League of Legends Review

A multiplayer action role-playing game (RPG) that lets you do battle against friends and strangers while building up a barrage of characters sounds like an absolute blast. But while League of Legends does all of these things, the scope of what’s offered here is so massive and offers so much depth that we felt like were drowning from our first five minutes. And that’s just the tutorial.

League of Legends is a strictly Player vs. Player affair. There’s no campaign here. No story mode. Each battle is an isolated conflict on a single map. Your role is that of a summoner – a meta-player that calls different heroes into battle and keeps an eye on the overall picture. As a summoner, you’ll control your heroes directly using fairly simple and predictable action-RPG controls.

Your heroes aren’t indestructible by any stretch. Thankfully they’re not alone in the battle. A variety of minions will tackle the opposing forces, and you can get behind these minions and let them take the brunt of the attack while aiding them from afar. The object of the game is to destroy your opponents’ base before they destroy yours.

In a lot of ways, League of Legends feels like a real time strategy game with all of the strategy taken out. You have no control over minion production or building new defences. You just have to hope for the best while focussing on your assault.

The real skill and focus of the game revolves around developing your hero. The game lets you pick from 30 different heroes prior to each match, and each of these has their own assortment of skills and spells. The differences in characters are where the real appeal of the game lie. Think of it like a fighting game – you might be really good with one hero, but how will your skills with Teemo do against your opponent picking Soraka?

Because of the game’s multiplayer nature, there really isn’t much here for the lonely single player. You can always start up a game and fill it with computer-controlled players, but it doesn’t really lend much to the overall experience. Besides –this game is at its most fun when played in teams. With a variety of player-controlled heroes banding together to face a group of opposing players, things go from crazy to manageably fun. Indeed – if there’s any strategy to be found here, it doesn’t really show up until you’re trying to work out route and combat strategies as a team.

If there’s one word we would use to describe League of Legends, it would be “overwhelming.” With so much happening on a board at any given moment, it’s hard to feel anything other than a frantic sense of frustration. There’s definitely an audience for games like this. The hardest of hardcore gamers that are looking to prove their skills against the best of the best will find a lot to love in League of Legends. But for the rest of us? There’s just too much going on to ever feel like you’re getting a grasp on the experience.