Battlerite
A MOBA without the filler
Developer Stunlock StudioS • P ublisher Stunlock StudioS • P rice $ 29.99 uSd ( All chAmpionS pAck) • A vAilAble At SteAm www.stunlockstudios.com If
you take a game like League of Legends, remove all the items, lanes, minions and long drawn out matches, Battlerite is what you’d be left with. Whilst it’s clearly taking heavy inspiration from the MOBA genre, Battlerite instead cuts straight to the PvP battles and calls itself a Team Arena Brawler (TAM). Some of the other key differences include redesigning the control scheme where movement is done using the WASD keys and every attack being a skill shot with a cooldown attached to it.
Battlerite comes with an easy to follow tutorial that explains every facet of the game’s fundamental dynamics from loadouts to special moves and should quickly bring any player up to speed on how to approach the game. Battles are either 2v2 or 3v3 and matches are won by being the first team to win three rounds. Even though a typical round lasts about two minutes, the game entices players to close their proximity with health power-ups that spawn in the centre of the arena, forcing teams to engage with one another, and teams can quickly snowball to a win or loss.
Where this gem of a title truly excels though is that it has an incredibly high skill ceiling whilst still remaining very accessible. The main keys to victory lie in outplaying and outwitting your opponents, knowing the right time to go all in and having tight team cohesion. For the more competitive gamers out there, knowing things like which champions have invincibility frames, counters and maximising your preferred style of play with your preferred customised loadouts, quickly becomes intrinsically rewarding as well as addictive. Battlerite feels like a game that rewards hours spent with more skill to overcome your opponents.
Gamers are really getting behind this title and the community continues to organically grow, and as a result finding a match was never an issue. The developers are also showing continuous support and, at of the time of writing this review, have added yet another champion to its roster, bringing the total number to 22. For all these reasons and more it should come as no surprise that Battlerite is shaping up to potentially have a very healthy future in the esports scene with competitions growing in popularity all over the world.
Battlerite knocks it out of the park on almost every level. It’s a highly competitive games that’s also accessible with an easy learning curve. Every loss is more like a learning experience and every victory feels earned. For many multiplayer games out there this is a rare combination to get right, but thankfully Battlerite finds that perfect mix with every facet feeling like it has thought and meaning. The only minor criticism is that the UI can often be a bit unintuitive when changing things like mounts or layouts, but hopefully this will be fixed in the near future. This one definitely deserves a place in everyone’s library.
the main keys to victory lie in outplaying and outwitting your opponents