The MOBA space has been dominated by League of Legends and Dota 2 for a while now. Both have massive tournaments and some of the highest-paid esports players in the world, but they may soon have some new competition created by one of the people behind Rainbow Six Siege.
March of Giants is a unique title that takes the concepts and fast-paced gameplay of a MOBA, mixes in RTS elements, adds some magic, and wraps it all in a World War I aesthetic. The result is something interesting and genuinely fun to play. After visiting Ubisoft Montréal and spending a full day playing against a range of journalists, creators, and the development team, I have to say March of Giants feels like it could be something special if the team gets everything right.
March of Giants is a 4v4 MOBA that has you taking control of a giant, a massive magical creature with a range of abilities and powers that can dramatically shake up the battlefield. Much like League of Legends or Dota 2, these giants all feel distinct. Split between ranged and melee roles, each brings a unique fighting style, powers and buffs that feel well thought out.
The twist is that while most MOBA-style games have you taking on the enemy directly and trying to destroy towers or other objectives, March of Giants adds troops and RTS elements that make the flow of battle more interesting and offer a welcome shake-up from the usual formula.
“March of Giants is a 4v4 MOBA that has you taking control of a giant, a massive magical creature with a range of abilities and powers that can dramatically shake up the battlefield.”
Talking to creative director Xavier Marquis, the passion feels real, and it is hard not to get excited along with him. “The story behind the Giants, it started four or five years ago,” Marquis said. “It was just after my last game, and it was a competitive shooter. It was Rainbow Six Siege, and I was looking for a fourth challenge.” He went on to explain: “Immediately, I thought about MOBA, and I was like, so many tried to enter this space, and maybe it could be interesting. But how can we enter? How can we find the key to exist in this world? It was my obsession.
“Since the beginning, because I know MOBA, I was thinking about: can we find an idea to move out from the classical point of view, but at the same time mimicking the fact that you have units colliding in the middle of the map in a perfect balance? That’s why I used World War I as an excuse to punch directly the universe and to think outside of the box. It was the first start.”
March of Giants is set in a war-torn society, and the giants are meant to serve as support units and secret weapons for the standard army. They essentially act as massive, super-powered generals on the battlefield, allowing you to command, use, and manipulate the troops under your control. You can rally troops to your side, and the more units you control, the more options you have for taking down the opposing team, destroying towers and defences, and shifting the flow of battle, provided you can get the hang of everything.
I am not going to lie, when I first sat down for the introductory presentation, it all felt a bit daunting. There is a lot to manage, and when you first start playing, even after going through the tutorial, it can feel a little overwhelming. After going through a few matches and watching our team lose early on, the mechanics and concepts started to click. March of Giants began to feel like something I would love to play with friends, and I could genuinely see myself jumping online to dive into a match.
There is a lot at play here, with the giants, light base-building elements and commanding armies of troops all helping make the game interesting enough to keep me wanting to play. At the same time, it does not throw away what already works and remains enjoyable about the traditional MOBA formula.
Starting off with the giants, according to the story of the game, these are built from dreams, nightmares, story and myth, and can range from a giant woman who represents the dream of peace to werewolves to an Eldritch Lovecraftian god, and each giant brings with it its own unique powers and abilities, and can even change how your troops look and act.
Broken up into ranged and melee characters, March of Giants offers a little for everyone. I quickly found a few different giants that I loved experiencing and really liked seeing how they work. I also quickly found out that the difficulty each giant has should be taken into account, and while you may find a character with some amazing powers, if you do not know how to play them, you will be dying a lot.
With characters like Trench Maw, a reptile-like creature that can carry your troops underground, or Void Master, the aforementioned Lovecraftian god, there is no denying the team behind March of Giants had some fun with the designs of its creatures and heroes. That is one of the first things worth pointing out: just how unique March of Giants feels and looks compared with League of Legends and Dota 2. The World War-inspired concept gives everything a grittier sense of realism that moves it away from pure fantasy and into something more recognizable, even if it is still fanciful. The team has created a world that feels genuinely different and interesting to explore, test and learn.
I also cannot stress enough how much the RTS elements and troop management change up the MOBA formula. When I first read that the game would include RTS mechanics, I was concerned they would slow down the flow of combat and get in the way of matches moving quickly, but I could not have been more wrong. March of Giants moves quickly, with the troops actually speeding up various tasks rather than slowing things down. Most of the matches we played lasted around 20 minutes, with many closer to 15. They were fast-paced, with both sides trading blows and everyone cheering when a team finally won. It felt good.
“Broken up into ranged and melee characters, March of Giants offers a little for everyone.”
As Xavier Marquis explained, “When we are building a game, when some reference exists already, it’s easier.” He went on to explain: “But a soldier army system in a MOBA doesn’t exist. It’s not like an RTS. It’s not an RTS at all. It’s clearly a combat-compatible soldier system adapted for MOBA. So we had to decide for ourselves: where should the soldier be? And does it fit in a complete game length? So there are a lot of questions about it.”
The troops can be directed en masse, so if you want to take down a tower, another giant or capture a special vehicle, you simply issue the command, and they go to work. It is quick, easy to use and helps keep the various objectives moving along at a good pace. It is also shocking how quickly a giant can be taken down by a swarm of opposing troops. When left on their own, troops can be stomped on, crushed or otherwise destroyed, but when controlled in unison, they can bring down these hulking powerhouses surprisingly quickly.
The same is true of the various weapons and towers scattered across the battlefield. While your giant is incredibly powerful, it can still be killed when these larger weapons focus their fire on you. That is why you need vehicles, troops, and your other abilities working together if you want to stay alive. Everything needs to be used in conjunction to really succeed, and that is why it all kind of works.
If you have a ranged giant, you can use your troops to slow the enemy down while you take aim. If you have a melee giant, you can use those same troops to whittle an opponent down before moving in for the final blow. It creates a strong gameplay flow, and one that feels fantastic when everything comes together the way you want.
But even as Xavier Marquis explained, there are no dedicated classes, and building a team of these giant creatures is part of the fun. “Since the beginning, we decided—I don’t know if you saw—but we don’t have classes. We don’t have positions pre-placed, etc. It’s by intention,” Marquis said. “We designed this game to accept a part of chaos first. So let the players be creative. It’s a slider. It could be more difficult in terms of onboarding, but on the other hand, you have fewer rules to learn because your freedom will be OK. So it’s less tailored like that.”
With no real classes, building out your team of giants is all about finding a good balance and testing different combinations. There are some basic concepts, including healer, ranged and tank-style characters, but with each one feeling so different, a lot of playing March of Giants came down to testing what worked and discovering what was the most fun to play.
After a few matches, we found some good synergy between the different characters we chose. Once you learn how each giant plays, you can also start figuring out the best upgrade paths and combinations that can help net you a victory.
With the core objective being to see which team can take out three towers first, there is a lot of back-and-forth action across the map, and figuring out how to push forward is key. If you go in alone on a specific lane, you may make some dents in the enemy’s armour, but unless you plan things out well, you will quickly find yourself dying a lot. March of Giants manages to bring a solid formula to the table, and after a few hours, I was really enjoying what I was playing.
Slated to launch in a preview on October 7th, followed by a full early access launch in 2027, March of Giants is still early, but everything I have seen has me excited. The MOBA market can be challenging to break into, but if the team gets everything right, this title may have what it takes to push across the finish line.
There are a lot of great ideas in March of Giants. The light RTS elements, in particular, feel like a solid shake-up of the formula, and I am excited to see how players respond once the game gets into the wild.
