VideoGame Picture DOTA 2, except easier and less cruel.
You don't lose gold when you die, it's less common to have a one sided victory (It will happen if your team is really bad) and the game is famous for having lots and lots of nerfs. It's Easy, so It Sucks, right?
No. That isn't the case.
Because it's more simple than DOTA 2, League of Legends is less frustrating than DOTA 2. Sure, it's cool to have some challenge but DOTA 2 is way too much cruel for the losing team. (It's from Valve, so it's expected) Also, in DOTA 2 the kill counts on mid-game easily starts to get uneven. League of Legends? Commonly you will se that both teams will have "balanced" kills and because of that a comeback victory is more easier than on DOTA 2.
But there are some things that i dislike about League of Legends.
The matchmaking takes longer. Trying to find an avaiable group takes 7 to 20 minutes. Matchmaking on DOTA 2 takes between 2-4 minutes. If you played DOTA 2 before, you will probaly use an item or 2 while trying to use an ability, because the hotkeys are inverted. The game can also be difficult to start, especially if you're the person that made this review that almost destroyed his own PC because he downloaded a virus while trying to fix the game's launcher.
Short Review: A good game, it's simpler than DOTA 2 but it also has it's problems. I can't say alot more to this game because it's easy to start a flame war if you anger one person by saying something about it. Yes, even worse than Callof Duty
VideoGame A meh game with an awful fanbase.
League of Legends is okay. Not the best MOBA ever made, but it's certainly not the worst. (That title goes to either the Dead Island one, or the Marvel one.)
I used to play it pretty heavily, it was my thing. I had an hour set out each day for League of Legends. I mained top, etc. etc. Of course, computer troubles happened, and I had to switch to my moms computer, which, because it was on Steam and I was bored, I got DOTA 2.
I haven't looked back, besides a round I played today.
League as a whole seems a lot less interactive than DOTA. Like, a lot. Teamfights are pretty simple. It all boils down to: Can we disable the damage dealers? Because, in League, no one else can really deal a shit ton of damage besides the people that are designated at it, so it's all a race just to put down the scary people, and then mop up the rest. Solo fights are simple, yes or no things, and the fights overall just seem boring and predetermined. Meanwhile, DOTA fights are always intriguing and complex, due to the sheer amount of factors going on in the fight. Someone might have a Bk B, leading you to have to respond by Hexing them, while you're frantically trying to get to higher ground to avoid the dreaded miss penalty you have from being on the low ground.
It just feels, overall, more fluid and engaging. The items actually feel like you're building towards something great, and they all do interesting things, even while the stat bonuses are pretty solid, while the majority of league items are static, most activatable items being tossed towards the support.
It also tends to be easier to come back. Five kills behind isn't much in a DOTA game, due to the creeps giving out more gold, and experience being easier to get. It feels less 'Farm, then Stomp' than League, I suppose.
Finally, the community. Both communities are pretty bad, implying anything more is kidding yourself. However, DOTA people tend to actually know what they're doing as they get mad at you. Every time i've had some guy call me out for a bad play, I pretty much learned what to do in the future. Meanwhile, League players remain pretty ignorant and whine about more general things. 'X is overpowered', 'Y is feeding, report pls', and surrendering after the first tower gets taken. I know league players that are pretty cool in real life, but i'm not heading to the rift anytime soon.
VideoGame A good MOBA, but there are better
The graphics are only okay. The music is one repetitive loop. While many of the champions have cool designs, the devs stoop to an almost insulting degree to make almost every single woman fanservice. I mean, am I the only one who feels condescended when a game constantly releases "hawt" female characters, thinking I'm supposed to get aroused by a bunch of textures? And the game is willing to completely ruin any sort of consistent art style just to give more fanservice.
Other than that, the champions have little persoanlity. They only have a few lines. The voice acting is good.
The gameplay is the best part, but its still not great. First of all, the early game is way too passive. You don't lose gold when you die, which means that the towers have to be buffed to absurd levels to stop rampant tower-diving. That means there's almost no tower-diving. Also, Flash is complete bullshit. Almost everyone uses it and it means every single champion has an escape. That makes the early game even more passive; why tower-die when the enemy an just flash away?
The particles lack any sort of characterization, if that makes sense. In a teamfight I have no idea which champion is activating which abilities.
It's said the game is free, and technically it is, but you are most likely going to spend money on this game. Most champions cost a ridiculous amount of in-game money. Oh, and the community is horrible but that's par for the course of any MOBA.
So overall, the game isn't very good. Just play Dota 2 when it comes out (or buy into beta). The graphics are better, the music is better, the characters have more personality, all the heroes are free, there's actually some aggression in the early game, and not every champion has a bullshit escape mechanism (just a few- looking at you, Anti-Fun). It's a bit harder to learn but not much, really. Learn to creap-stack, creep-pull, deny, block creep waves, animation cancel, and orb walk (and none of those are as hard as they sound), and you can transition to the much, much better Dota 2.
