Smite 2 hands-on playtest at SWC X — Our first impressions of Smite 2

My husband David and I were among the few people who were the first to get a hands-on play test with Smite 2, and we’ll be the first to tell you just how gorgeous it already is. When we got word only a few days ahead of SWC X that Smite 2 was being announced, we certainly did not think there would be a hands-on event, let alone that the game was as far along as it already is. Our photos aren’t the best, as we were not allowed to capture using OBS, so they are only over the shoulder pics, but you can get a rough idea of how things are looking in Pre-Alpha.

Smite 2 looks and feels like Smite, but with better graphics. Built using Unreal Engine 5, models actually have things like cloth simulations/physics applied, rather than key framed animations. This means gods and terrain can potentially have interactions based on abilities. Examples we could see during our play sessions are interactions with Ymir’s wall freezing the portions of the map it comes into contact with, or Chaac’s rain circle making the ground wet.

Obviously Smite 2 is still in development, so things are very much subject to change, but there are some interesting differences from Smite. While we say differences from Smite don’t fret, we felt like we were playing Smite the entire time, just with some new upgrades that made it feel more polished. You will start to see this right from the God selection screen, as the lobby UI is much more simplified and modern looking.

Everybody gets purification beads and a ward right from the start for free, but relics as we know them in Smite 1 are no longer around. The relic effects you know and love are still around, but now they are active effects of items, triggered by a keypress for the corresponding item slot. For balance purposes these items tend to be less stat efficient than items with passive effects, but as an example you can get a blink amulet if you want to engage in blink shenanigans. You can buy as many of these “relic items” as you’d like, though doing so you will have to trade off raw stats for more utility.

The Gold Fury is getting a little glow-up in Smite 2, with some fun new changes. Currently there is a tracker for both teams that counts each time you kill a Gold Fury, after you have 3 kills for your team the next Gold Fury spawn will be enhanced. The Enhanced Gold Fury has a buff similar to the Bull Demon on the Joust map of Smite 1, where towers and phoenixes are disabled for a limited amount of time. The developers are hoping this gives you some counter play if you are unable to contest a Fire Giant.

There is a new system for the jungle, as you proceed to kill camps in the jungle your ‘infamy’ level will increase. As it does, the jungle minions in that camp get stronger and will start to offer buffs. At level 1 there is no buff, but starting at level 2 you will see one. This allows for some interesting strategies in the jungle, as you can see your enemy jungler’s progress to level up their camps, and potentially steal their camps to delay their access to some buffs. Speaking of buffs, you now have to push the spacebar to pick them up, which should mean no more accidentally grabbing the wrong buff.

The last major difference to Smite 1 is the introduction of bushes/grass patches that will hide your character. The specifics of the grass mechanics are still being tweaked, the devs mentioned to us that they are still experimenting about the specifics of when a god gets exposed in the bushes, but this lends itself to some more strategy when considering ward placement.

Graphics wise, we were really struck at how nice the abilities look in comparison to Smite 1, one that comes to mind is Cernunnos brambles. They look much more impressive, as you can see individual thorns reaching out of the patch, as well as a swirled design within. The god models that we were able to see at this demo look spectacular, shadows work much better in UE5 than UE3 (no more shadow color stacking). Armor looks polished, yet weathered at the same time, and you can see every detail in cloth textures. All of the spells and particle effects really popped, and made the team fights and interactions seem much more engaging because of it.

The UI has a lot of nice improvements, with all of the elements already looking polished. We really appreciated the combat text that makes it clear when particular items are triggering, with words that pop up above the players head so you can see when someone on the enemy team has used their beads and no longer have to guess. They are really trying to make some things more obvious in the chaos of a big team fight. It may change before the game goes live, but in the demo a white border would appear around your screen if you were stunned, as well as text above your character’s head to indicate the status effect impacting you, along with a progress bar so you can see how long you will be impacted by it. These quality of life improvements will go a long way with both new and old players to simplify moments that can very quickly get insane in team fights.

Smite 2 devs are currently focused on getting the Conquest map perfected, but devs feel confident we will see a version of Assault (or ARAM of some sort), as well as other modes once the kinks have been ironed out on Conquest.

We had the pleasure of hanging out with Daniel Cooper (a.k.a. Pon Pon), Lead Developer on Smite 2 over the weekend, and he showed us some captures of the dev playtests over the year, and it’s mind blowing to see just how far these guys have come in a little under a year on Smite 2. Heck, it was insane to see the playtests from just a month prior to what we saw this weekend. These guys are truly working hard to make Smite 2 the game we all want to play.

Our PR team wanted to make sure we got to play Smite 2 against more experienced players so we could really get a feel for how things were looking. Little did we know we’d be up against Pro Smite players, but we still had a blast, and even got a kill or two in on them. David is quite proud that he was the only player on our team who walked away from game 1 with a positive kill-death ratio. I couldn’t think of a more fun, or fitting way, to test out Smite 2 than to get steamrolled by some pro players, and we had an absolute blast.

David and I have been playing Smite 1 since beta, we each have over 7,000+ hours and counting, in Smite. This is our game, we are true fans, and daily players. We could not be more thrilled to be a part of this Smite 2 reveal weekend, to get to pick the brains of the developers, and get to sit down and actually play the game. If this is how wonderful it looks and plays now, I cannot wait to see what Smite 2 has in store for us over the course of alpha, and into release. Speaking of alpha, be sure to sign up for Smite 2 alpha!

We’ve got plenty of interviews with devs coming up, so be sure to stay tuned for all the latest Smite 2 information here at Gaming Trend!