League of Legends Review

League of Legends is one of the most popular (if not the most popular), well known and played games in the world. It also tops the Twitch streamer viewership count, or at the very least is among the top ones consistently.

League has marvelously survived all these years and it’s no fluke. As a matter of fact, every new game that becomes extremely popular (with the most notable examples including Fornite and Overwatch) everyone proclaims that “League is dead”.

Yet it survives, and always tops its challenges. I’ve talked about League of Legends (LoL) before, but I’ve never given it a proper review. And so, I will now, and as usual, it will be split to storyline, gameplay, visuals and personal thoughts. Without further ado:

Storyline

LoL’s storyline is completely separated from its gameplay, meaning that what you do doesn’t reflect in the storyline at all.

Other than that, Riot Games (LoL’s developers and owners) has a huge roster of characters, each with their own distinct personalities and motives, and a place in the game’s fictional world. The few that don’t are being looked at in order to be put in as well.

Generally, the game’s champions all reside within the fictional world of Runeterra.  Runeterra has been ravaged from wars called Rune Wars, where very dangerous crystals of tremendous energy called Runes were used to level cities and armies alike.

The world’s largest factions are at war, but none can use the Runes again, as another Rune War could destroy the world.

Other than that, there are many other factions with their own agendas, and many types of beings, like celestial or alien beings from other worlds.

The lore of the game is constantly expanding, and Riot Games really tries to appease the lore fans.

Gameplay

The gameplay is exactly what you’d expect from a MOBA, LoL was the first independent MOBA after all. You choose a champion, then go on to fight in one of the three lanes.

Your purpose is to gather enough gold and experience to improve your champion, and along with your team, slowly destroy the opponents’ base until you reach its heart, the Nexus while you try to stop the enemy team from doing the same.

Once either team destroys the nexus, they win, and the other team loses.

LoL does have some other “different” game modes but they are not popular at all. Riot also releases completely different, albeit temporary, game modes every few weeks. These modes cycle between a preset list. Sometimes, they create new ones to bring for one time or to incorporate into the cycle.

One of the main reasons for LoL’s popularity is its competitiveness. LoL is a very competitive game, and once you level your account to level 30, you can start playing ranked.

You will be put into a division and try to “climb” the ladder rankings for a season, which roughly lasts 9-10 months.

Their esports scene is one of the biggest in the world, with more people watching it by the year.

And trust me, everyone dreams of one day being pro. It’s kinda like football, to be honest.

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Visuals

LoL’s graphics are good enough to be able to be played without complaints and bad enough to be able to be played in the worst of PCs and Laptops. That is another reason for LoL’s popularity; the fact that it can be played by almost anyone who wants to.

Personal Thoughts

Even though LoL is so popular, there are still complaints to be heard. These are based on two accusations; the matchmaking system, and Riot Games’ general policies and behaviors.

About the matchmaking, there’s not much to be said. As with every game, you will find many players who will just ruin your whole game by being extremely bad, negative or both. Riot is trying its best to improve this, but it’s pretty bad. They also gain a double penalty for this due to their policies, more on that later.

Now, about Riot Games. I personally like Riot Games, as I truly believe their example of ‘game company that becomes rich and influential in the gaming world with only one game’ is really inspirational. But the facts, unfortunately (for them) speak for their own. Firstly, what I mentioned above. Riot is extremely strict with verbal abuse and flaming in general.

League can be extremely toxic as a game, and rightly so; it’s very hard having to fight for about half an hour only for literally one person making that half-hour a complete waste of time, not by having a bad day, but by straight-up trolling. Now, imagine that happening for about half of your games. This is enough to break the hardest of men (or women). Yet Riot decides to ban people immediately for any form of flaming.

Honestly, I’m all about banning racists of any kind, but there are people being banned for just calling everyone something light as an insult like “ape” for example. There are of course two mitigating grounds to justify Riot Games, but the fact remains; they are too strict.

The mitigating grounds are the fact that punishments are scaling, and they warn you before your fist ban, and the second is that it’s within their terms of playing the game, which is known within the game as the Summoner Code.

Riot was and is blamed for greediness as well. Here, I wholeheartedly disagree, at least when it comes to the game. Riot recently gives gifts and has sales on many of its items requiring money, and in the end, the game is completely free to play, and you gain no advantage from paying whatsoever, so even if they are greedy, at least it doesn’t affect the game. They are also blamed for the balancing of the game, but they improve on that by the year, and there are always going to be complaints.

The last negative you can hear is about some internal problems with Riot, but that doesn’t affect the game. I will list it though, just as bonus information. Riot has been blamed for sexist behaviors, and their stance to these accusations which have not yet been proved is suspicious at the very least.

Their answer was harsh to them because they started work strikes, and now, Riot waits to see how things play out and promises to be even more harsh to such outbreaks.

In the end, despite Riot’s (sometimes) shady nature, and the game’s toxicity, it will always have you coming back to it when you run out from games to play, and it will be a changed game (depending on your absence time).

Final Verdict

Storyline: 7.0

Gameplay: 9.0

Visuals: 7.0

General Rating 7.7

That’s it for LoL. Probably, most of you have played LoL, and if you haven’t it’s probably because you prefer another alternative to it. In any case, I wrote this review for people to know what’s happening in general, either in the game or with Riot Games. I hope it at least accomplishes that. I’ll see you in my next article.

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