The announcement of Valorant Mobile last autumn, under the name Project A, was a bombshell with all the others from eSport giant Riot Games on the occasion of the League of Legends’ tenth-anniversary celebration. The ambition of this tactical FPS was to gather “all FPS players under the same banner” by mixing the mechanics of Counter-Strike with the usable skills of Overwatch or Rainbow Six Siege. So keep reading our Review only at ApkCorner.
It’s also a game with an eSport purpose. An ambitious but credible ad from a publisher who is at the head of the number one eSport title in the world. At the time of release, many modest cash prize amateur tournaments are being organised and the biggest sports organisations are launching their teams, but it is still too early for ambitious regular tournaments or Majors to be organised for Valorant Mobile.
After a successful closed beta with three million players daily, some people were concerned about the short time between its closure and the official release of the game, which took place only a few days later, on 2 June. Is Valorant Mobile well finished? Has the project had time to mature just a few months after it was unveiled?
Valorant mobile Gameplay
Let’s go back to the basics first. Valorant Mobile is a free-to-play tactical FPS that is played in teams of five. Two teams compete against each other consecutively in attack and then in defence in order to win points and win the game, which lasts between twenty-five and forty minutes. The attacking team must succeed in planting a bomb, called Spike, on one of the different sites located at the other end of the map and defended by the opposing team. The other way to win a round is to eliminate the entire opposing team.
The defenders must prevent the bomb from being planted or, failing that, from exploding by defusing it within a given time. Players can also win the defence by eliminating all opponents. The first team to reach thirteen points wins the match, and the two teams swap roles at halftime. Each round has a preparation phase of thirty seconds and an execution phase of one minute and forty seconds.
At first glance, Valorant Mobile seems to have invented nothing, since CS:GO is played with almost the same rules. But the main originality of this FPS is the addition of agents with unique skills. A mix of genres that was notably influenced by MOBA, which inspired the creation of Rainbow Six Siege, and Team Fortress 2, which preceded the release of Overwatch. Each agent generally has four skills, which serve SPF purposes such as taking control of an area (damage or blinding areas for grenade-like effects) or taking information about enemies (camera, revelatory arrow etc), for example.
Competitive Potential
One of the most important strengths of Valorant Mobile is its high progression curve. This is an opinion shared by many professionals and high-level players: players will have the opportunity to progress over many hours of play, with a depth of gameplay that seems sufficient. In addition to the inherent difficulty of accurate aiming, which already requires many hours of training, the maps and agents add additional layers of skills and strategies to be mastered.
While the maps may appear unremarkable at first glance, they are full of tactical possibilities and each has its own style. While Ascent offers countless choke points and a very open-mid, Bind favours flanking, while Haven consists of short paths that favour aggression.
The economy plays an important part in Valorant Mobile, in the manner of Counter-Strike: at the start of each round, players must buy their weapons, but also armour and the usable skills of the chosen agent. Only two skills cannot be bought: the “signature”, which recharges itself, and the ultimate, which is unlocked with eliminations and orbs placed on the map. An Ultimate can be used as often as twice in a game, or as often as six or seven times by a successful player.
Either way, economy adds a layer of strategy: the player must decide whether to spend all his money in Valorant Mobile around or to make concessions and save to avoid losing everything in the event of defeat in the round. This is because the player is separated from his weapons when he is eliminated and regains less money after a lost round. This also limits the use of snipers in the game, which are among the most expensive weapons with the minigun.
In addition to all this, weapons also bring additional skills to master. There are seventeen of them in Valorant Mobile and each one has its own specificities. Depending on your preferred agents and game styles, the weapon preferences will not be the same.
