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Hello to all my fellow Champions of the Realm! Hero Shooters are a genre of fun, exciting and competitive gameplay that you can’t find anywhere else.
Starting in the genre, you’ll come across both Paladins and Overwatch.
However, both games are significantly old, and deciding which one to invest your time in is going to be a difficult choice in 2023.
Now, both of them are drastically different games in terms of actual combat and movement; however, they do have some decent similarities in both their formats and even their gameplay! So, we’ll take a deep dive into both games and compare the aspects of both games, which will help us decide which game is better!
Paladins vs. Overwatch: Gameplay
Okay, before getting too deep into the differences in the gameplay aspects, they are both very different games in their regard. The most significant difference between both games is the skill gap, Overwatch feels more like a game catered towards casual players, whereas Paladins requires you to become skillful at it.
Overwatch is built as a traditional hero shooter, you pick your heroes with different abilities, and you essentially use your powers to either heal your team or take your opponents down. Whereas Paladins, it brings a bit more of a MOBA influence to the table from games such as SMITE.
What Paladins does is bring a ton of strategy to the mix, characters can be countered by one another and they each bring a different element to the table.
This can be anything, such as helping your team in pushing a specific objective or holding objectives from a far range, or even flanking.
Overwatch is wholly based on reflexivity, you can run around and spray blindly in a hot zone, and you’ll get kills. You can even use your ultimate if you’re playing as an aggressor character and then get killed off that.
Paladins, on the other hand, require you to aim, track, and consistently hit your shots without missing much.
Your ultimate will usually be an enhancing ability, or if it is an ability that deals damage, then it’ll have to be precisely aimed. The TTK (time-to-kill) in Paladins is even higher than that of Overwatch. So strafe shooting won’t help you in Paladins; you’ll have to land your hits with precision.
Even when it comes to the abilities, the build system in Paladins is what makes it different and engaging in each match-up. Paladins is less about team composition and more about champion customization, where you can switch between the three skills and the ultimate ability that your champion has.
You can’t switch heroes in the middle of a match or any role queues like in Overwatch. So essentially, any sort of strategy you have in mind; you’re not restricted to specific champions.
Paladins vs. Overwatch Graphics:
To all those who say that Overwatch is better in every way compared to Paladins; I’ll just like to state that Paladins is not as low-spec as it used to be. While the graphics don’t look as good as Overwatch, of course, the models and textures are pretty unique; the art style feels like a thing of its own.
The only thing that pulls Paladins down in terms of graphics and art is the baked-in lighting, and the sources of light are very few in most maps. This was likely done to help with frame-rate and avoid visual clutter, but it does make the game feel much less good-looking.
Now, when it comes to graphical fidelity, Overwatch is on a whole different level. It’s not just the graphics either, it’s the art and the characters themselves; not to mention that each of these heroes have whole stories that support their backgrounds.
The amount of detail that Blizzard has infused into each and every aspect of its characters and world is fantastic. Not to mention, the game just looks much more refined with better textures, sharper models, and some great lighting methods such as environmental lighting, and even ray-tracing in the upcoming sequel Overwatch 2.
State of the Games in 2023
Now, Overwatch and Paladins both have an extremely hard to get into communities. Talking about Paladins’ community, it’s a bit extreme in competitive game modes, and there will be a ton of toxicity. In Overwatch, you essentially double those toxicity levels.
Overwatch’s player base is also much divided, and people hardly play the game with very long queue times. You can’t queue as a DPS at all anymore. It takes half an hour to find a match at times; the role queue is to be blamed for this.
Paladins’ player base is also facing the same issues, although you can definitely find matches much quicker and you can play any character that you want.
Overwatch’s nerfs on tanks and supports have made them quite boring to play, not to mention DPS is the hardest role to find any matches in. Paladins’ balancing patches are usually very casual, as none of the game’s champions are overpowered.
Finally, Overwatch is super pricey if you’re not getting it on consoles. If you’re getting it on PC however, it’s much cheaper to find. The thing that makes Paladins better here is that it’s completely free to play on all platforms. Which is why it’s much more of an accessible game to be played.
Paladins vs Overwatch: Which One Is Better?
These games were both made with the same ideas in mind; however the developers had different ideas added into the mix so now these two games can’t head-butt each other.
The focus of Paladins was to be a game that is fun for casual and sweaty players alike, making a balanced gameplay loop that is hard to let a power creep slide in. Sure, some characters are more fun to play than others, but that just depends on your play style.
Overwatch, on the other hand, didn’t have such a refined gameplay loop and leaned more towards shooting and its characters. This lead to a lot of characters becoming absolutely overpowered and a lot of team compositions became hard to play against.
So to sort this out, they put a role-queue system within their game which effectively killed all chances for strategy since every team must have the same sort of team compositions in the two tanks, two supports, and two damage heroes.
The overall balancing issues that Overwatch had faced, which lead to it becoming quite stale amidst the growing competition of hero shooters is why Paladins is a better game currently.
Overwatch is much better looking, it’s visually gorgeous and Paladins stands zero chance against Overwatch’s graphical fidelity and its art design. However, the gameplay aspects are what make or break a game, and Paladins definitely takes the cake here.
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