League of Legends Review

I will begin my game review with one of my favorite computer games: League of Legends. League of Legends is an MMO that pits you against a team of players, but do not fear, for there are other players that are teamed up with you. This can be good in that there are other people that can help you learn how to play the game. However, it can be bad because other people can be mean-spirited, or just outright jerks. Before you stop reading for fear of being accosted by a jerk from League of Legends, you should know that there are ways to stop them from calling you names, namely, the ignore feature.

The gameplay is easy to learn but difficult to master. Fortunately, they have multiple maps and game modes to help you learn the different champions that you can choose as well as the general gameplay of the game. For two of the maps, the goal is to destroy the enemy nexus, but first you have to destroy the towers along the way while defending your own nexus from the enemy champions. The Crystal Scar has a different goal which I will get to later.

The map that I play the majority of the time is called Summoner's Rift and has five players on each team and games usually last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on the skill level of the players. The two other maps are the Twisted Treeline, and the Crystal Scar.

The Twisted Treeline puts three people against each other in a small map. This allows for much more player versus player (or PVP) action because it is just easier to get from one side of the map to the other so you are bound to run into another player much faster. These games last 20 to 30 minutes.

The Crystal Scar takes PVP to a whole new level. It has five people on each team but instead of trying to reach the enemy nexus you are supposed to capture five nodes that are laid out across the map. If you have more nodes than the other team then their nexus health will decrease. It is a bigger map than the Twisted Treeline but smaller than the Summoner's Rift but it is much more fast-paced than either map. All the champions gain experience and gold much faster than the other two  maps so the games are much shorter. There are also different items that you can buy which adds to the game as well. These games last 20 minutes and sometimes not even that.

To play a game the player must choose a champion. There are 10 champions that are free and they change each week. After every game the player earns IP based on the length of the game and if they won or they lost. With this IP the player can buy more champions ranging from prices of 450 to 6300. With over 60 champions there is definitely enough content to keep you playing for years and years to come. Along with the  champions, the player can also buy different skins for each champion but these cost RP which costs actual money. These skins are how Riot pays for their game and employees. With over a million players, they have no problem paying for anything, especially since they are expanding aggressively over the entire world including China, Russia, and many parts of Europe.

Overall Rating: 8
Overall, it is a very good game for being free to play. There are some glitches and problems with the interface or the client but they usually fix those kinds of things quickly.

Plot/Storyline: 10
There actually is a story that is involved with League of Legends. Each character has its own lore, or back-story that explains why they have joined the battles in the League of Legends. This lore is so well-developed that they have many different kinds of things telling the story including comics and newsletters.

Graphics: 7
The graphics aren't as good as other games but as a multiplayer game, the graphics have to be accessible to a lot of people. However, they make up for a lack of graphics with some extra art and ability designs based on the skin that the champion is wearing.

Gameplay: 9
 The gameplay is fast-paced and hard to learn if the beginner starts playing against other players right away. They do have AI bots that people can play against until they feel they are ready to play against actual players. Also, having 60+ champions means that each game is going to be different, even if you use the same champion the entire time. There is also an in-game item system that can change the way a character plays.

Replayability: 10
This game can be played again and again and again and never get old. Each game is completely different from the last one even if there are the same champions played in each game. The player base is over one million people so there are many people that you will only play with one time. However, you can add people as friends and invite them to play games with you.

I would definitely recommend playing League of Legends, especially if you like RPGs and Real-Time strategy games. There are many different aspects to this game that make it a fun time every time you log in. The best part about this MMO is that you don't need to play all day every day to be one of the better players. This is a great game and it has many hours of gameplay for anyone who wishes to continue to play it. There is much more that I can tell about this game but I will save that for a later post.

If you have comments or questions, please comment below or email me at oanta93@gmail.com