With Crownfall coming to an end, we feel like all of us need a little break from Dota. While Valve is cooking the next update, be it a huge balance overhaul or a new content patch, perhaps it is a good idea to try out something different. Yes, other games exist.
Picking games for hardcore Dota players is hard. Playing Dota definitely has an impact on players’ taste and most casual, well known offerings don’t make the cut. So in this list, with one notable exception, I will try to highlight some of the lesser known titles that I personally enjoyed as a Dota player with ~20 years of Dota experience.
Hades is definitely a title that most gamers have at least heard of. It is possibly the most polished and most inventive rogue-lite out there, with great lore, story and hours upon hours of quality gameplay content.
I’ve always wondered why exactly it resonated so hard with me and why I’ve spent almost 200 hours playing Hades, instead of Dota, until I stumbled upon this bit from an interview with Hades’ Creative Director.
Suddenly it all made sense: the reason Hades is so wide and deep is because it drew heavy inspirations from the game we all love and cherish. And while most games today are getting faster, flashier and more casual, Hades II went the opposite route and made the gameplay slower, even more strategic and, in my opinion, even closer to Dota.
Controlling Melinoe is very different from controlling Zagreus: her combat approach heavily relies on crowd control and high-impact abilities, as opposed to more frantic gameplay of the original Hades. This has been a point of contention for parts of the community, understandably so, but I feel like Dota players specifically will be able to appreciate this new approach. After all, Dota is a strategy game first, and an action game second.
So if you haven’t tried Hades yet, I absolutely recommend you give it a try. The second one is still in early access and Supergiant are still tweaking some of the systems, but it is already an incredible game worthy of attention and praise.
Most of you know how Dota came to be — it was a “mod” or rather a custom map for an RTS game Warcraft 3 that started it all. The RTS roots are still present in Dota to this day, but the progenitor genre is struggling hard. RTS games are few and far between and for most younger gamers they simply don’t exist.
There are some understandable reasons for it: the barrier for entry is very high and the micro requirements can get out of hand very quickly. To truly appreciate the Strategy aspect of the game one has to go through hours and hours of training to make units do what the player wants them to do, when they want them to do it. At the highest level of play, RTS players typically perform 250+ actions per minute, which is roughly four different commands per second.
But what if I told you there is a game that puts capital S Strategy at the forefront, gets rid of the micro side of things, gets rid of preset build-order execution checks and just lets you have some smart fun by outplaying and outmaneuvering a human opponent with your armies?
Mechabellum is exactly that. It draws heavily from several games I personally enjoyed over the years: C&C Generals is an obvious inspiration, but there is also quite a bit of Dota: Underlords DNA in it. In Mechabellum you put your units on the game board and let them battle it out versus enemy units for ~10 rounds. Each round you can add a couple more units, unlock new ones and upgrade the existing ones and the game is about knowing what and when to prioritise, since your resources are heavily limited.
The end result is a constant back-and-forth of counters, feints and tricks. There is nothing quite like the feeling when you get a read on what your opponent might be planning and get a couple of steps ahead of him, preemptively countering their newly deployed forces.
There is a lot more to it as well, as there are some surprisingly fair random-based reinforcement cards between rounds and various one-round abilities a player can use to turn the tide of battle, but I will let you explore this incredible game yourself, if I managed to pique your interest.
Hey, wait, what about Baldur’s Gate 3 for Dotabuff’s CRPG of choice? Well, yes, BG3 is an absolute masterpiece of a CRPG with charismatic cast, great reactivity and high production value. But is it a good CRPG for Dota players? Well… yes, it is, but there is an even better one! At least in my opinion.
As a Dota player I care a lot about the underlying gameplay systems and about how tight the math is behind the curtains. The fifth edition of DnD really doesn’t — it is an incredible storytelling tool with a simplified ruleset that results in cool events and plotlines, but it doesn’t do combat great. Character progression choices and combat encounter choices are very limited by design, to appeal to the mainstream public, but as Dota players we aren’t exactly “mainstream”.
Pillars of Eternity (and to a lesser extent the OwlCat Pathfinder games and the upcoming PF2e tactics game) puts the combat front and center, with incredibly tight and fair math, countless subsystems to tinker with and highly specific encounters to overcome. In it, especially in Deadfire, you will be annoyed and angry a lot of the time, at least if you play on the harder difficulties, but the feeling you get from defeating a tough boss is very similar to the feeling you get playing and winning against a smurf 
Tinker. Be prepared, be smart, be creative and you will be rewarded, just like in Dota.
Great Lore and Plot are certainly a contributing factor as well. Sometimes it is nice to get immersed in a fantasy world that is significantly different from Tolkien-derived high fantasy offerings. And while the production value and the reactivity are certainly not on the level of Baldur’s Gate 3, we think that as a package, especially for Dota players, Pillars series is simply better. Oh, and Avowed is also coming soon, so perhaps it is a good idea to get acquainted with the world of Eora before what could potentially be the best first-person RPG of the year. exhales hopium
Slay the Spire inspired a whole new genre of games back in the day (though technically it drew heavily from Vlaada Chvatil’s Mage Knight) and one of the games that not only matched Slay the Spire’s depth and complexity, but perhaps even eclipsed it, was Monster Train. It ended up being a hugely successful title that still has a strong following, however the developer’s next project, InkBound never quite reached the same level of praise.
Which is a shame, in my opinion, as InkBound is possibly one of the best co-op, turn-based rogue-likes on the market. It is satisfying to play, it is very deep and solving combat encounters and building characters over a ~2 hour run is very much like playing a match of Dota in a good stack.
Basically, think Hades, but turn-based and with teammates. I personally feel like the lore in the game is all over the place and it is presented in massive info-dumps, which is never great, but if you are the type of player to ignore the story and just want to whack some monsters by building a superhero character this game might be for you, especially if you have a couple of similarly-inclined Dota friends.
As a side-note I would also highly recommend Windblown from the Dead Cells developer, for a pretty similar experience, but in real-time. It doesn’t have the level of depth and complexity that InkBound offers, but I know that turn-based games are typically less appealing to the majority of gamers.
This post ended up being a lot bigger than expected, but I think it was worth it. All of us need a break from Dota once in a while, but we also have very particular tastes, ones that don’t necessarily get reflected by the mainstream gamedev. Finding games that can get us out of Dota is hard.
So share your own favorite titles and favorite experiences in the comment section below and let us know whether this type of Dota-related content is something you would enjoy in the future!