➤ League of Legends: Wild Rift review: Riot's MOBA goes portable 🎮

League of Legends recently turned 10 years old, an anniversary to celebrate with liters and liters of champagne as in the last decade the MOBA Riot has risen to the absolute box-office champion, shattering record after record and jumping to the top of the ratings. of players like very few in this market have managed to do. A lively community, with developers who have been able to keep the game updated and always fresh while never going to destroy that imposing house of cards made of statistics and strategy just like that.

In addition to all this, Riot has built around its flagship title a majestic universe of events, merchandise, tournaments and phenomena of the PoP culture, such as to enter right into history. Riot, however, did not feel satisfied and wanted to do more in the last period of time, alongside her one and immense son many other valuable securities, invading other markets. The house has ventured into shooters with Valorant, tried to counter the success of Hearthstone with Legends of Runeterra and in the near future fighting games and RPGs will also arrive ready to further expand the catchment area, no more than just the League of Legends but of the whole imaginary that revolves around it. There review di League of Legends: Wild Rift talks about what is only the latest of the titles involved and after spending several hours on it we are finally ready to sum it up before the official launch here.

Designed to last for a long time

League of Legends: Wild Rift review: Riot's MOBA goes portable

Wild Rift is the mobile version of League of Legends, in short, but it would be limiting to fit it into these boundaries. Riot's new MOBA is in fact something much deeper, a product designed to be usable by casual players, more than League of Legends already is, and even has the audacity and the goal of not leaving behind even the most competitive part of that fringe of players.

After a long beta in Asia, Wild Rift has therefore also arrived here in Europe, with the opening of the servers scheduled for next 10 December 2020 officially and we were incredibly curious to try it in preview, to find out how Riot could transform League of Legends in such a way as to make it usable on Tablets and Mobile devices, but above all to understand how much playability in this way could be affected. Arena of Valor and Vain Glory had already shown how simple it was in this sense to bring MOBAs to consoles and mobile phones and it has always left us perplexed to see a motionless Riot getting eaten such a large slice of the market by two competitors who were making good use of it. idea and even the mechanics of the heroes, almost as if Blizzard's mistake made with DOTA was repeating itself. Today, however, we have another panorama and if it is true that the MOBA genre is no longer to be explored, League of Legends is now an extremely loved and recognizable brand and it will be the same Garen, Draven, Lux and company to attract the players.

In fact, since the tutorial, it is clear how Riot wanted to keep the same atmosphere of the PC version intact, using the same dubbing, the same vibrant colors and even faithfully reproducing the animations of the various skills so as to offer that continuum essential to not leave bewildered all those players who wish to make a platform jump. Mind you though, Wildrift is by no means a simple port, so much so that even the Riot account will manage the two products completely separately.

Wildrift and LoL don't share progress, rankings, and sadly in our view, neither already unlocked characters and skins, as well as the currency. We are basically faced with a completely new product, but we have to admit that having to repurchase samples and skins on which we have already spent money has bothered us. Riot tries to accommodate us in this sense by honoring League of Legends veterans with Champions and skin packs as a reward, but that's not enough to take away that bitter aftertaste that we would have gladly avoided. The biggest problem for users, therefore, will be that of not wanting to move to the new platforms given the time and money spent on PC, a problem that competitors usually have to face to compete head-to-head with League, but which now Riot will have to deal internally.

Half times for fast and adrenaline-pumping games

Once this obstacle has been overcome, which obviously concerns only veterans and not all new players, a game world opens up almost in 1: 1 scale with small changes to the gameplay able to halve the duration of the matches. It does not change the three-lane map, with the intent of reaching the enemy nexus by destroying the towers on the way to win the game, as well as the strategies behind the title, with a general feeling substantially identical to the older brother.

I minion they will appear immediately at the start of the match and even the largest monsters in the jungle will see their spawn times significantly reduced, including Baron Nashor. To such a high speed of play there are also tricks for what concerns the gain of experience, but above all that of gold. The mechanic of the last hit is in fact still present, but now the champions get gold even by being close to a minion that dies, with a penalty of course, but still giving a constant stream of income. This makes the need to stay in lane for as long as possible even more important, a necessity favored by the healing pods, now positioned directly behind the towers, so as to avoid having to use the recall based on any trade instead.

The possibility of earn gold even without giving the final blow to the enemy minions it is also due to the fact that the precision of the controls, especially in such excited moments, is not exactly the best when we use the classic touch scheme. It will certainly take some time to get used to and to simplify the matter Riot has also included special buttons with which to define the attack priorities between minions and towers, so as not to make you get too many accidental shots. We are convinced, however, that in the first months of the game the easy-to-play and skillshot-free champions such as Garen or Master Yi, will be the best performing ones, among the approximately 50 available at launch, and probably abused by those who want to quickly climb the rankings. The ranked matches are back in a mirror image of what is seen on League of Legends, with a competitive sector in turmoil and already in the organizers' plans.

Beautiful to see

We told you before that this title represented a real new product, as if it were a new and updated version of League of Legends and in fact there are many details even superior to the PC version. Meanwhile i models of the heroes have been rebuilt and are as beautiful as ever, complete with exclusive animations and a presentation of the skins that are different from what was seen on PC.

Convenientgame interface Although we have often found ourselves confused by the new location of the map, now in the top left instead of the bottom right, but it is the changes to the objects that will require the most study time ever. The new speed of item acquisition will in fact change the purchase priorities considerably and the presence of completely new items will revolutionize the way we are used to playing on PC, with a meta that in all probability will greatly differentiate itself by creating its own ecosystem, followed by dedicated patches and updates aimed exclusively at Wildrift. Likewise not all the old characters will be ported to Wildrift and it is not excluded that some of the old champions will be completely revised in terms of functionality to adapt to the new devices, with Riot ready to look very far into the future of Wild Rift.

Comment

Tested version Android Resources4Gaming.com

8.5

Readers (7)

7.0

Your vote

League of Legends: Wild Rift is not a mere port but a real new Riot product. It is the new gateway to an as yet unexplored potential market, ready to overwhelm Riot with exorbitant numbers. The game at present has already proved to be well-kept, refined and eager to grow further with the total support of a dedicated team. After the initial stumbling block of changes to the game system and the control system, there is an incredibly fun MOBA, with short duration games and a very high pace, perfect for short game sessions. The only drawback, therefore, remains the lack of synchronization of progress with League of Legends, which could make more than someone desist to change platforms or having to choose which one to invest time and, inevitably, money on.