This review is a long time coming and it's really hard to parse.

Teamfight Tactics has a lot of promise, but also fumbles the ball in so many aspects that it becomes a little annoying, it is the living embodiment of a double-edged sword.

Firstly, it falls into the same "realm of play" as a Counter-Strike or League in the sense that you can pick it up, run a few rounds, stop, so forth. A good snippet-like playstyle that can also be hard binged if needed. However, this doesn't ever really feel like the case because the biggest benefit of this game, being it's constant switch-ups and set changes, is also the biggest detriment to my personal enjoyment of the game.

While the new mechanics and builds are always fun, TFT doesn't ever seem to stay on the same wave-lengths, sometimes becoming far too difficult or far to easy, balancing sometimes good, sometimes poor, and it makes returning to the game very confusing as each set in itself is widly different and also has two "phases", basically a half-set that changes around the formula in a way that doesn't differentiate it enough to be confusing, but enough for a breath of fresh air (although i have been informed these are being removed). I feel, however, that as the game has been out, TFT has continuously seemed to over-complexify itself and build on too many mechanics too fast, and because of these set-changes, I find myself getting lost entirely in some sets and loving others, making it feel like a coinflip set-to-set with learning curves that seem inconsistent despite the base gameplay "looking" the same but never "feeling" the exact same.

Now i will be clear and say that I am not great at the game, however, I can say that there are definitely aspects of the game that are really fun, with the inclusion of new gamemodes of Double Up and Hyper Roll, it makes the game far more accessible, introducing or removing mechanics for preference. I think this gives it a good sense of versatility of play and difference in approach, letting it appeal to a larger audience than it would otherwise have.

But the most important complaint of mine, and the one i'll leave off on.

Remove it from the League Launcher for f**ks sake.

This is about as good as this type of condensed strategy game can get. Obviously yeah, it has bad patches that require hotfixes but the core fundamentals are so strong. You set up a team of characters, all with their own little quirks, and have them fight against 7 other players' own teams of characters.

Boiling the whole game down to "RNG" is like boiling poker down to RNG. you know its more than that.

The whole point to TFT is mitigating that RNG by knowing what to do in different game-states. What's the general tempo of the lobby? Are people hitting level 7, with 2* 4-costs at 3-5? Roll down. Am I being cannibalized? if so in current game state, again, what nearby comps can I comfortably pivot into that maybe aren't as contested? My frontline isn't targeting their backline carry consistently, how can I reposition my units in a way that doesn't compromise my board? There's so much constantly going on that I think lower level play just doesn't pick up on, and as the game has gone through Sets (TFT's equivalent of Seasons or just major patches), the different factors you have to take into consideration change and update as well. You can still "low-roll" as in you just get flagrantly unlucky some games but for a good chunk of these games there's always some alternative - some decision you made at some point that brought you to the low-roll. If someone took all of the Tristana's in stage 1, was it really a good idea to try and contest a Tristana Carry comp when you were clearly running behind? It's knowing the pitfalls to avoid at such a microscopic, almost inane, level that may explain how the pros are able to entertain such consistency.

That's ultimately TFT's MO. TFT is a really obtuse problem whose solution is very unclear and over a couple hundred hours, the inner matrices start forming, you'll start seeing out of your third eye, this board at 2-1 transitions well into this comp and this comp and this comp, this emblem can be applied to this variant of a really bad comp with this augment and suddenly its showtime, you're shitting on your Vietnamese opponents, downloading their preferences with MetaTFT mapping everything out, there's no stopping you, you're fulfilling that idiot power fantasy - everyone else is playing for 2nd and you are a god amongst men. your subjects below quiver and quake at the sight of your perfectly itemized Gwen 3. "there's nothing i can do, fartgang wins again" they whimper. and they're right. I do win again. i ALWAYS win again

all things considered, tft is like if they made a version of Football Manager where you can go on reddit dot com and find all of the characters having sex with each other