Hey guys! I’m Miggy, your newest guide to help gamers decide! Today I’m sharing 10 important gameplay aspects of VALORANT. Some will be positive, and some will be negative. Ready? Let’s dive in!

1. Genre

VALORANT is A 5v5 tactical shooter with unique character abilities. It's like a mix of CS:GO and Overwatch

To quote directly from playvalorant.com, VALORANT is a 5v5 character-based tactical shooter. There are two teams in this First Person Shooter game: the attackers and the defenders. Each round, the attackers win if they either plant the spike and let it detonate or kill all five defenders. On the other hand, the defenders win if they kill all five attackers or defuse the spike before it detonates. After 12 rounds, the teams switch sides. A team will win the game once they reach 13 rounds.

So far, it sounds a lot like Counter Strike, right? Boo-hoo, how unoriginal. However, I only described the TACTICAL SHOOTER aspect of the game. I am yet to explain the CHARACTER-BASED aspect!

Characters in VALORANT are called agents. They have unique roles and abilities! Some skills are good to get solo kills, others for flashes, others for info, smokes, heals and flank watch.This part of VALORANT may be familiar to fans of Team Fortress and Overwatch. So, combine the classic Counter Strike tactical shooter plant or defuse the bomb mechanic with unique character abilities from Team Fortress and Overwatch, and you get VALORANT! If you enjoyed any of the titles I mentioned, and are interested in mixing those together, then VALORANT is worth getting into.

2. Multiplayer: Solo Queue

Solo Queue will make you angry like Jett. Proceed with caution!

If you’re a solo player, you’ll get 4 random teammates in your games. Since your teammates are random, the quality of team play and communication will vary per game. Sometimes you’ll hear “2 flank, I’ll play off your contact, etc.” Those are examples of good comms. But more often than not, you’ll hear more of: “You’re boosted! You’re brain dead! Just quit the game!” Mind you, these are the tame insults in-game! A lot of players dish out the most vile insults known to humanity. And of course, there are games where you wonder if you’re playing a solo game because there’s no one talking!

This is the aspect of VALORANT that will make you feel insane. Unless you want to train your mental fortitude, it is not worth going through this experience. Just queue up with friends!

3. Multiplayer: Party

Form a duo, trio or a full 5-stack with friends! Valorant is more fun this way.

In VALORANT, you can team up with up to 4 friends! There is a party chat both for text and voice so you can choose if you want to communicate exclusively with your friends or the whole team. A lot of people use VALORANT as their social activity. No doubt, it’s more fun to play this game while hanging out on Discord.

Do note that you can’t form a party of 4 in a competitive lobby. It’s unfair to the 1 player not in the party, as he might get blamed and flamed for whatever goes wrong during the game. It’s enough torture to play with 4 random people. How much more if it’s 4 people who are likely to gang up on you if things don’t go well? 

4. Game Modes

Escalation: everyone plays just one agent. 5 Sovas, unlimited recon bolts!

The standard game modes are unrated and competitive. 5v5, plant/defuse the spike to win a round, first team to win 13 rounds wins the game. Tryhard stuff. But there are other modes for casual players or for warm up! 

Spike Rush: Everyone on the attacker side has a spike! There are orbs/powerups scattered throughout the map, which makes this game mode feel like an arcade game.

Deathmatch: This is the main warm up tool for most players. Deathmatch is a free-for-all game mode wherein the first player to reach 40 kills wins the game. Skills and abilities are disabled in this game. That would be chaotic!

Escalation: This is a 5v5 team deathmatch wherein players start with arguably the best guns in the game. As they get more kills, their weapons get progressively weaker. In the end, a team wins once they get a kill with the weakest weapon available that game. You HAVE to win with a knife in a gunfight, basically.

Replication: Everyone plays the same agent! Unlimited Sage revives? Unlimited smokes? Chaos ensues in this game mode.

Swiftplay: Unrated but shorter! First team to win 5 rounds wins the game. Who says you can’t play Valorant during lunch break?

Team Deathmatch: The latest game mode! 5v5, first to 100 kills, and as the game goes, the weapons get better. This time, skills are enabled!

Whether it’s because you can’t commit enough time for a 30-45 minute game, or you just wanna try out casual, more fun ways to play VALORANT, there’s a lot of game modes for you to try!

