VainGlory Review

I'm a huge fan of action RPGs like Diablo and its iOS clone, the Dungeon Hunter series. I've been playing them for years. Sadly, as my hand has stopped working, the games have integrated more and more complex controls and left me behind. VainGlory is a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) that also feels like very modern take on the action RPG genre, and it returns to the perfect basic controls of yesteryear. Simply tap where you want to move, and tap to attack your target until it's dead.

You pick a fighter of your choice to work with and level-up, each with a unique way of fighting and different special moves. As they level-up, you can make these moves more powerful. You fight your way through battle maps, killing other team's grunts, gun turrets, and eventually their power crystal, which acts like the king in chess. Once that's gone, you win.

While you're trained against the computer, you'll be competing online against two other players' teams at a time. You collect gold from downed monsters and enemies, which is used to by consumable items and weapon/armor buffs to equip. The game is monetized by allowing you to spend real world cash to pay for these and get a jump on the competition.

Where the game suffers is in its character design. When I started it up, I was greeted by a rather cliché anime cat girl named Koshka who was almost naked. This already turned me off a bit, but then I got to the character select screen. The only three characters you can choose from initially are the naked cat girl, a woman with huge guns (and some heavy firepower) in an extremely open shirt, and a buff guy who, in the developer's defense, is also mostly naked. I looked at the other characters who were somewhat obscured and saw a few other scantily clad women. I thought we were past this, game devs. Girls play your games too and we don't like being represented like this. Worse yet, some of the characters spout out random, semi-questionable phrases while you play; for example Koshka will say things like, "Umm... Where are my pants?"

VainGlory would be a really enjoyable game, but the sexist exterior is a major disincentive for me. Personally, I think small art change in a future update could really do wonders for it and make it a must own.