 Is Paladins worth playing in 2021? Paladins is a Hebrew shooter similar to Overwatch. The thing is that it's free. Since it's released in 2016, it has never seen as much popularity as Overwatch, but it has a stable player base that's actually pretty big. First, I'm going to talk about the gameplay. The first time I played Paladins in 2019, it felt super balanced and something finally new when it came to first person shooters. In 2021, I can probably say that the meta has changed, but nothing is too overpowered by any means. Paladins has four classes. Every champion in each class feels significantly different from another one. You can easily master any champion and be good with it. For example, Strix was the best champion a year or two ago, but now it's pretty bad. Does that mean that experienced players will notice the difference? Yes, but slightly, and that's in the most extreme case. The only time the meta affects anything is in the highest levels of play. Right now, for example, Atlas is stronger than the average champion, but if you're new to him, he's pretty capable of being the reason why your team lost. Even the worst of the worst champions still have a huge impact. The meta, even though stable, does shift regularly, which makes the game feel refreshing while balanced. This also allows for new team comps. For example, right now, double healer is pretty popular. Next, let's talk about the cards. Each champion has some skills you can tweak to be more powerful than some other skills. Overwatch doesn't have this type of system, and it's one of the big reasons why I like this game. Harvest also tweaks strong and weak cards. This adds a way to make the game more balanced as well as something for players to customize. Champions also have three talents that work similar to cards. Although its competition Overwatch has balanced its game out in the last year, we all won't forget how OP some characters were on that game. Playing to your style is also really easy in Paladins. Buying a champion costs around 60k gold, which you can get within a couple of hours if you focus on challenges. The skins are also really well made. Even free to play players can get cool skins by paying gold or mastering a champion. Mastering happens when you reach a certain level and it awards you a skin. There's no such thing in Overwatch. This is why I like grinding the game. Not only is it fun and balanced, but it has an accomplished feeling when you master a champion. Of course, you could just pay for skins or champions, but I don't think it's worth it. Simply because it's one of the best games if you want to play without paying. Now is Paladins still growing in 2021? Well, it still is, but I think more players are either not playing as much or leaving. The game is still fun and you can queue in a match under a minute, but it isn't popular as it once used to be. Now it hasn't gone down in popularity as much as Overwatch. It's still great to see High Res still adding new champions and tweaking old ones. It's really appreciated because even though they have bigger projects, they still care about this 5 year old game. The maps are also fun as well, even though it's been the same maps for a while. Every map feels like it has some way to flank and has some special features, as well as no overpowered positions. In terms of ranked, it isn't as toxic as Overwatch for example, but people do still take ranked really seriously. I wouldn't suggest practicing or warming up in this mode. In most ranked matches, I feel like I'm going up against a fair but sweaty team. Yes, there might be smirks or really bad players, but it isn't as bad as Valorant for example. Teamplay is a big factor in Paladins because 5v4 is almost always an automatic gloss, especially if your healer is killed. So it sounds like Paladins is way better than other games like Overwatch and for free. So why is Overwatch still more popular? Because it's created by a bigger company with a bigger community. A lot of the times, a smaller community, although still really fun to play in, can have some limitations like less eSports events, less input on updates and less video content. So overall, I still think Paladins is worth it to check out and play. It could get you into hero suitors and Overwatch, but sticking to Paladins is not a bad route. I hope Hi-Rez keeps up the good work on updating the game. It's still one of the few games I play regularly.