5. Balance

Chamber was the most dominant agent in 2022. He was nerfed to the ground, but nowadays he's played in the pro scene again.

All competitive games have metagames. In VALORANT, there are commonly played agent compositions per map. Sometimes, agents are either way too overplayed or underplayed. To change this, the VALORANT devs buff and nerf agents on a regular basis. This helps keep the game balanced and not stale. It’s rare to get burnt out due to boring metas here!

Ultimately, agents have had their fair share of domination in metagames. They all got nerfed to give way for other agents to be played more.

Sometimes, agents are overtuned. But there is always a way to play around these. Riot Games does a great job keeping the game fair!

6. Competitive

The complete ranks of Valorant. Hardstuck diamond reporting for duty!

In the competitive mode, there are two factors in matchmaking: your current rank and your hidden matchmaking rating (MMR).

The ranks in VALORANT are: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Ascendant, Immortal and Radiant. All of these ranks have three tiers (except Radiant), and you will need to get to 100 LP to move on to the next tier.

What is the hidden matchmaking rating? In the background, this is a number that they use to determine your skill level relative to everyone else in the queue. This is to prevent smurfs from dominating low ELO lobbies. It gets confusing or frustrating, though. Because there will be games where you’re a Gold player but you’re facing a Diamond player because either your MMR is too high or the Diamond player’s MMR is too low.

If you’re one for sweaty lobbies, VALORANT is testing, both on skills and mental. Proceed with caution. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

7. Cosmetics

The in-game shop featuring the Spectrum bundle. They also feature 4 different gun skins that change daily.

Weapon skins are insanely good in this game! Every month, they release a new skin bundle. Each bundle has a unique design. They even made a bundle for the VALORANT Champions Tour, wherein each purchase contributed to the total prize pool of the tournament!

My personal favorites are the Spectrum and Arcade. Spectrum is the collab between Riot Games and Zedd, a famous EDM artist who loves playing video games! Whenever you inspect Spectrum guns, you hear cool sounds produced by Zedd himself. Buying the skin bundle is cheaper than therapy, you know. Arcade is a skin bundle where the finishers are classic arcade games: fighter, dance, and rocket launcher. The hits of nostalgia made it worth it for me to get the bundle.

These skins can be very expensive, though. Arcade is worth $75 USD for the whole package. There is a cheaper option for skins: the battle pass! At around $20 USD, you get a lot of cosmetics as long as you play a lot of VALORANT.

If you like customization on your weapons, there’s a lot of options for you!

8. New Content

This was the loading screen when Yoru was released and Icebox was new. Those were the days.

Aside from skin bundles every month, new agents, maps or game modes are released every new episode. Recently, Team Deathmatch was just added along with 3 new maps for the game mode! It’s a fresh take on the game for sure.

As mentioned earlier, it’s rare for VALORANT to be stale. There’s always something new to enjoy!

9. Esports

Boaster, FNATIC's IGL, on his serious mode. Outside the game he shows his goofy personality!

The storylines in the VALORANT Esports scene are wonderful. In the most recent VALORANT Champions Tour, FNATIC became the first team to win back-to-back international events! Evil Geniuses came 2nd, even though at the start of the season their future looked very uncertain with all the early losses. Paper Rex was 3rd, and they made it so deep into the tournament despite not playing with their star duelist. If you’ve ever heard of the term “W gaming” – rushing every round, that’s their playstyle! It’s all very exciting to watch.

If you’re a fan of narratives in esports, VALORANT has a lot to offer.

10. Replayability

Fade, the agent that will use your worst nightmares against you. Playing against Fade will turn VALORANT to a horror game.

Each game doesn’t feel quite the same in VALORANT. It’s very unlikely to play the same map every game. There will be people who prefer shotguns or snipers over rifles, so play styles that may work one game become ineffective in another. And then there are unique agent abilities! Sometimes you play against a team that has effective map vision, sometimes they have a lot of flashes, and sometimes they have a lot of aggression. You will face an endless combination of agents as you play the game.

I can assure you, it does not get boring pretty fast.

So there you have it. Is VALORANT good? Absolutely! Riot Games has done an amazing job with their First-Person Shooter game, and I can’t wait for them to explore other genres.

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