If you know me, you know I’m an Xbox gamer. I’ve been on the platform since 2008 and it’s all I’ve used since. Before that, in my younger years, I was a PC gamer, Mostly for sports, Medal Of Honor, Call Of Duty and Diablo 2. It’s been a long time since I’ve used a mouse and keyboard to game. And for the most part I’ve missed out on the MOBA genre.

When Ubisoft invited me out to Montreal to check out their upcoming MOBA game March of Giants I was both nervous and intrigued. I didn’t know too much about the genre or the game itself, but it looked interesting and I was eager to see if I could still cut it with a mouse and keyboard. From what I saw March of Giants also had some real-time strategy elements, and I do love me a good strategy game. So off I went to give it a look.

The MOBA genre has pretty much been dominated by the likes of League of Legends and DOTA for as long as most of us can remember. There’s been many attempts to break into the market over the years, but so few have been able to gain any meaningful market share. March of Giants is looking to be the next game to give it a crack, and I have to say after my time with it, it feels like it has a chance.

Welcome Home

For those that don’t know much about March of Giants, it was originally a game under Amazon’s gaming banner. Creative Director Xavier Marquis was looking for a new challenge after the hugely successful Rainbow Six Siege and wanted to tackle the MOBA genre and found a partner with Amazon.

Thing’s changed over at Amazon as the company has significantly scaled back it’s games division, and Ubisoft stepped in to take on March of Giants. With much of the team having previously worked on Siege under Ubisoft, it seemed like a natural fit. Plus they took a gamble with Siege in a competitive shooter market that paid off well, so why not try the MOBA space as well?

Since that change of publishers back in 2025 things have been pretty quiet for March of Giants. The team has been hard at work with the game and finding ways to stand out in the space, with mostly positive results.

Looking To Stand Out

Before we got hands on with the game we saw a presentation from Xavier himself. He explained what the studio was aiming for with March of Giants. The team wanted to do 4v4 rather than the traditional 5v5, making the battlefields a bit smaller to keep players engaged more. He also mentioned that the backdrop of WWI was the inspiration for the game, which kind of threw me off. Looking at the game initially I did not think of WWI, but after he said it and I saw the characters and battlefield, it did make some sense.

The gameplay itself should be pretty familiar to MOBA players. You have your 3 lanes, and each player picks a hero, one of a melee, ranged or support class. These are the games giants. The giants control mini soldiers, sending them off to charge into battle to fend off other giants, soldiers and destroy buildings. The giants themselves also have specific attacks and skills.

They can stomp the mini soldiers to keep them off of them, and a basic attack for some tanks and other enemies. Additionally each Giant has 4 unique skills, 3 main skills and then 1 ultimate attack that has a much longer cooldown.

Lastly each character has perks that allows the player to build up their giant as they earn gold from getting kills and collecting it out on the battlefield. These perks are all the same, but are the typical things you’d see. You can level up the soldier section to gain more soldiers. At the beginning you can control a maximum of 70 soldiers at a time. With all the upgrades available it can go up to 300 with life sap and other cool features. If you are a tank however you may want to focus on your giant and their health and damage. There’s quite a few options so the variety of builds will be interesting to see.

There are also supplies that come into play that you can pick up, either by walking over or sending your soldiers to go pick up, that allow you to place a few items. Supplies come at a premium so you cannot just spam them, but they range from bringing in more soldiers or tanks, or more defensive items like bunkers and trenches.

On the map on each lane there are multiple outposts and at the end the main target, a bastion. The ultimate goal, and how you win the match is to destroy 2 Bastions. First team to do so wins. There is no time limit to make this happen, so matches can last anywhere from 10 minutes to probably upwards of an hour.

Git Gud

Jumping into the game we were treated to a tutorial section, which I for one certainly needed, not only for the game but to get a feel for a mouse and keyboard again. I wouldn’t say it was like riding a bike, but after a few minutes I mostly was comfortable again with things. With that out of the way we were thrust into battle as a team, and were properly slaughtered. It was rough y’all. I’m not even sure the match lasted 10 seconds.

Our second game we fared a little better but were still getting are butts whooped. It wasn’t pretty but our confidence was at least building a little as we got used to the mechanics and found our favourite heroes. For myself I ended up settling on Kragg, a brute of giant who could take a lot of damage and dish it out as a melee character. I dabbled with many of them, and they all seemed good and worth playing, but Kragg is who I mostly settled on.

By the time we got to our third game and beyond we were starting to hold our own and even winning against the bots. Now I’m sure some of the issues I had were a skill issue being a relative noob to MOBA’s and PC gaming, but the game does have a lot going on and seemed to have a steep learning curve. That isn’t a bad thing, it made learning and succeeding all the more satisfying, but with it being a free to play game I can see a lot of players giving it a chance and then falling off if they can’t pick it up quick enough. Such is the life of free to play games.

