Arena of Valor

I’ve dabbled in a few MOBAs on PC, and love the concept, but the community was awful, and the time commitment was unaffordable. Fast forward about six years, and I almost exclusively play video games on the phone these days (after kids are in bed). Arena of Valor combines a strong pedigree (produced by the owners of League of Legends), with a well-balanced community encouragement system, with great frame rates and visuals, mixed with a really nice tutorial that opens up the whole system for you over several days, mixed with joystick based controls that feel right at home on the phone. Oh, and disregard all the negative reviews about balance issues: This game has been out for *years* in China, so trust that those kinks have been smoothed out long ago—no offense to those reviewers but skilled players will win over unskilled players, all heroes have distinct strengths and weaknesses. I’ve played this longer than any multiplayer (video) game to date, to include my Counterstrike days. If you’re new to the concept of what a MOBA is or why you should play (you should), this is *the* one you want. And lastly, you don’t need to pay a cent to play with about a dozen different heroes and unlimited play time. You’ll be matched with players of equal skill regardless. This is a solidly constructed app that takes a serious competitive game and makes it accessible and fun to play at nearly any time. Have fun with this one! Most Recommended!

This game is definitely enjoyable, but I’m not sure I see too much skill involved as far as controls. I’ve only been playing for a few weeks, but so far, it seems as though gameplay just consists of spam buttons. It is extremely difficult to overcome an enemy that has had a better start than you, which gets frustrating sometimes. As a long time Vainglory player, the action spamming in this game is quite enjoyable for a change, but once you’ve played for a few days, there isn’t too much strategy and skill involved, unlike Vainglory. Once you understand your heroes abilities, and the fun of spamming the “attack” button with Valhein starts to wear off, the game starts to lose some fun. Also, in the rare occasion that both teams are pretty equal, late game is a little annoying. Both teams just bunch up in middle lane and try to push, which takes forever, and I feel like the game doesn’t move forward. I mean, both teams can just keep killing each other forever, so I feel like this game is in need of something like the “kraken from Vainglory”. Although it does have the dragons, they do not really change the flow of the game as much as I would hope. However, I love the colorful roster of heroes and the 5v5 action. Overall, I feel as though this game is only really fun on the winning team, but has great potential with the wonderful heroes, so far so good community, and well known developer. Hope this helps thanks!

Game is flawless so far, no bugs, easy going etc. The only issue I’ve ran into is the matching system, it happened at least to me since the last patch, I was a 60% win rate player both in classic mode and ranked before the last patch, after the patch I get matched against full diamond ranked teams me being platinum at the time now gold II with a 46% win rate, I get matched with every kind of troll in the game and AFK player, me getting a kda of a minimum of 2-4 deaths and 5 to 10 kills in one game while my team is composed of feeders and an afk,I didn’t know what a losing streak was till now, 16 losses in a row is just pitiful thanks to afk players and trolls or feeders, the matching system honestly should be fair and not place a diamond team against a team of silver or gold players with less than 1000 matches and the hero selection screen should be changed into something where players get divided into the role that suits them the most for example if a player is good with Butterfly (assassin/jungler) the game should give that player the option to call jungle or fill spot before anyone else does and give priority to that player to jungle, I’ve run into people who play a hero like Murad who in my opinion is the hardest jungler assassin to master in RANKED for the first time costing the match to other players, besides all that the game is near perfect and enjoyable, I rate it a 4.2 for now.

UPDATE: The game has improved tremendously. Gameplay is smoother with easier targeting. And while the ranking is still slow you are able to earn more rewards now. Punishment system is still kinda wonky but it’s getting there. Community is improving but still come across an occasional troll, whether on your team or the opponents remains to be seen. Over gameplay is even better, hero balance is improving, community is shifting towards the upside and reward earnings have increased. Still requires real world money to unlock heroes quicker but they have introduced some nice features around that at a fraction of the cost. My overall rating ATM is 3.7!!!! Game itself is great. Amazing artwork, detailed landscape, colorful ability effects, diverse characters, but that’s about as far as the good points of this game goes and those are the only reason I gave this game 2 stars. The reward system takes entirely too long to level up your rank and earning gold is at a snails pace so you are forced to spend real money if you want to unlock more characters. The community is absolutely horrible! The punishment system is a joke. Yes you can report a person and it can damage their reputation and hinder their rewards, however, all they have to do is play 3-5 matches and they are back at the reputation they previously had.

I’ve played many MOBA games over the past 7 years and have to say that AOV is king of the hill. From great graphics and frame rate to a skilled META that takes patience and skill to learn. It’s not an easy game, but I come back every day for that reason; it doesn’t get old and challenges you anew day after day. It does have its downfalls, though... but so do others: The newer characters feel unbalanced, or in gaming terms “OP”, nerfs and buffs don’t seem to happen as often as they should and eye catching advertisements are everywhere, only a few buttons/icons really have anything to do with playing the game, or adjusting settings etc., most of the icons take you to a place with menus and sub menus to spend your hard earned cash on well overpriced items: tickets, orbs, scrolls in two different forms. The value of the items coded into the game are less than the price set. Also teammates going afk are prevalent in ranked matches. You will lose and also lose a star, a...hard...earned...star. You will be punished for your teammates decision to go afk and that is far from fair. AOV has its ups and downs and is far from perfect as a game in whole, but as a MOBA it’s mechanics, gameplay and META are far superior to anything else on the market. You will spend money on overpriced items, teammates will go afk... but you won’t find a better MOBA.