League of Legends (PC) Review

It is I, Emmanuel!

Alright, where do we begin with League of Legends, or ‘LoL’ for short? First of all League of Legends is a free PC game, when I say free, I mean like free! There is none of that hidden pay to win bull crap as you can reach high potential in this game without having to spend a single dime. You’re probably wondering “High Potenh tial? What on eartare you on about?” There is a magnificent professional gaming career in LoL, which I will talk about more later on.

Gameplay:

League of Legends belongs in the category MOBA, which stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. You play league from a top-down view/ birds eye view where you use your mouse and a selection of buttons on your keyboard to do cast abilities or to move around. When you first launch the game it will ask you if you would like to play the tutorial, If you are a new player with no other experience from any other MOBA then it would be very benefical to play it. So the ‘Casting ability keys’ are mostly ‘Q’ ‘W’ ‘E’ ‘R’. The first 3 abilites Q W E are the basic abilties with you R being you ult which is short for ultimate abilitiy. There are a range of diffrent game modes to play from with 5v5 being the original gamemode. When you begin the game you have to choose from a range of champions, each champion has its own unique set of abilities. There is a champion rotation each week so you can have a chance to eventaully try every champion, keep in mind there are over 100 champions! So each game/match you play, you will start in the spawn area either from the bottom-left of the map or the top-right. In the spawn area you are able to buy items, items are an essential part of LoL as it can make the champion you play, more strong. Oh and each match you start, everybody begins at level 1 but there is something called a summoner level which is your account level. As you level up your summoner level you unlock different things like rune slots or mastery points. Everytime you que up for a game you will most likely be matched with people your skill level. So the aim of the game is to destroy the enemy team’s “Nexus” sounds easy? Not really. There are turrets which you would have to destroy to be able to even access the enemy team’s Nexus and your going to have to keep in mind of the enemy team, which is also trying to destroy your nexus. Every time you slay an enemy you earn ‘gold’ which I was telling you earlier about. There are diffrent ways to earn gold. The other ways would be killing minions or camps in the jungle. As we were talking about earlier gold is VALUABLE. The more gold you have the more ITEMS you can buy, the more ITEMS you can buy the STRONGER you are, the STRONGER you are the easier time you will have beating your opponents in fights. And eventually you will reach there ‘Nexus’ and win! Or they do the exact same thing to you, and you lose. After a match you will gain another currency for your summoner and this would be called “IP”. Which stands for “Influence points” What’s “IP” used for? Well IP is used to buy things like runes OR champions. (If you purchase a champion with IP it is yours forever!) How much “IP” you earn will vary. If you win a game, you obviously get more “IP” compared to when losing a game. Each day you get a “first win of the day” boost which gives you 150 “IP” for winning any game. Overall the gameplay is really fun and requires skill. It’s also got an element of strategy behind it. You might be thinking “Isn’t it going to be a bit reppetitive?” Well yes but no. Since there are a ton of different champion match ups as well as different people playing the game so it would be different each game!

Graphics/ Aesthetics:

The graphics in my opinion are really good. The LoL community is known for it’s amazing cosplay and designs. The graphics are sort of cartoony but not so cartoony that it looks like it was made for 6 year old kids. Each champion has it’s own portrait and a set of skins. Skins are basically a re colour or a different appearance of a champion with some of them changing the effects of their abilities. However “skins” are not essential in the game as they don’t give you any benefits apart from boasting how amazing you look.

Buisness Model:

As said before you will be able to eventually unlock every champion and every rune. You can also buy champions with “Riot points”. Riot points are usually obtained by cashing in, basically giving money for example £9 for 1800 “Riot Points”. To be honest, this is quite a fair business model. There are weekly sales or skins or champions. I also forgot to mention that the only way to obtain skins are either buying them with Riot points or being gifted one. This is a decent business model as it doesn’t force you to buy anything to get a certain advantage. I’ve been playing LoL for more than 3 years now and I honestly don’t thinking spending RP on buying a champion is worth it, maybe if it’s on sale but you get more of a satisfaction if you save up and then buy the champion. I also forgot to mention every champion has a different buying price which can range from “450IP” 1350IP” 3150IP” “4800IP” “6300IP” “7800IP”.

The Competitive scene:

As mentioned earlier, League of Legends, has a competitive scene. It belongs to the category e-Sports, which is basically a form of gaming professionally. e-Sports has been around for quite a long time and LoL has been part of this. You can earn a lot of money winning massive gaming tournaments, in fact you can even earn money from just playing LoL in general. For example you can stream it on “Twitch” or just go around and take part in Local LAN tournaments. Verdict:

League of Legends is a major game, it has loads of fans (Including me) and will probably continue to get a bigger fan base. The game gets updated quite frequently so it will always be changing in ways. You can compare the game from when it was first released in 2009 to where it is now, and there would be a lot of changes. As of now, this game is fantastic and I rate it 93/100.

– Emmanuel