Top 500 player in season 1, number 368
This game is good. REALLY good, even. If you've happened to stumble onto this game by chance (your only real shot at finding this game) and came straight to the reviews to see what's up, let me give you a run down of what you're looking at. Quite a read, so if you're serious about trying it, read up, if not;
tl;dr
Game good, some small issues with some controllers, custom games, and ball cam. Lack of player base makes it hard to find a game, and when you do, probably bots. Still very good game and plays smooth and fluid.
Pros
•Movement feels great. Smooth, quick, and responsive. You're not a rocket car, so don't expect to be flying around. You're on foot. That doesn't mean you're a snail though. You have a jog and run speed. You have a stamina bar that depletes as you sprint, but it regenerates over time decently fast, and can be repleted by getting energy items that spawn on pads on the field (boost pads from Rocket League, so, yeah)
•You are not position locked and can use any character no matter what position you choose, and can freely roam the field as you please. However you ARE given a starting position, or spawn location which is called your position. Attackers and Defender. Attackers spawn at a diagonal from the ball, defenders spawn on net. Once the game has started, this is locked and cannot change. All this means is that you will spawn in that location at the start of the game and when everyone's positions are reset after someone scores a goal. As I said, you can choose ANY character and any character type regardless which position is chosen, though I would highly recommend playing a defense character if you are on that position, if you understand positioning in games at all anyway. You are given a position at random by default, but you can request to swap with one of your teammates if you want to be defender or attacker, but that implies they'll accept. So be weary of that. Only other thing positioning grants is the defender position grants TWO different gadgets, while everyone else only gets one. We'll get to those.
•Remember, this IS a hero shooter styled sports game, so there are abilities and other things that characters have. There are 3 different character types, but don't let it fool you. There is, for the most part, only 2 character types.
-Attacker
-Universal
-Defender
Attackers are hard focused on movement options and abilities that steal the ball or keep possession and good scoring methods. Universals are PRACTICALLY the same thing, with them rarely having good defensive options and are more for disruptions on your opponents instead of direct defense of the net. Defense are the big guys that have good defensive abilities and can stop the ball and clear it much better than most other characters. Every character has the same walk and run speed, so no need to worry about that.
•PASS. Passing in this game is BROKEN. Ever wanted to pass in soccer or rocket league to a teammate, but had to read exactly where they were going to be, and hope that they could read it and take the pass, and so on? Not here. Imagine you pass it to the teammate you want, and all you have to do is press a single button and it has AIMBOT. It will go up, curve, and home in on the teammate you passed it to, with a glowing line only YOUR TEAM can see to show its exact path and where it will land. It's stupid good. Has range of HALF FIELD. Keep in mind though a touch by ANYTHING will immediately cancel the homing properties and it will free fall with its current velocities, so if you pass next to a wall and the curve makes it touch the wall, it won't work, it'll just roll along the wall when it touches it. Most of the time this will not be a problem as it goes too high and fast for players to reach it. Default buttons to pass on controller are LB and RB. Each button passes to that specific player, though a glyph with that button will appear over their head. It stays the same button for that teammate for the entire game.
•Gadgets are cool. They are more or less just universal abilities that any character can add to their kit. There are like 8 or so of these. Not too many to be overwhelmed. All characters have access to the same gadgets. They also have a lengthy cooldown depending on which one. One allows your sprint speed to be increased dramatically for about 7 seconds, while instantly refilling your stamina bar on use and makes your stamina infinite until it runs out in that 7 seconds. Another instantly teleports you back to the defense zone of your net (clearing a field in less than 2.5 seconds? Try instantly) while there are offensive ones like shock grenades that will stun your opponent, and so on. These are obviously playstyle related so just pick the one you think benefits how you play. Remember, defense position gives you TWO different gadgets to use at any time during game. Pretty crazy.
•Customization for each character is awesome. Lots of customizability. Skins are in sets of pieces for the head, body, accessory and etc. These can be mix and matched. Got a really cool gold head style for a character and wanna use it with a shiny purple body style for the character? You can!
Cons:
•Some controllers are bugged on pc. Their triggers won't fire correctly at all because something in the game isn't reading them right. Hit or miss on what controllers are affected or what causes it.
•Ball cam is funky. It DOES have a toggle option, where you can press the ball cam button and it will stay in ball cam, which is kind of a standard for a game like this. It isn't on by default though, and instead uses some weird version where you press the ball cam button, it will lock to the ball cam for a few seconds, then turn it back off. Not great. They also didn't make it easy to change it since they named it strangely in the settings. It's the tracking setting, when it should have been named the ball cam setting. Even with it on though, it functions more like the ball cam in SARPBC than something like Rocket League.
•Some cosmetic items are ONE TIME USE, meaning you have a limited number of them and have to acquire more if you wanna use multiple. This only applies to things like sprays and holo posters.
•Game is hard locked to 3v3 only. No 1v1s or 2v2s, not even in custom games. They may change that one day but right now that's how it is.
•Custom games are practically pointless. You cannot change any settings except the map, game time limit, and something with map hazards or something. You MUST have 6 players exactly, not more, not let, and if you don't, you'll be stuck in waiting purgatory because it won't let you start a game unless you fill those spots with bots. Not only this, but to even START a custom game lobby, you cannot be in a party. You have to leave your current party, create the custom game lobby, THEN invite everyone back. This one is quite the L especially for a game that has such a low player count.
•NO CROSS PROGRESSION between Xbox and Steam versions, but there is at least cross play, so there's that.
•Very low player count. Mostly due to Pathea not having any idea how to market the game at all, so most don't know it exists. Sad, considering how good it is. It used to have so much more during season 1 when I played, but now has next to nothing. You'll have a hard time finding a game, and when you do, it'll likely be bots. Ranked is practically unplayable since almost no one plays so you won't ever find a game.
Overall, it really is a super good game. Really sad to see no one knows it exists. If it had a healthy sized player base, controller bugs fixed, and some overall good QoL updates for things like customs, I'd easily put this above Rocket League, a game which I have over 1000 hours on Steam alone, not counting my console or epic games store hours. Recommend it to everyone, and can only hope we see an uptick in players someday.
