dawngate | Within the Game

Hey guys,

I’m a huge MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) player in general and I love League of Legends which is probably the most played game in my PC gaming history. A few years ago I started off playing League and have been a complete addict to the point of obsession ever since. I played a little DotA (Defence of the Ancients) as well but wasn’t too keen on that, maybe purely due to the fact that I was so hooked on League and the different style put me off, as well as being incredibly bad at it. I was browsing Twitch.tv lazily after work one day and I saw ‘Dawngate‘ being played by a few people and I remembered hearing about it previously so I thought I’d give it a go.

Dawngate is a relatively young MOBA developed by Waystone Games and published under EA. The developers use the slogan ‘break the meta‘, which is interesting to think about for a frequent MOBA player such as myself. The idea behind the game is that there are 2 teams of 5 players battling against each other on a set ‘arena‘ style map, with two ‘lanes‘ and a ‘jungle‘ filled with various objectives, the main objective being that one team must get in to the opposing teams base and destroy it. The player can choose to fight as one of a varied selection of different characters, or ‘Shapers‘ as they are called in Dawngate, and each player starts off equal and will look to gain an advantage during game time by buying certain items and working as a team to get ahead of the enemy. MOBA games in general are very strategic and take a little getting used to, and I can safely say that upon setting off on my first venture into Dawngate I was beyond awful at it.

Me and a few of my friends dove in headfirst and tried out the new Beta game, and after a few 30 minute sessions of struggling and feeling sorry for ourselves, we actually began to really enjoy the experience. This game, like any MOBA, does take some adjusting to as the controls, gameplay and actual mechanics are really unique to other games, but once you get used to it you swiftly begin to get stuck in to the strategical side of the game and start figuring out the conceptual item building and playstyle for the Shaper of your choice.

In comparison to other big named MOBA’s, I personally think that Dawngate is extremely similar, almost to the point where one might ask themselves ‘why would I choose to play Dawngate over my usual MOBA game of choice’, however the saving grace of this game is that the customization of characters and how you choose to build each game is extremely open and subjective. The slogan ‘break the meta’ really comes in to play in regards to the actual tactics of each game as the player can really choose to play however they want to. At first I was rather dubious about this as I believe that in MOBA games generally there will always be some characters that are a lot stronger than others, depending on what changes have been made at that current time, but in Dawngate I feel like there are many more options for counterplay, and the itemization trees and spell choices are exceptionally flexible in all situations. Once you have a decent idea of where you want to go in each game, and when you learn how to effectively use your character in each situation, the game suddenly becomes very fast paced and energetic which is refreshing for a game such as this because in other MOBA’s the games can start off rather slow and begin to drag on past the 40 minute mark. Most of the games that we played on Dawngate lasted from 20-30 minutes and I felt that there was plenty of action in every minute of the game, although that may be down to the fact that I’m still a serious noob at it.

Graphically the game is really nice and I would say that it falls somewhere in between League of Legends and DotA, whilst still retaining its own style. I would personally say that the design may not be quite as inventive as some other developers have managed, and I haven’t really connected with any of the Shapers as of yet, but time will tell and perhaps I will become a Dawngate addict in days to come. Currently I have loved playing as the Desecrator, kind of like a huge roaming hulk of death and gravestones.

One major downside to this game is that I feel like the scaling and snowballing of a player can spiral out of control. There were times where I would get killed or make a slight error and come back to an enemy several levels higher than me and have very little to come back on. It tends to seem like if you gain an early lead you can very quickly become an unstoppable force. Waystone need to level out the Shapers slightly and make it harder for one hyper-carry player to emerge from a few early kills and to snowball their way to victory. In the end we were able to win certain scenarios by all simultaneously jumping on the enemy teams strongest player, but I still think that there needs to be an easier way for a player who has fallen behind to get back in to the game, even if it was just that one could gain enhanced experience from killing jungle mobs when at lower levels at later points of the game. This would allow people that had been destroyed early to try and take a few objectives and gain some form of equality.

The game is in Beta currently and I’m actually really looking forward to seeing how it develops in future. I think that Waystone have done a good job producing an enjoyable contender in a really tough gaming arena and Dawngate is a game that I will happily continue to play after this review and invest time into. A huge factor of a MOBA game is the time investment that a player has to give, and I feel that Dawngate is definitely worth trying out. As a final word of advice; don’t be disheartened if at first you suck! The game is quite easy to get the hang of and may not be enjoyable straight away if you’re getting hammered to the ground by a more experienced player, but persevere and you will soon become a pro (or at least get a few kills under your belt).

But there’s my opinion of my first night spent in Dawngate! If you guys want to give it a go then you can find it available to download here – https://www.dawngate.com