One of the oldest MOBAs now accessible for mobile is Arena of Valor. It is a translation of Honor of Kings, one of China’s most well-liked MOBAs. Since its introduction almost 6 years ago, AoV has been among the most well-liked MOBAs.
Arena of Valor: Essentials
Arena of Valor was created by TiMi Studios, a division of Tencent Games, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, if not the biggest. One of the 2015 releases from Tencent, Honor of Kings, was translated into several languages to produce AoV. Honor of Kings, which has more than 160 million monthly active users, became the highest-grossing mobile game in the world in less than two years after its introduction. AoV was initially released in the EU on August 10, 2017, after Tencent chose to modify the game for a worldwide release due to its enormous popularity.
The game has received over 10 million downloads on Google Play and an average user rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars from over 800,000 user reviews. Additionally, AoV has over 66 thousand user reviews with an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on the iTunes App Store.
On September 25, 2018, the game was also launched for the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, one of the reasons AoV wasn’t as well-liked on Switch is that cross-play between the Switch version and Mobile wasn’t possible due to some incompatibilities.
Game Mechanics
The MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre includes AoV.
Its primary game style involves two teams of five players, each engaging in a field of combat. The objective is to destroy the enemy’s core, and each team has its own base to protect. Three lanes and a jungle make up the battlefield. Waves of minions will start marching down these lanes shortly after the game begins. There are neutral monsters sprouting in the jungle along with each team’s own minions. You can earn money by killing monsters, minions, enemy players, or demolishing any of the buildings that belong to the opposing team. The gold can be used to buy various things that will improve your character’s fighting prowess.
Each hero has one passive, two actives, and one ultimate skill. Additionally, there are numerous classifications of heroes.
- Characters with durability who specialize in surviving perilous situations include tanks. As a result, they don’t deal as much damage as other heroes. Still, they excel at keeping the foes under control and safeguarding their friends.
- Warriors can take damage very well, but not as well as tanks. They frequently have good damaging tools in their toolbox and can take some harm from their adversaries.
- Characters like assassins are mainly concerned with providing high burst damage to their opponents. They frequently have good mobility but, for the most part, no survival skills. They are the high-risk, high-reward kind of heroes as a result.
- Heroes who specialize in high magic damage dealing with their skills include mages. They often have excellent AoE damage output and frequently have some mobility or crowd control.
- Marksmen are ranged attackers who concentrate on inflicting heavy sustained damage on their targets. They frequently need the protection of other heroes to use their maximum damage potential, which is why they are commonly partnered with Support heroes in lanes.
- Support characters are heroes who typically deal more minor damage but compensate for it with beneficial abilities like utility, crowd control, or healing. They frequently team up with other heroes – usually Marksmen.
- Heroes known as “junglers” are adept at eliminating jungle enemies rapidly and have reasonable crowd control or burst damage. They can now move around the area and hunt for chances to ambush adversaries or support their allies in battle. Since they are not officially defined in the game as a separate category, heroes from all six types mentioned above could potentially jungle.
In AoV, there are numerous distinct game modes. For example, in casual matches, players can engage in 3v3 or 5v5 combat with human opponents or AI bots. In addition, ranked matches are available for those more interested in the competitive side of AoV.
Game Atmosphere
When it comes to this element, AoV does quite well. Players frequently experience joy once they record a kill or assist and triumph over their opponent because the game is fundamentally competitive. In addition, the announcer for the game is also significantly enhancing the ambiance.
It’s also important to note that the music was written by the great Hans Zimmer, Matthew Carl Earl, and Jeff Broadbent. The game’s soundtrack is incredible and significantly enhances the overall experience. Other than that, each character has a complete voiceover, which further enhances the mood.
Artwork
It has 3D visuals, like the majority of other MOBAs. The character models are all really well-made and carefully thought out. Additionally, each character has its own piece of art and a variety of skins. These occasionally significantly alter how the characters seem. Some uncommon skins may also include distinctive narration and animations. Finally, the game’s aesthetics have been worked on for about two and a half years. As a result, several elements seem dramatically different from when it was first released.
Most spell animations are well-done and work well with the overall scene. After playing for a while, players can quickly identify the skills and spells because many of them have pretty distinctive animations. All things considered, the game looks fantastic and has seen significant visual improvement since its debut.
Tech Compatibility
The Arena of Valor definitely shines in this situation. The game’s optimization for a wide range of mobile devices was a top priority for the developers. An Android 4.0.3 compliant smartphone is the absolute minimum required for Android users. In addition, you must have a device compatible with iOS 9 or later to play the game on iOS. Since the prerequisites are so few, almost everyone with a smartphone should be able to play the game.
AoV has excellent optimization. Players can alter various graphic settings to boost the game’s performance. The game will operate smoothly enough for those with less powerful phones to play if the settings are just reduced to the absolute lowest. However, users of high-end mobile devices can turn up the graphics settings to the maximum and take advantage of the game’s high visuals.
Arena of Valor: F2P or P2P
One of the fairest games available is AoV when it comes to being Free-to-Play friendly. Contrary to many other games, which have numerous microtransactions and paywalls, you cannot actually purchase anything beneficial with real money. The main uses of microtransactions are to buy cosmetics and unlock new heroes (which you can do by playing anyway). This is one of the friendliest mobile games for free-to-play players because there isn’t much that can be bought with real money regarding actual battles.
Review Summary
AoV is still among the most played MOBAs in 2022, all things considered. Its engaging gameplay and fantastic atmosphere set it apart from other games in the same genre.
Based on current trends, AoV will continue to be played for many years.
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