VideoGame A great game bogged down by an abysmal community
League Of Legends is the spiritual successor to legendary Warcraft3 mod Dot A, coming out a few years ago as a free to play game with its own client (as opposed to a mod) and purchasable content. The core of the game is very similar to Dot A which has since seen an official sequel and a number of other games that League has since popularized called MOB As.
League of Legends is a game of intense strategy, a relatively fair amount of balance with its system of checks and balances, and the company who makes it, Riot, is extremely active with their fans and constantly make adjustments and additions to their game, which has since grown into the Largest Game in the World.
While immensely fun, this game requires a team to function as a unit, and this means that finding a game in a queue will likely result in your team being unbalanced in skill. People in this game are known to have extremely short tempers especially towards bad play, resulting in a very difficult experience for people on losing teams. Not only that, but it has a fair number of griefers as well. Meaning you will only seldomly be grouped together with a good team opposite another good team to make a balanced game.
The community of this game is so full of attitude that it makes playing the game sometimes a miserable experience. It is a lot of fun and at its core is a great game for killing time, and hey, it's free. So give it a shot. Just be cautious of your own temper and your team mates.
VideoGame A bit hard to get into, but it's free intense co-op fun once you start playing it.
League of Legend is IMO the best MOBA out there, and one of the best game period. It does have a lot of issues, but despite its flaws I heartily reccomend you at least try it.
Gameplay description: League of Legend (Lo L) is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or if you prefer a Dot A clone. It takes a lot of elements from both real-time strategy and Rpgs. You are summoner, able to control a hero. Your goal is to work together with several other players to destroy the ennemy team. There are currently two play style: standard and dominion. In the first play-style, you need to destroy the ennemy HQ by fighting your way to it. In dominion, you need to capture and hold several points to lower the ennemy HQ's health to zero. What makes Lo L gameplay different from your standard RTS or RPG is that at the start of every game, your hero starts from scratch. In the beggining of the game, you collect cash to buy items, and as the game goes on, the fights become more and more intense as everybody grows in power. There are more than 85 heroes, and each of them have their own sets of abilities. This means that even though 4 heroes are mages, they have all a different focus: long range, immobilising the ennemy, pure damage, area denial. If you add to that the items you can buy both in game and out of it using the cash you earn every battle, its easy to see that the game offers a vast amount of strategy.
Pros:
- Insane replay value.There's a ton of heroes and some of them have 2 or 3 different way to be played.
- It's free. Completely free.(well, there is an cash shop, see the cons list)
- Playing with friends is a blast as you come up with better team tactics over time.
- There is a huge community that produces vast amount of tutorials and champion guides to help you get started, or get better.
- The gameplay manages to combine fast paced action with long term strategy.
Cons
- A bit hard to get into. This isn't that much of a problem, but it goes hand in hand with
- Extremely punishing for mistakes. If you or your teammates die to the ennemy a few times too much, or just have a hard time, it will CRIPPLE your team incredibly.
- Idiots and trolls. In a game where you need the entire team to act as one, having a troll or a leaver is rage-inducing.
- If you don't want to use the cash shop,you need to grind a little bit more, not a lot though.
VideoGame The definitive MOBA.
LoL may not be the first MOBA, but it (not Dota) is definitely the one that all others are measured against. Riot Games took the Dota formula (that they helped create, thanks to the development input of Guinsoo) and said "How can we make this better?" And they've never stopped asking that question. They don't always succeed; in fact a lot of the things they do make me Face Palm, but they've never stopped trying to improve the game.
Removing denial to encourage champion interaction within lane. Inventing ability scaling, runes, masteries and summoner spells and brush. Toning down raw skill power in exchange for lower costs and cooldowns. Removing almost all Random Number God elements from the game. Promoting "objective control" as the primary road to victory. Refining the vision game. Riot streamlined the game, keeping what worked and throwing out what didn't, making sure it was easy to learn but hard to master- watch a high level LoL pro play and TRY to claim it's a "no-skill game". They communicate with their players to explain the reasons for every change and nothing is sacred- the game is coming up on its 5th season and every season they practically reinvent the entire game, with new items, jungle changes, rune and mastery changes, summoner spell rotations and more. There are more (gameplay) differences between LoL in season 4 and the same game in season 1 than there are between Defense Of The Ancients All Stars and its own sequel.
LoL also features the BEST-designed heroes in the genre. While there isn't anything as radically insane as Meepo or Invoker, Riot are constantly coming up with new ideas. While a lot of MOBAs can't even grasp the concept of resources OTHER than mana, LoL champions are designed so that their kits work together to make a coherent whole, fitting the theme of their character. The ones who don't (the infamous Sion, for example) get remorselessly scrapped and remade until they do. Champions like Ahri, Kha'Zix, Nocturne, Leona, Diana, Aatrox, Cassiopeia, Yasuo, Trundle, Riven, Rumble and DRAAAAAAAAVEN are iconic and immortal.
The game is far from perfect, of course. The community sucks, that goes without saying. The metagame can sometimes be PAINFULLY stagnant, with up to half the roster being underpowered at a time. But Riot will never stop improving. Ever.