you don’t mind looking up a guide online to clue you into how to play it effectively.

tl;dr – Smite is a MOBA that has players taking the role of one of over 100 gods or mythological heroes. The strategic action here is solid, the monetization is pretty fair, and overall this is an excellent game for anyone curious about the genre. At least… as long as you don’t mind looking up some of the finer points of how this game works.

Grade: B+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}