League of Legends is a pet peeve of mine, since one bad person took down DotA forum, stole ideas from it, created LoL, and acted like a big shot. He wasn’t alone, but you know what I mean.
To this day I think that Blizzard hates esports, because they left DotA with 0 support, and only after many years of Dota 2 they created Heroes of the Storm, which was even more watered down than LoL.
And LoL is such a simple game, which is OK, but once you actually understand Dota, it doesn’t come anywhere close. It brought nothing innovative. Which is sad.
Source: I played hundreds of hours, and put hundreds of dollars into LoL back in the ~2010.
I am always suprised that people expected anything differently.
Epic was from the start doing things the wrong way, and I will not support any store that has exclusives.
Making a good gaming platform that could rival Steam would take A LOT of time and money and dare I say - no company is willing to lose that for a chance of one day perhaps being only slightly worse competitor that still can’t convince people to migrate.
Not that old, but Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (2004).
I have not played that many games, but I have yet to find such an amazing action adventure combat mechanics.
There is a trailer on Youtube that does the system justice - everything can be done in-game, at your will, and it’s not even that hard. Context matters, and it’s so rewarding chaining different combos to plow through them like butter.
Those basic enemies are meant to be fucked up in every possible way, the environments often provide ample varieties of opportunities.
Then there are stronger enemies and bosses, which don’t let you mop them around, so you have to fight them face to face.
The game itself is decent, there are some bad platforming parts, but thanks to time rewind they can be beaten.
The biggest issue is very low native resolution, and the game kept crashing on my Steam Deck. I will try it again, because I want to relive that combat again.
I love it, it really makes for great immersive experience even for people who aren’t used to RPG settings. The Deep ones are always on the move, so there is the omnipresent sense of impending doom, and that gets everyone nervous and looking kinda sus.
But it takes a while to finish one run, with first-timers it can take over 3 hours.
I still recommend it and push it on other people :)