We start immediately on a assumption, reviewing Wild Rift is not an easy task: we are talking about a brand, that of Legends League, which has recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary and continues to make numbers that make more recent productions stack.
And to celebrate these incredible results, Mom Riot has decided, wisely, to invest in a rapidly growing market, that is to say, mobile gaming. That the MOBAs fit very easily to be played on the screen of a phone, it certainly does not teach us LoL: Mobile Legends, Arena of Valor, VainGlory, just to name a few, are all titles played and with a huge follow, especially in the Asian continent. It seemed so strange that Riot Games, dominatrix of the MOBA universe along with the rival acerrim Valve, had not yet exploited its prominent position to give a stroke of grace to competition, especially in the West.
Well that moment has arrived, and since 10 December last, that is since the servers for us European users have officially opened, we spent several hours on League of Legends: Wild Rift (with good peace of the battery life of our poor smartphones) to tell you our about this "new" arrived in the panorama of MOBAMobile.
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Welcome (or welcome back) to the Landa degli Evori
From the first moments the feeling of play is exactly the same as the older brother on PC: already during the tutorial we reconnect the same music, the same sound effects, as well as the same dubbing. Once this introductory phase is completed it will be possible to compete in complete games, first against AI, then against real players. Once reached level 10 opens the chance to participate in ranked matches. Leeds are accessible in a very premature manner compared to the version PC and, if on the one hand this has been done clearly because much of the playerbase already has a long experience in the version PC, on the other hand the risk is to throw beginners into the mix well too prematurely. The absence of the pick pick draft is a lack that honestly made a lot of feel: often you find yourself having to play in absurd positions only to beg for the unspoiled picks of the random that matchmaking made us. If this is acceptable in unranked, it is certainly not for those looking for a bit of extra competition in ranked, but Riot has already announced that the draft will be added shortly, the problem is therefore destined to resolve shortly (we hope).
Wild Rift currently has about fifty samples, a quite narrow roster with respect to the original, but it definitely helps the rosters to set up and gradually know the heroes as they will be added. The presence of fewer samples also allowed the team to balance them in an extremely positive way: apart from a few exceptions (cough...Lee Sin....cough Ezreal...cough) we have not seen samples prevail overwhelmingly, unless he who commands them deserves it by manifest superiority. Sample models have been completely redesigned to adapt to the mobile version and we have to say, but perhaps it is superfluous to reiterate it, that the work done by Riot is definitely egregio. At present there is a certain scarcity of skins, but we do not doubt that even this is a short-term problem.
HUD, however "rich", never becomes intrusive
The Gameplay
Although Wild Rift is not a porting, this is right to reiterate it, with telephone to the hand really seems to be at the PC to play a Standard League match. Graphically the work done is excellent, the skills of the characters are practically unchanged, the mechanics of play, although speeded up to allow shorter games (about 20 minutes), are at all upset. Of course, this requires the attention: in the first place the minion spawn, jungle monsters and dragons/baron is sensibly speeded; the mechanics of the last-hit, made more difficult obviously by the inevitable inaccuracies by the touch controls, has been adapted to the situation, allowing the players an introit of gold even if they will not be to last-hittare the neighboring minions (obviously if not slab- less). The developers have also inserted a lock system of minion, towers or heroes, so that both our spells and our auto-attacks are automatically addressed to the target we choose: to normal things, in fact, the system always gives priority to the nearest sample, but, if we want to focus on the last-hitting, it is possible to press a button to ignore the pointing system the samples. Also pressing on the portrait of an enemy sample when it is near you can lock it so that all our spells automatically address to him. Two features that at first glance seem very interesting, but that in reality we used very little, preferring the manual pointing of skills.
The roster sees veteran champions but also quite recent, as Seraphine
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In this regard there is to say that inevitably the characters most tied to skill-shot mechanics to be efficient are, at least initially, penalized: no matter what you have spent hundreds of hours agguanting enemies with Blitzcrank, because when you have to direct for the first time his hook with your thumb, you will probably resell yourself to the first weapons also tie the easier grabs. On the contrary, characters like the good old Garen are extremely efficient even for the most inexperienced player, given the substantial absence of "mirate" skill. As far as the controls are successful, it is useless to deny that the absence of mouse and keyboard makes itself felt, especially with regard to communication with other team members: three standard pings will be available to signal a danger or the will to engage the fight, but for other equally important callouts such as "enemies missing" (for the love of heaven call the absence of your laner to allies) we will have to turn to the game chat, which presents pre-set callouts but not exactly immediate to select.
Ashe and Braum side by side, for the Freljord! !
We recommend you, even if you are old-time players, to try with hand the mobile adaptation of all champions. This is also extremely easy to do as Riot has decided to reward players who have already experience with LoL with delicious rewards that climb according to how many hours of your life you spent in the Landa. Among free events and rewards you can easily get about half of the samples currently available, not to mention those available in free rotation every week. Unfortunately apart from counting hours, nothing else is shared with your main LoL account: champions, skins, game currency, everything remains segregated on PC. That's too bad.
Technically speaking. .
We tested the title on a iPhone XS Max. With maxate settings, we've safely played without straining the device, even in 60fps mode. As we already said, Wild Rift is a spectacle for the eyes and it really turns very well. We do not know how the situation is on more dated devices, but given the wide range of editable graphics settings, we are sure that everyone will be able to find settings that allow them to enjoy the experience proposed by the game. From the point of view of latency we found a annoying bug: in the game lobby the ping detected is often very high without reason (500ms). But when you actually enter the ping, it turns out to be absolutely normal and stable. So don't let yourself be blocked by the warning that you are propinated by saying that your connection is too unstable to play, IT'S A LIE!
In conclusion
League of Legends: Wild Rift enters the mobile market of MOBA, disembarking competition with quality and experience. Reproposing the winning formula of content and gameplay, Riot will prepare to destroy further school and university careers (as well as work, why not) by making Landa available wherever you are. Although with the insurmountable limits to which the input touch obliges us, once we take the hand it will seem to have always played on mobile, and the speed of the games will lead us to shoot one after another, worse than the cherries (and so much health of our carpal). The title is officially still in beta, so many content will be added, so many players' requests will come, hopefully, welcome, the competitive scene is already forming, in short, This time Riot seems to have hit the target.
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