Arena of Valor Preview

I've heard so much about Arena of Valor they said it's the much better version of Mobile Legends so I decided to give it a try. AOV is by Garena and this game company is not new with these stuff they have already launched this kind of game before in the pc platform and was second popular pc platform moba game before LOL arrived years and years ago I think back in 2007. I wasn't surprised that they are already in the phone gaming platform market. Here I'm going to write down my thoughts about AOV the similarity and difference with ML since everyone knows ML very well it'll be the best way to describe how good or not this game is.

Let's start with the lobby design. The lobby design is better than ML cleaner and uncluttered. If you're a minimalist you'll find it the most pleasing lobby design compared to Heroes Evolved and Mobile Legends. AOV almost have everything that ML currently have from the Casual matches, heroes, ranking even the AI matches and so much more that ML doesn't have. What AOV doesn't have is t2qournaments. Now I'm not a long time player of AOV so I might missed a few things on here, you can let me know in the comment section down below. 

You can actually get a total of 14 permanent heroes for free. Four of them are given after completing tutorials and others are given after completing games.

After tapping the Casual match you'll see 2 more option on how you want to play the game bot match and the custom match. Bot match is playing with yoour friends against AI meanwhile Custom match is where you can play versus with friends or you can play with AI too it has more options than Bot matches.

Each one have the same type of matches the 5v5 Valley skirmish for 3v3 match, Hook wars, Abyssal clash, Solo battle and death match.  I haven't played hook wars, solo battle and abyssal clash I will find out soon what kind of gameplay these have.

On their Training camp tab is where you can find the tutorials, practice and guides. Tutorials is where you can learn something inside the arena like jungling. Practice mode let's you try all of the heroes except for Xeniel, the joker, kil' groth, Arduin and Airi. Guide is where you can learn about the basic outside the arena like daily quest and shope purchases.

Unfortunately live streaming is not for everyone. You can access live streaming under the setting option at the top right corner in the lobby. And they don't have a specific page or tab for streamers yet. (Credit to: Peter aka chuck)

Heroes here also have their own background stories, one passive skill, three active skills and skins. You can also view the heros in 360° and the graphics is crisp and outstanding yoou can see so much details. Similarities that you'll see in ML but in different terms are: Instead of Squads you'll be see Guilds, instead of emblems you'll see Arcana, instead of abilities you'll see Talents, instead of Gears you'll see armoury, instead of battle points you'll see Gold and instead of diamonds you'll see Gems. And oh they don't make new heroes op and nerf them after they stay the way they are with their stat and abilities which is fab that's why a lot of people who played AOV says heroes here are much more well balanced.

Now let's talk about about Arcana. Basically you get to unlock all these slots and choose which Arcanas' you want to fill in to enhance your heroes prowess. Unlike in ML you just need to level-up your emblems in AOV you are given a chance to customize your additional stat. There are 8 types Arcanas and each type has specific enhancements for Attack, HP, Defense, Ability, Life steal, Attack speed, Critical chance and Piercing. Now each page has 30 slots every 10 slots are divided in three colors in which you can place Aracanas' that has the same color and there are 10 pages that you can unlock.

The very first thing that I like in this game that ML doesn't have AOV is able to detect if you have a highly unstable network and will stop you from joining matches and rank games. Sometimes you won't know if your connection is unstable so hey thanks to this the frustration in-game is lessen. Though you may still feel some lag in-game when your connection suddenly drops  but at least it would let you know before hand as soon as the game detects it.

As you can see here besides the option to invite your friends (fb friends and manually added friends) you may also invite people to join you in two more way. Inviting those you just recently played with and those that are near your location.

Inside the arena there are couple of things here that ML doesn't have while everything else stays the same.

 First is the pre-order at the shop, the shop let's you pre-order an item that you want to build first which will show up on the left screen prioritizing that item that you pre-ordered than what's on your first list in your armoury setting. Sometimes you would have a change of heart of what you want to build first or you forgot to change your armoury setting prior so this is a great help if ever that happened.

Second is the ward, there's a bird like spirit wandering each lake sides which provides ward for your team but only within the jungle area. You just need to defeat it as it turns into a wisp then it will roam around in a few seconds and goes back as a bird spirit again.

Third is that green glyph right there. If you played brawl matches in ML you know you have been seeing this a lot if not then let me tell you what this is. This is a healing glyph in AOV every first tower in every lane as long as they are still standing will always provide these glyphs after a few minute. It heals both of your hp and mp.

And lastly it has two major bosses in the jungle the Abyssal dragon which gives extra gold and exp and the Dark Slayer which increases Team damage, boost mana and hp regen.

Meanwhile Arena stays the same. How you get to the next tier by filling up the stars, seasons, skin rewards and using heroes that you have acquired. Techincally everything.


If your more on tournament stuff then this is not for you or you have to wait for local tournaments. Ranking those three moba that I've tried it would be Arena of Valor first because of their balanced heroes then Heroes Evolved because of their rank up system is justified lastly Mobile Legend because of their server traffic, failure on detecting the exact ping/ms and nerfing heroes. That's it! Thanks for reading!