First Look into Wild Rift in League of Legends

If you told us a while ago that they making a mobile version of League of Legends we wouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, don’t worry, we know about Wild Rift someone told us. But it is an increasingly common trend to adopt mainstream popular franchises to phone ports, especially with the increased capacity of phones to handle more and more demands on their hardware. If you told us that Wild Rift would be a really good League of Legends port, then we would probably be very much surprised, and just more than a tad skeptical. In fact, we have a hard time believing it now as we write this article. But yeah, it’s true, go figure.

More specifically, Wild Rift isn’t as trimmed down as most were expecting to be. Don’t get us wrong, if you are a hardcore LoL purist who needs your specialty mouse, keybindings, and headset then Wild Rift isn’t really for you. But the thing it, it isn’t just for new players either.

Don’t get us wrong, Wild Rift is really accessible to new players. Tons of tutorials, easy controls, easy-to-understand gameplay, and shorter matches make this version of LoL a newbies dream. Absent too are the horror stories you may have heard before, no voice chat and all the interactions are pre-programmed. The toxic facets of the community will not be able to get much of a foothold here, knock on wood.

What about more long-standing fans, veterans, and the like? What will they think about Wild Rifts? Surely it isn’t meant for them. Maybe they aren’t the target demographic, true. With the gameplay for regular LoL being so established and daunting, Riot does need a way to give newer players access to the lore if they want to see new player bases for the other spin-off games like Team-Fight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra and Wild Rift might be just what the doctor ordered.

But back to the previous question because we weren’t done answering it. Wild Rift isn’t bad for veteran players, some may even really like it. Wild Rift, while paring some stuff away to get the game into mobile shape, there is a lot that has been retained. In fact, some players may really enjoy having some of the more complex aspects of LoL removed since a lot of new gameplay and champions might have been challenging for long-time fans. Wild Rift is good for new players, but it might be a breath of fresh air for veterans who are looking to come out of retirement.

And the gameplay might feel different without your standard PC mouse and keyboard set up, but it will feel familiar too. The lanes are still there, the roles are still there, your favorite champions are still there, except now they are spelled out in much more direct and simplistic terms. You probably won’t have the check the wiki if you haven’t caught up on the lore in a while, which we personally count as a plus.

Well, now your really skeptical right? Because it can’t all be good news. Well no, it can’t, opinions are a fickle and subjective thing. Where some people see simplicity and streamlined mobile controls, others see ones that aren’t precise enough. And that is fair on both sides. You can no longer choose specific enemies, no mouse clicking after all, but instead, choose areas and the A.I. chooses enemy priority. Less precise, to be sure, and if that is what you value in your LoL strategy then you are sure to be in for a bad time.

Another thing to point out. If you are looking for highly skilled opponents every time, then Wild Rift might not be your cup of tea for the time being. It’s inviting to new players, which means new players are going to play. This is a good thing, generally, but that also means you can’t expect the same skill level matchups you get with people whose League of Legends account is older than the entirety of the Wild Rifts game.

The biggest downside? Well, it might not really be an issue with the game at all but rather the nature of the beast. If you are a long-time LoL fan then you have your account around the way you want it, with your preferred champions and preferred skins and all of that good stuff. The thing is, while Wild Rift has a lot of the champions from core LoL in it, your account and assets don’t transfer. To play some of your favorites you might have to buy them all over again, which has certainly left a sour taste in some players’ mouths. Why try a new, similar game on your phone if it just means you have to start building an account from scratch after investing years in the one you have on your PC? We think is a very fair question.

What it really comes down to are your expectations. Wild Rift is far from a bad game, and that’s fairly objective. It runs smoothly and it is fun. Perhaps you may see Wild Rift accounts for sale soon on a League of Legends account marketplace such as our own.  If you remove that there is an existing similar game on the PC to compare it to then what do you have? It is hard to be able to examine anything in a vacuum, but being perfectly blunt Wild Rift is good because it a mobile port of a tried and tested good game, and there is little more to it than that. Little more, that is, other than larger mobile and micro-transaction conversation surrounding gaming as a whole, but that is a different conversation for a different article.

If you are a League of Legends fan we say check it out. If you aren’t a League of Legends fan and want to know what all the noise is about, then we still recommend checking it out. If you want to know what knights killing giant teddy bears has to do with a music video that features a woman with fox tails singing in a laundromat, then this is also a better place to start but we will admit it might take you a little longer to get caught up.