League of Legends Review

League of Legends - Review

League of Legends, built using the same principles as the legendary DOTA (Defence of the Ancients) a custom map that was created in one of the most popular RTS games of all time, Warcraft 3. League of Legends lets you command a mighty champion in a list of 80+ you can choose from.

Champions in League of Legends range from mighty melee characters that can shred through anything, to incredible war mages who use mana to smite down their foes in ranged combat.

This game offers so much for gamers, and best of all, it is free! But like other free games, you can buy products in store that will cost you real money but give you awesome skins, champions, instead of using the in game credit (Influence points), and boosts that can help you level up quicker, or even if you want just some extra IP and need it ASAP.

League of Legends has two game modes based on DOTA which are a 5v5 map, and 3v3 where you can either play intermediate or beginner bots if you need to get use to the fundamentals of the game, or you can test your skills playing real players. Recently, League has introduced a brand new mode called Dominion, which is a faster paced game where you must capture and control points in order to win. I will be covering the 5v5 and 3v3 aspects more in this review.

When first starting a game, you will be put into a selecting screen, this is where you choose your champion that you will use to hammer down your foes. You only have a choice of a few characters that are free, but free characters change in a weekly rotation, so they won’t always be the same set and it is advised you should start saving up for a champion of your own. Once you select your champion and your summoner spells you can finally set out to the battlefield of the League of Legends!

Just a small portion of the characters available...

The whole aim of League of Legends is to destroy the enemy’s nexus, and to do so, you must push through waves of enemy minions, enemy towers, and your rival’s champions who have the same exact objective.

Games on average go around 30mins, so you are required to be patient and look for opportunities if you’re versing a decent team of players.

Your character will level up as you farm from minions. Even being close to the fight will allow you to gain EXP. Leveling your character will not effect your League of Legends profile level, but the level of your champion just for that game, with the max level for a champion in a single game being 18. To gain gold to buy items for your champion, you can farm from minions, kill enemy champions, or even the destruction of towers will reward you, and your team with small portion of gold.

Once you have enough gold, there is a whole range of items you are able to buy, such as Ability power items, which are mostly used for casters, Damage, that is used for characters who use physical damage, and much more. When you finish a game you will be rewarded with Influence points and Experience points regardless if you won or lost, but if you win you will be rewarded with a higher reward of IP and EXP and even better, if it’s your first win of the day it’s doubled!

As you start to level up your League of Legends profile, you start to understand the game a lot more. Also, at each level, you receive a point to spend in your masteries. These consist of three mastery branches, much like World of Warcrafts system of talent tree’s. This lets you focus points into either three trees, Offense, Defence, or Utility, giving your champion an edge. Offense lets you pick from a range of buffs that will give you more of a boost with damage then your opponents. Defence focuses on more of the defense capabilities of your champions, like health, armour, resists and so on. So for e.g, if you were playing a tanky character, you would spend points in the Defense tree. Now, last but not least, is the Utility tree. The Utility tree gives you buffs focusing around regen, healing, and is a tree more suited to playing a support role for your team.

There is also a cool thing that is included to buff your in game characters, and they are the Rune Pages. Rune pages are basically a system that allows you to buy runes from the store then fit them into your page, each rune will possess a buff, for e.g, +health or +damage. Every time you level up, a rune slot is open for you to put a rune inside to give you more of an oomph.

Once you hit the max level for your League of Legends profile, (level 30) you are able to play ranked games. Some of the ranked game modes that are solo/duo que, which will allow you and a friend to partner up and be put into a team, or even better, you can now make your own pre made ranked teams. Once you have chosen what you want to do, you can now que just like in a normal game, but this time, it’s serious! When you are put into the selection screen, it is a bit different from what you have been use to, instead of just being able to pick a champion straight up, each team’s leader will be allowed to ban three champions that they do not wish to be in the game. Once that is done you are now allowed to pick your champion, a lot of teams will want a good composition for their team so they have an all round selection of champions they can work with who will want to perform their roles to the best of their abilities.

After playing about five ranked games, you are put into an Elo. The Elo rating system is basically a method that is used for calculating the relative skill levels of players, and at times, can be inaccurate unfortunately. When you win a ranked game, you get an amount of points to your Elo, however, if you lose, you lose points. If you were playing in a premade ranked team your team will be set an Elo determined on how your team has been going, and the same kind of system would apply.

Our League of Legends Review would not be complete without talking about the somewhat simple but gorgeous graphics. The artwork in this game and the graphics have more of a cartoony feel to them like Warcraft 3, but even better, League of Legends has an amazing environment that feels alive, and if you put it onto high graphics you will truly see what I mean. The good thing about it is that you don’t need to have your settings on super extreme for it to be pretty, because even on low it’s still decent.

Things soon heat up in the snow..

Now, I have played League of Legends for a while, I wouldn’t say I’m a Solomid player, but I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest noob to set foot into this game (it's debatable) but anyway. What I’m trying to say, is that you don’t have to an insane player of DOTA to play this game, because even if you do get beaten or do terrible, this game seems to just keep hooking you in no matter what.

The range of characters you can play in League of Legends is just incredible, and it allows you to be flexible with your choices and experiment with new types of game styles, this will let you create characters that are more powerful and who are able to rank up the kills. Another thing that I love about League of Legends is that you don’t necessarily have to play countless hours of game time to get in front of other players as much as you do in games such as World of Warcraft.

To wrap it all up, to be honest, the only problems I find with league of legends is that some of the champions are really unbalanced compared to others, and the server lag can get really irritating. But those few problems are hardly a major thing, I am in love with this game and I advise anyone who is into fantasy based games such as Warcraft 3 or even a fan of the custom mod DOTA to definitely try out League of Legends.

Graphics - 8.0
Sound - 8.0
Gameplay - 9.0
Longevity - 9.5
Game Score - 9.0

*League of Legends Review - League of Legends also appears on our Top 10 Free Games and Top 10 PC Games Lists*

Game Review Nation League of Legends Review, League of Legends also appears on out Top 10 Free Games and Top 10 PC Games Lists.
League of Legends Review - Champions