Smite 2 early access review: prettier, snappier, but not spicy enough

Bear with me on this, but I adore how swordfighting works in Dune. Ubiquitous wearable sci-fi shields repel any attack that comes in too fast, so everyone has to learn this unique, overtly dance-like form of close-quarters combat where every thrust and parry is necessarily slow and considered. Picture it: careful judgments of your movements, weighing up the right time to strike, every measured jab part of a wider strategy that culminates in the kill.

MOBAs are like that. Both in the fights themselves, sort of, where probing lunges lead up to bursts of lethality, but more broadly in each match as a whole. They’re map-wide knife fights, where a thrust is a well-judged lane push and a parry a savvy item buy. At first, playing Smite 2 felt akin to watching on helplessly as my opponents repeatedly shoved their crysknives through my ribs. After 30 hours, it often still feels like that - but I am enjoying myself. Mostly. Despite Valve’s third-person elephant in the lane.

MOBAs are notoriously punishing, so it’s best to approach learning them as an edifice to chip away at over months rather than a cliff to yeet yourself up within a week for review purposes. Yet I am, somehow, a professional, so in an attempt to accelerate my scramble up Smite 2’s skill curve I started by finding a veteran Smite streamer to crib from - who cheerily remarked that the current situation is even worse than I thought, because the matchmaking is a mess. Playing in the same pool, he said, “you’ve got people who’ve played Smite for 3,000 hours, and those who’ve only played it for like, 200. Or even less”.

I have played 5 hours of Smite, largely in the distant past, so if you’re a Smite vet who wants the skinny on all the subtle differences here I am not your man. Broadly: it’s prettier, firing off auto-attacks feels slightly more satisfying, and the active items (press to use, rather than providing merely passive effects you’ll find in Smite 1) are a welcome addition despite not feeling nearly as impactful as they do in Dota 2. That’s my main reference point, with (ugh) 4,500 hours under my belt, but that’s mostly just made me a big fresh Dota fish in a pool of, um, salt water fish. Different environment. Killer.

Knowing my MOBA fundamentals has definitely helped, though. Two sides, three lanes with neutral monsters dotted in between, and each team with a big important entity wot they must protect tucked away on their side of the map. Five players on each team control characters that start weak and get stronger, gulping up XP and gold over the course of the match, while waves of li’l soldiers charge at each other, knocking down the towers that guard each lane until they’re all up in one team’s base. In Smite specifically, everyone plays a God plucked from a pick n’ mix of ancient mythology, with Zeus squaring off against Arthurian bastard Mordred while Loki slips behind him for a stabbing. Now you know your MOBA fundamentals, too!

Except you don’t, of course. A broad overview doesn’t tell you about the different phases of the game, where you should be and when, which heroes are suited to which roles, what roles there even are, which items to buy, what order to acquire and level up your skills and which order to use them in during a fight and - you get the idea.

Your opponents? They know these things, and they will kill you over and over again until you do too. It’s worth mentioning that I’m mostly talking about Conquest mode, and you do have the option of learning the God’s abilities via the faster-paced (though to my mind more throwaway) Arena mode - but not if you’re playing on the Oceania servers, like I was. Even in the post-launch buzz I couldn’t find an Arena game.

With so much to learn, it’s a shame that developers Hi-Rez don’t seem more interested in teaching. There are basic tooltips that appear when you’re near certain structures or neutral monsters, but no tutorials and heaps that’s left unexplained. They’ve also decided to remove the labels that would traditionally indicate each God’s role and where you should play them, alongside tweaking the Gods so that they’re more flexible and in theory can fill any role. Problem is, they *do* still have roles they’re suited for, so figuring out how to play them now just means looking for help outside of the game. Even sans role tag, a simple text summary of each God’s toolkit would go a long way.

There are, at least, pre-made item builds, where you select from a few options at the start (tanky, crits, lower cooldowns, etc) and let the game buy your items for you as you go along. They’re invaluable when you’re starting out, but those items sorely need attached explanations for why they’re being bought, like you find with player-made item guides in Dota and elsewhere.

This general lack of onboarding led to even more gnashing of teeth than the base level of teeth gnashing I expected with learning a new MOBA. You’ll note the pallid tone of so many of these screenshots, indicating that I’m spectating during one of my many untimely deaths, which were especially frustrating when they came off the back of ostensibly appropriate plays. I might spring out of shadows (they hide you from players, like bushes in League Of Legends) and get zapped in an instant, then ask myself whether there was a spell I needed to bait out, or a difference in XP. Or did I just do buttons wrong?

