VainGlory: Preview

I recently got interested with Vainglory. I actually want to check out on it since they updated to 5v5 but I had some personal excuses. *ehem* anyway this was introduce to me more on a family get together recently we were sold to play it. Me and my siblings decided to download it on the same day to have fun with everyone. No more excuses.

Vainglory is a 5v5 three laned mapped and a 3v3 one laned mapped moba by super evil megacorp. The apk size is small but additional files may take some time to download in an average internet speed. The good thing is that's all that you need, no more patches to download after. Once you run the game it will start extracting files on your storage.

As you can see above the home user interface is minimal, very minimal but not aesthetically pleasing which I don't mind really. It has no leaderboard, no world/local chat, no equipment cusomization, no additional stat customization, no battle history and so on. You will see basic things here like matches, heroes, market for shop, party and social for friends and guild

Here's the player profile, if you click on your name on the top left of the UI as you can see on the image above it only shows your level and level rewards plus the tabs to see and get your seasonal reward, ranking for 5v5, ranking for 3v3 and trophies. Unlike other mobile moba games player profile shows your battle record, winrate, hero proficiency and so on. In Vainglory can't see your friends profile because there's nothing to see.

And here is the list of heroes tab. Nothing fancy again just the basic of showing you all the heroes.. I notice there is no option to filter out the heroes for tanks, marksman, melee etc you just have to tap on each hero to find out.

Here's what you'll see when you tap on one of the heroes the only difference here from the other moba games are: obviously heroes are not in 3d, no background story and no equipment customization.

Heroes here in Vainglory have talents which you can unlock and level up along the way. These talents are passive skills which helps your hero dominate the arena and every hero has their own unique talents. Taping on the talent tab will let you see their available wtalents each gives an effect either to the hero itself or additional effect for that specific hero's skills.

For example this Hero Kestrel as you can see on the previous image above has 3 active skill and one passive. Her skill A called glimmershot fires an arrow as it damage the first target on its path then does a splash damage on nearby enemies upon impact.

If you unlock this Talent Glimmer Volley the first talent on the list for Krestel instead of Glimmershot firing only one arrow as it shows above it will fire two arrows with additional damage and range which increases as you level the talent.

Meanwhile the Market or shop is the same buying skin, in-game currency and keys to unlock chests for talents, heroes, skin blueprints and in-game currency.

For its matches they have the 5v5 which is new, 3v3, Blitz is a 3v3 brawl mode game who ever has the highest score wins, battle royal is another 3v3 brawl mode type which gives you random hero and tutorial where you can practice any hero.

Let's only focus on their 5v5 arena because without it I wouldn't be playing this game. Vainglory's arena has all of the basic things that other moba has. The gameplay here is tapping everything for movement and targets. The player view is too far that when both team clashes you can't tell what's happening mostly its confusing sometimes if there's a lot of melees battling each other out. The map is actually huge if you compare the hero:map ratio that's why it feels like you're heroes are walking so slow compared to other mobile moba upgrading your shoes twice is a must in early game.

Couple of things they don't have are the option to pre-order equipments and you can't see your allies hp unless your with them which is not that bad actually. What they have here which most mobile moba that I played don't have is wards they call visions, since it doesn't have pre-order option and customization for equipment it offers build recommendation which prompts on your screen at the start of the game at the arena.

Here's how it shows the build recomendation. You choose a build and it shows a brief description about the build if you swipe more towards the right it'll give younoption to create your own build. Now to increase the damage of your hero you can choose from these two items list: Weapon and crystal damage items.

Weapon damage increases your basic attack and crystal damage increases your skill damage. If in doubt you can always check your skill it will show you the damage difference. And one more thing this game has the most items that provides active skill which they call utility items for healing, blocking, shield and the effect is mostly for the whole team in the area.

Ranking matches is separated for 5v5, 3v3,and blitz also it requires for you to be level 10 with 14 heroes for 5v5 and 8 heroes for 3v3 and no requirement for blitz. Which means you really have to play a lot before you can join rank up matches and also means your proficiency with all the matches you played has improved to average or above. Less cancer player on rank games.

Lastly Ms or ping here stands the best from other mobile moba. 500ms below can still make you play smoothly unlike in aov and ML it's a very serious lag time that spells gg.

Overall this game is average. It has a scifi-fantasy-dark feels on it with its map theme and hero concepts. The gameplay is unique it has simple and basic things that beginners can understand for moba gaming though the gameplay is a bit tricky. I feel like the game is raw which I think now their beginning to understand soon they will have an analog control and voice chat. It's good to be unique but try not be left behind or you will be out of the game. Another good thing is you'll encounter lesser toxic people here unlike ML which has the most number of toxic players followed by AOV. Since there is no need to think about your winrate, rank and toxic players who blames or curses everyone you can just have fun with friends or alone.