If you want to survive, you’ll need to learn a lot, and fast. Practice against bots means long games. Any MOBA player knows what it’s like. Combat has three lanes and is five vs five. In addition to leveling up your Champion and earning gold to buy stuff, you’ll be slaying minions and dismantling turrets. Wild Rift doesn’t change that, but it does sand down the rough edges of League PC. It’s pretty obvious that a match is going to last about 20 minutes — half as long as a normal LoL PC match. Anybody who wants a quick burst of action and doesn’t want a long-term commitment can jump straight into another game afterwards.
It’s a big deal because Riot changed the map of Wild Rift. The map still has turrets, jungle, etc., but inhibitors and Nexus turrets are gone. Turret plating is gone too, so the game doesn’t feel like it’s an attrition war. In Wild Rift, your character can be built out with dozens of items, yet it’s still tactical. You can now pre-order items, build up your gold reserves faster, and they no longer have active abilities. Instead of clicking a location to send your character there, Wild Rift takes a controller-like approach – movement goes left, abilities go right.
My only non-turn-based phone game has turret targeting options and skill shots like Lux’s Final Spark. I also love watching League players go at it, but now I’m too old to play myself. Although Wild Rift has its own ranked matches, I like to take down the bots in PvE mode, and teaming up with friends is fun — and a great way to try out new Champions. League of Legends may be a little dated after more than a decade, but Wild Rift features great new character models. The game looks much more modern than League on PC, whether you swing Garen’s sword, Draven’s axes, or cards. You don’t need skins to earn new characters, but the in-game economy is pretty generous. Wild Rift is a great starting point for League of Legends fans.
