Every once in a while I play a game that can become practically brand new when I try something out just slightly different than before. One of those games is League of Legends, or LoL. After playing the game for two years, I think it’s time I gave my thoughts on it.

Currently, LoL is one of the most played PC video games. One of its biggest draws is that it’s free, but the game has other underlying qualities that make it just so much fun to play.

I will admit, LoL had me wondering why it was so popular at first. I saw it as a featureless, free-to-play version of a normal tower defense type of game. My opinion changed when I gave the game a chance, and now it is one of those that I play every single day.

The game has a sort of tower-defense style, but with dynamic situations thrown in that make sure no two games are alike. These “situations” are actually called champions, and they are what drive the game’s replayability. There are more than 100 champions to choose from, with an additional champ added every couple of weeks. Each “summoner” (player) gets to choose a champion at the beginning of a game, and then spends the game leveling up their character with kills, captures and assists.

For instance, my favorite champion is a mage called Swain. Like every other champion, Swain has four abilities that he can level up and activate to help him fight, support or tank (depending on his role). The first three abilities on all champions are meant to help them out in whatever way possible, but what truly defines a character is their “ultimate.” This fourth skill, which usually costs a lot of mana (or whatever resource the champion uses), exemplifies what the job of that champion is.

For instance, Swain’s ultimate transforms him into a massive raven that deals huge area of effect damage and grants him insane healing. A champion with a gun can activate his ultimate, which might shoot a massive cannonball at his enemies. A tank’s ultimate might give him a shield that makes him invulnerable. No matter the champion, each has an ultimate that could possibly change the entire game.

Champions all start at low levels (0 or 3, depending on the game mode) and need to play their jobs if they want to gain XP. Swain is a “mid” champ, which means he gets the middle lane of the map and is supposed to fight the enemy mid. This is replicated for all lanes of a map, as each team’s goal is to reach the enemy base and destroy their final structure, called a Nexus. When a Nexus dies, that team loses.

The game is so fun and has me coming back to it because whenever I get bored with a champ, I just use the in-game currency (you can also use real money) to buy a new one to try out. I was using Nocturne for the longest time, but tried out Swain and had a blast. I currently own 5 characters, which means I can choose any of them to play as in each match, provided someone else doesn’t choose them first.

The only drawback to the game is that the community can be very rude and that there are only three main maps. You don’t even get to play more than one map per game mode; those three each have 1 mode tied to them and you can’t interchange. This is disappointing, but the game is still too fun for that to really be a deal breaker. Still though, a couple new maps would be appreciated.

In all, the game is very, very addictive and offers extreme competition that is unheard of in most F2P (free to play) games. In the end there’s not much to it (kill enemies, spend cash for champions), but I and millions of others still play it daily, so they must be doing something right.

League of Legends gets a 4.5/5.