A Heavy Dose Of RTS

While March of Giants is a MOBA at heart, they really do a good job of implementing the strategy elements. Without teamwork and communication, you probably won’t succeed. Do you split up and attack all 3 lanes? Do you maybe all try to do a single lane and overwhelm it. If you do decide to do that and the other team had the same idea on another lane then what? Do you go defend or just hope you can take their lane quicker than they can take yours?

It was these moments and pieces of strategy that stood out most to me and made the game fascinating. You can’t see where other heroes are unless someone from your team is in the vicinity, so at times you could sneak your way up a specific lane. In one match I decided to go up a lane where we had already destroyed a Bastion so no one was paying attention to it. My team wondered what I was doing but I was able to easily make it to the enemy side of the map and then cross lanes to attack another Bastion with little resistance and got some good damage in before the enemy came to defend. The downside to that move is it’s quite difficult for a single hero to take down a Bastion. But it caused the enemy to come protect which allowed other members of my team to advance easier.

The other major element of strategy is weighing offense versus defense. Chalk it up to my own inexperience, but I rarely ever laid down defensive items. With limited supplies my mind was always focused on offense and saving those points for tanks and troops when needed. It wasn’t until playing with and against the developers that I really saw the value and strategy of the defensive supplies.

There are also a couple things on the map that will help you and your team. A dozer can periodically spawn which if captured will drive towards the nearest outpost or Bastion and can cause significant damage. There’s also a giant autocannon ship that can drive around and if you get in its way you might as well just think about respawning.

At the beginning of the maps there is also a tunnel system that allows you to quickly change lanes. I actually liked this system a lot but thought they could do more with it. The tunnel simply takes you to the next lane up or down. It would be nice to see them implement the tunnels so that you could quickly move up the battlefield to get back into the fight. Even if it was just up 1 section it would be a big help, especially with the spawn times (more on this later).

Lastly in terms of the gameplay there are spots on the map, mostly on the outskirts, that are in your control and allow you to pick up more supplies and gold. These spots will spawn these items every few minutes allowing you to stock up. There’s also areas where if you go in and destroy the bunker in place you can earn an augmentation for the team to boost your heroes skills.

I found that we rarely ever went to these areas to collect the items. I don’t know if that was our own inexperience or what but they always seemed like an afterthought. I’m not sure what the solution here is, but perhaps if they can implement an on screen announcement that the supplies are ready, or even an announcement from the background commentator.

Take A Break… A Long Break

The biggest complaint currently about March of Giants, and one I heard from most, is the spawn times. At the beginning of the match if you die, it takes about 15 seconds to respawn. Pretty long but allows you time to maybe buy a new perk or something.

However as you progress through the match the spawn times increase. Your giant dying 25 minutes into a match means sitting on the sidelines for nearly a minute. I do understand the thinking behind this from a strategy standpoint. The developers want to make giant deaths have a big impact and therefore retreating a very worthwhile strategy. Running back to home base to heal while losing some ground on a lane is much better than being dead for 60 seconds and getting overrun.

We did have a situation late in a game where all four Giants went down at pretty much the same time and that gave the other team a full minute to rush us and end the game.

On the one hand, as I mentioned this is a piece of the strategy. It also helps keep matches from running forever if Giants just keep respawning over and over.

But on the other hand? If I can pull out my phone and check an email or send a text while I wait to spawn, that in my opinion is too long. I can see that being a major turn off for many players. As I said at the beginning I’m not a MOBA expert so maybe that is the norm and I’m the weird one here, but if the ultimate goal is a good game that everyone can play, this will likely be the biggest breaking point for the masses to pick it up. A big learning curve to start with the potential of players being idle a lot is a tough recipe to get right, even if all the other ingredients are right.

This will likely be a crossroads for the developers. If they want to appeal to the esports and competitive crowd, they should probably leave it as is. They simply risk the mass appeal if they do. Sitting around waiting for a Rainbow Six Siege round to end is much different than waiting in a menu, even if it can be the same amount of time.

Final Thoughts

Going into the preview of March of Giants I had no expectations. As a console gamer with no MOBA experience I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. After 5 hours of hands on time, I left wishing the game was coming to console so I could enjoy it over there.

Despite a couple of issues, mostly the spawn times, it feels like Ubisoft has something here with March of Giants. I don’t know if it can truly crack the MOBA genre, but it sure made this reviewer a believer that it is a good game, and that’s half the battle.

March of Giants is scheduled to release into early access Summer 2027. A Pioneer Playtest will run from October 7th to the 18th to give players a chance to see what Ubisofts MOBA is all about.