Plot twist: this is all part of the fun. The agony of repeated failure is inseparable from the satisfaction you get from gradually overcoming those hurdles, and despite the lack of onboarding I suspect MOBA newcomers will vault them more rapidly than in Dota, League of Legends or even Smite 1. That’s largely thanks to Smite 2’s current piddly pool of 23 gods, compared to the 130 strong pool of bastards you need to get a handle on in Smite 1. Simply having less to learn largely makes up for Smite 2 fumbling the teach.

I’ve now played at least one game as every Smite 2 god, and yep, that Mayan murder noodle *did* have a super-damaging ultimate attack I needed to avoid. And I could have! I have since pulled off some, forgive the self-horn-toot, pretty sick dodges with Loki’s own ultimate. Pulling off tricksy plays is undeniably more satisfying from third-person, rather than the ironically more traditional top down God’s eye view of yester year’s MOBAs. One particularly tense getaway using those cloaking bushes made me whoop.

That immersive immediacy is one of the main advantages Smite has over Dota, which is meaner and less approachable - though ultimately richer for it. Looking at last hitting is a good way of getting at their differences: in Smite 2 landing the last hit on an enemy team’s li'l soldiers gives you a bit of extra gold, while in Dota you need to land that last hit to get any gold at all, and your opponents can attack their own minions to deny you the chance.

Compared to Dota there’s significantly less to think about at any one time, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t myriad nuances you can juice for an edge. The second and third hit of Mordred’s basic attack chain scales with intelligence, for instance, so if you’ve bought a bunch of intelligence-granting items you get the biggest bang for your buck by ensuring those hits land. Gradually folding nuances like that into your muscle memory are part of what makes MOBAs so enticing, and Smite 2 doesn’t lack for them.

I particularly like how every God has an innate ability, most of them interesting, that leans into their theme and playstyle. There are only two new Gods so far who haven’t been brought over from Smite 1, but they’re strong initial showings. Mordred gets mad as he hits stuff, unlocking and then transforming his ultimate ability, while Greek goddess of witchcraft Hecate can empower structures or heroes who’ve recently killed an enemy player. My favourite, though, is the returning god Bacchus, who chugs from his wine bottle and gets different buffs for being tipsy or smashed. Managing my wine intake to imbue my belch with a stun before taking a massive swig to increase the damage of my belly flop might be Smite 2 at its peak.

Second, foreshadowed plot twist: I haven’t spent a single second wishing I wasn’t playing Deadlock instead. Valve’s third-person MOBA shooter has emerged with wildly unfortunate timing for Hi-Rez, rendering me incapable of not dwelling on how it innovates where Smite stagnates. Smite sells itself as the MOBA where every shot’s a skillshot, but Deadlock is the MOBA where every shot is an actual shot, comboed with a sprinting dodge-jump into a powerslide.

Smite 2’s early laning stage is far from mindless, but hovering around the edge of ability ranges feels dry as dust compared to frantically leaping around, playing with firing angles and harassing your opponent while wrestling over the competitive shooting gallery Deadlock makes of last hitting. Deadlock still has that Dune-like MOBA dance, but layered atop movement and combat that makes your existence so much more exciting.

There’s an argument, even a place, for Smite 2’s slower and more traditional pace. Less overall mobility imbues the few mobility options you do have with more significance, and if you’ve no interest in shooting then a greater focus on traditional MOBA fare might be welcome. But playing Deadlock makes my brain thrum, and that’s partly because it embraces wilder possibilities than Smite 2 seems interested in at the moment. An expensive Smite item briefly pops down a healing ward, while one in Deadlock brings you back to life. Or lets you permanently steal HP, or become briefly invulnerable, or teleport, or…

I have to wrap this up before this becomes a Deadlock review (and also so I can go play more Deadlock). Will Smite fans be pleased with the current state of Smite 2? I think so, though you should probably ask one of them. Should non-Smiters check out this sequel? Maybe, if you reckon you’ll play enough to get past the phase where you’re nearly always dunked on. With the currently small hero pool, it’s probably best to get on board soon - though the current lack of tutorials means you’ll have to do your own homework.

Should you all be playing Deadlock instead? Yes. Right now Smite 2 is fine, but it doesn’t feel like the future.