Strife
by Aethyna
Mar 12, 2015 |
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S2 Games Being the first ‘second-generation MOBA’, Strife offers all the exciting MOBA gameplay in a way that minimizes toxicity, allowing for a better and fun-filled gaming experience! Play Now Similar Games Played
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We're sorry to say that this game is no longer available. Click the Similar Games button to find more games like Strife.Summary
Hailed as the first ‘second-generation MOBA’, Strife by S2 Games is one game that shouldn’t be underestimated. In this game, players must battle in “The Trials of Strife” in a bid to prove themselves as worthy champions to take on the Dharkwave, the heralds of darkness are seemingly destroying the land. This game offers a shared gold system, a small but newbie-friendly hero pool, item crafting and enhancing system as well as smaller maps that encourages player encounters earlier in the game. What’s special about Strife is that the developers have implemented a variety of features that will attempt to reduce toxicity in its community – a dangerous phenomenon which is happening in a lot of MOBAs and other competitive gaming. Sounds interesting? Well, what are you waiting for then? Check out Strife today!
Gameplay
In terms of the core of the MOBA gameplay, Strife does not differ much from the other MOBA games. The game pits two 5-player teams against each other with the objective of eliminating the other side’s main structure, the Crux. Nonetheless, that’s where the similarities end and the features that made Strife special stand out!
Among the first things you’ll notice in Strife is the limited hero pool. Unlike other MOBAs with their massive “database” of heroes, the game keeps it simple with its current 28 heroes (including its latest hero release – bandit.0). This helps a newbie in terms of the amount of hero knowledge he/she has to learn, making the game much more accessible to players new to the MOBA genre. In fact, popular MOBAs like Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) or League of Legends (LoL), have over a hundred heroes in them. Despite offering variety and some elements of discovery with their huge hero pool, it may instead dissuade new players from trying out the game.
Not to mention, although Strife indeed has a smaller hero pool, it definitely doesn’t lack variety that DotA 2 or LoL has. With the addition of the pet system as well as crafted hero items, the game allows each of the heroes to be played in various different play styles. This makes the gameplay in Strife much more diverse than it seems to be!
Pets are your most loyal companions in Strife! They have their respective powerful and unique abilities to help you during combat as well as out of combat. For instance, Pincer is an excellent pet to have around as it has an ability that can break other player’s crowd control skills. It also provides a passive armor boost and is a prime choice for heroes in tank roles, such as Shank and Bo. These pets can be leveled up and become stronger as you play! However, out of the 10 pets that you can obtain, you are only allowed to bring 1 pet with you into battle. Therefore, it’s best to try out the many different pets to find one that suits your play style as well as your hero of choice.
Let’s not forget the other, major interesting feature in Strife - its completely customizable item crafting and enhancing system! At the end of each match in this game, you will be rewarded with elixirs, which can be used to create your own hero items from current existing item recipes. Each recipe has their own component values and these values will restrict what kind and how many of the components that you can add while customizing the stats on the item. If you exceed the component value by adding too many components, the crafting won’t work.
After choosing the components you want, you can further boost its stats by enhancing it too! You are given only one enhancement slot per recipe, so you should select your enhancements wisely. Once everything is done, you can just click ‘craft’, which will consume some elixirs, to make your newly-crafted and customized hero item available in the in-game shop in your next match!
Moreover, Strife implements a shared gold system that makes playing support or carries roles so much more enjoyable, especially early on in the game! If you love playing these roles, then you should know that they tend to rely heavily on team members in order to level up. However, with the shared gold system, you no longer have to focus on trying to compete with your own team members for that last hit. As long as you managed to get a bit of damage in or are anywhere near a kill, you will get your gold to buy that shiny new gear you’ve been eyeing at the shop. This system allows support players to have a more relaxed game while allowing carries to gear up much faster to reach the height of their power, without denying their teammates the opportunity to advance their own heroes as well!
Due to, mainly, excessive raging, the toxic behaviors in MOBA communities have been on an exponential rise! This is particularly evident in S2 Games’ first MOBA game, Heroes of Newerth (HoN). HoN has a taunting feature that propagated and heightened the degree of toxicity in its community, causing its well-known fall from grace among MOBA players. In an attempt to prevent creating another ‘HoN’, the developers have included several features, such as personal carriers that cannot be killed or that you cannot deny an enemy a creep-kill. Hopefully, these features will be able to reduce and control the level of toxicity in Strife.
Furthermore, Strife has smaller maps as compared to maps in other MOBA games yet are equally strategic. Not to mention, whenever your hero leaves the base, he/she will gain a little speed boost for a short duration of time as well! This makes the game much more fun, particularly players who love ganking, as you will encounter, and even engage, the enemy very consistently and much earlier in the game. However, if you are not ready to fight enemy heroes yet and would like to avoid them if possible, this feature will force you to stay vigilant at all times.
Community
Currently, Strife has around 420 thousand likes on its Facebook fan page and that number is on the rise! In addition, similarly to other MOBAs, Strife has already started to organize its slew of eSport tournaments, including Gods of Strife Weekly Cup and Strife Pro League, despite still being in open beta. There’s also a dedicated forum for the game, whereby players provide feedback on the game, discuss about their favorite heroes or pets, as well as post up fan-created artwork of the endearing heroes in the game!
Graphics/ Sound
Strife has very brightly-colored cartoonish graphics that borders on being a tad bit childish in the game. The maps are beautifully illustrated as well! The game has a very relaxing background music that ramps up its pace and temp whenever you get into combat. It also has sound effects aplenty! The game even offers a voice-guided system that allows you to select character-voiced phrases to warn your team about dangers and which lane to push or defend as opposed to freely typing whatever you wanted to say. This is another way S2 Games used to try to keep the toxicity level in the game low.
Conclusion
All in all, Strife is a MOBA that balances both its casual and competitive aspects perfectly, despite containing quite a number of standard MOBA fare. The game is an easy game to pick up and thus, is really newbie-friendly. Not to mention, the skill ceiling in the game is lower than that of more competitive MOBAs, further increasing its approachability to players new to the MOBA genre. Furthermore, despite the smaller hero pool, the crafting and pet systems made the heroes in the game so much more customizable and diverse. The shared gold system in Strife also allows for a generally more stress-free match, particularly for the support class and carries. If you would like a break from the overly-intense and sometimes toxic matches in DotA 2 or LoL, perhaps you could consider Strife as a good casual alternative! Dominate the enemy and carry your team to victory in Strife today!
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by Aethyna
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