Smite 2 is the epitome of the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” One of the most beloved MOBAs of all-time gets a much deserved but still somewhat surprising sequel that retains the charm of its third-person action and polishes the systems to the extreme, ushering in veterans and new players alike. A new lick of paint is also part of the upgrade, taking the game’s visuals to the current standards. But how exciting is Smite 2 in today’s MOBA scene, after some time on the battlefield of the first public test?

The Gods Are Back in Town

The first good news is that Smite 2 will remain free-to-play, just as its predecessor when it officially launched in 2014. Ten years later, the divisive business model is once again Hi-Rez Studios’ choice and should appeal to an even larger player base than the original which, it must be said, is still thriving thanks to a solid and reliable fanbase. How will the two games coexist in a way that they don’t predate each other’s community? That is a question that comes up whenever a similar scenario happens, and the only ones holding the answer to that are the players themselves.

Starting off with the revamped visuals, because Gods need to look as good as they can while smiting the opposition, Smite 2 runs on Unreal Engine 5. This marks a jump of two generations from the Unreal Engine 3 of the original game, and it shows when you look at both games side by side. It’s prettier, slicker, on par with what is expected of a MOBA nowadays, but don’t go in expecting a revolution – it’s more practical than stunning, goes for clean lines and effective hero and map design that is bound to make everything about the gameplay easy to see and to figure out, and the other advantage is that is the entry requirements are fairly low and make the game accessible to a large crowd.

The user interface is other aspect that gets a lot of attention, and while it doesn’t stray too far from the design of the first game, it was polished and is now more intuitive and fitting with the actual gameplay, with the heroes now displayed on the top area and the skill bar feeling less intrusive, blending in with the action in a more consistent style. The overall idea with the process of streamlining the UI is that players spend less time in the shop and more time fighting, offering all the information in a comprehensive way that even new players may absorb quickly.

This is not the same as saying that there isn’t a learning curve, because there is one and it can be quite steep. Smite 2 is a game where the best players will spend countless hours discovering the intricacies of each God, even more now that some build restrictions from the first game were eliminated. While there is some past experience to feed off from and intuitive ways of auto-building your characters, new abilities are being introduced for certain characters, mixing up the complexity of the playing field.

Relics, for example, didn’t make the cut for this sequel. Instead, you have the option to activate an item from your inventory with a simple button press. This will surely change how the process feels, but it’s only after some matches that players will be able to make up their minds about the change.

Smite 2 won’t launch with a large character roster, aiming for a number around 50 Gods. This is also pushed by developer Titan Forge as a way to avoid overwhelming new players with a vast choice – while it still does sound quite vast to us, it’s far from the current 130 Gods of the first game, and the goal is to get all of them into the sequel as time goes by. Since Smite 2 is built from scratch, this is a daunting task that requires constant polishing and balancing of the existing and upcoming heroes before new ones are added into the mix. Skins, however (of which there are over a thousand) will not carry over, a fairly understandable compromise considering the amount of work this would entail.

A few new Gods are planned, the first one being Hekate, a healer sorceress with the ability to open portals on the map, giving her a mobility and tactical depth that others may lack. More will be added in the future, but the priority is likely to port the existing ones into the sequel.

Conquering the Battlefield

The only mode available to try was Conquest, your typical 5v5 battlefield with towers, jungle camps, minions spawning at regular intervals, and there’s this inherent Smite feel. The changes are there but they don’t drastically alter the experience, and while it’s easy to get into, it remains as hard as ever for players to be relevant on the battlefield, unless they know their Gods inside out.

Smite 2 feels like an interesting upgrade to the original. It’s a sequel that doesn’t throw away most things that made the first game a huge success, and yet tries to refine some aspects that may have pushed some players away from it. If this approach is the best one, we’re yet to see; for now, Smite 2 has a hefty task and a long road ahead, some big shoes to fill, and it’s surely the kind of game that will be far from classified as a final release when it launches in July 2024.

MP1st was given access to a preview build of Smite 2 for our hands-on session. Smite 2’s initial launch on PC is scheduled for July 30, 2024, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions coming at a later date.