Caltrops - Reviews - League of Legends, making Warcraft 3 fun

Forum Overview :: Reviews

by FABIO 11/15/2009, 11:11pm PST

So Warcraft 3 was garbage that nobody liked. The one interesting mechanic was all the different heroes and the simplified diablo 2 level upgrading to them all.

Unfortunately, they made it into a boring RTS MMO of nothing but endless obscure stat buffs in lieu of ass kicking and slowly plinking the other side's TANK TANK TANK to death. On top of that was a traditional RTS economy model that didn't mesh well with their new "direction".

Enter Defenders of the Ancients. From what I can tell it was like Sacrifice only it was all about your hero and units were automated in construction and control. I'm not too sure past that, all I do know is that it was responsible for this.

Now comes League of Legends. Free(!)mium game that carries the torch. Two dozen heroes to choose from each with the Warcraft 3 model of abilities and leveling. You play on teams of 5 and the basic idea is to push to the enemy base along any one of 3 paths and destroy their equivalent of Sacrifice's altar. The trick is that each lane has turrets along it that will rape you if you come under fire so you need your units to reach it in order to act as cannon fodder to draw fire from you. Both sides' units are equal and automatically respawn at the same rate, so it's up to the players' heroes to break the stalemates and push back the front to the nearest enemy turret and destroy it. Once you destroy the last turret you begin spawning super units in that lane as a way to end the game.

Unlike Warcraft 3's boring pace, the action is fast and brutal. You can and will get shit torn up if you misstep. The game becomes a matter of ambushes, counter ambushes, managing teleports across the map, knowing when to defend, when to push, and when to shift your efforts to another lane. It's all about tearing ass with your hero and not about babysitting your braindead units because the other team's units are just as automated braindead.

There are a couple of minor nitpicks. Overall the balance is pretty good, though a couple of the heroes seem flat out better (Master Yi and the werewolf). It carries over a lot of the needlessly obscure stats from Warcraft 3 and can be hard to understand how they affect you at first (armor is measured with a numerical value which is then converted to a percentage based on some hidden diminishing return formula? bwuh?). The other players tend to be screechy DotA vets that will endlessly pound the beacon button and scream at you for not following optimum lane placement and item selection. But that's about it.

Why are you still reading this? It's free and can run on a 6 year old computer. Play it! Tell the other players to a eat dick.