by Matthew Ingram

After eleven years on PC and Mac, League of Legends has made its way to mobile, now branded as League of Legends Wild Rift. It’s surprising that it took this long for Riot to bring their extremely popular multiplayer game to mobile, considering how expansive the mobile user base is.

I went into Wild Rift with very low expectations and came out pleasantly surprised. I haven’t played many League of Legends on PC, but I am familiar with the game. League translates very well to mobile. The touch controls work very well, the graphics look just as good as the PC version, and the UI is very well designed.

Wild Rift is not exactly the same as the PC game, and there is no cross-progression or cross-play between the two games. However, the game currently has 40 playable champions compared to the PC version’s 155. In addition, Riot plans to add more champions to Wild Rift, presumably bringing it to parity with the PC version.

The map is also changed slightly to make it smaller and facilitate shorter matches. While matches in League of Legends typically run for 30 minutes to an hour, Wild Rift’s matches usually last between 15 and 20 minutes. This change makes sense for a game designed to be played on the train or during short periods of downtime rather than sitting down in front of a desktop PC.

Wild Rift is a free-to-play game that offers optional microtransactions. League of Legends has always had very fair monetization, and Wild Rift doesn’t seem to be an exception so far. Companies will often release games with limited monetization to score good reviews and ramp up the microtransactions a few months later. I wouldn’t put it past Riot since this is the same company that sells $30 weapon skins in Valorant.

Overall, League of a Legends Wild Rift is a well-done port of an already good game. Riot knew exactly what to change to fit the new platform better and what to keep the same as it’s always been.