Paladins is the latest first-person shooter to come into popularity in the past few months with it’s recent release to open beta. With the huge success of Overwatch from Blizzard earlier in the year, it’s easy for people to assume that Paladins was a flat out copy of Overwatch. However, looking at the facts you can tell that that’s not the case, as Paladins was actually in development much earlier than Overwatch.

While both shooters are solid (and fun) games to play, here are some reasons why we think Paladins is a solid alternative to Overwatch.

Gameplay

Overwatch is a fairly straight-forward first person shooter with heroes equipped with fixed statistics and abilities. This means if you're playing Pharah against another Pharah, you'll both have the exact same abilities with no sort of upgrades or upper hand other than your own skill.

While it's also classified as a first-person shooter, Paladins has a card system to upgrade your abilities. You can customize your champion with a vast amount of cards either bought with gold or gained from opening chests.

Along with card upgrades, each champion gains credits during matches that can be spent on items to upgrade your attack, defense, healing or utility. Think of them as 'skill' trees you can upgrade throughout the match. With the card and item system there are countless amount of upgrade combinations to buff your team playing abilities or hold a strong defense. These upgrades give Paladins more of a MOBA feel, than a typical shoot, kill, win thought process.

Paladins does not allow multiples of the same champions on the same team, nor does it allow you to switch champions live Overwatch does. So you won't see the headache of a 5-man team of the same champion

Modes

Paladins only has two game modes, both of which are fairly similar in style.

Siege mode has a unique team point system. Even if your opponent gains one point from spawning the payload, you can still gain one point for defending the payload from reaching your base.

In Payload mode it’s as simple as whichever team moves the payload the farthest, wins. You can also pick which mode you want to queue into

As for Overwatch, Escort, Assault, Hybrid, and Control are the current team objectives and, unless you're playing competitive, they spawn randomly.

Cost

Like all Hi-Rez games, Paladins is currently free in open beta/early access and will most likely stay that way. Overwatch retails for about $60.

While you may look at Paladins and see a virtual copy of Overwatch, the differences are actually quite obvious. Some of the character traits between Heroes and Champions are very similar, but it's silly to think a studio such as Hi-Rez would and could have made an Overwatch copycat so quickly. If you really look at it, much of the attributes that are similar between the two games can be applied to many other game concepts.

Don't get us wrong, Overwatch is loads amount of fun to dive into. But the difference in the gameplay, the different map modes and the cost (or lack thereof) compiled together just make Paladins a more enjoyable FPS to lose a weekend to.

Want to try Paladins? Grab your friends and try it for free on Steam and coming soon to consoles!