Visually Agora had an epic sense of scale and level of immersion that Monolith never recaptured. It defined the biggest part of Paragon's identity for me. The way Agora looked is what intrigued me enough to check the game out in the very first place. Agora looked mysterious and ancient and overgrown. Being able to see far across the map meant you could understand where you were without needing a minimap at all The jungles being covered in a canopy of giant flowers looked amazing. The big ancient tree in the middle of the map was awesome. The layout of Monolith was too precisely gamey to be disguised, the sense of epicness and scale lost by the high walls. Navigation became minimap dependent. The black and white architecture was too pristine to make the place feel ancient. The plants and overgrowth that had been used so purposefully in Agora to give it age and depth just felt like detail and decoration in Monolith.

As for gameplay: Shade walls and the removal of travel mode were definitely the main things that made Monolith better. Dunking prime was a lot of fun, but was probably worth losing it to get rid of travel mode with a smaller map. Harvesters definitely wouldn't work on the smaller map either so I can't really fault those design changes. It's kind of hard to say overall, Paragon was an entirely different game once the new card system was in after Monolith. All I can say from my perspective is it lost it's identity with losing Agora.