Valorant is my first FPS, what do I think a year later?

Some background

Valorant was released in June of 2020. The game was created by Riot Games, the same sadists that got everyone hooked on League of Legends and now you can never break free. They have now given us a free, first-person shooter that you can use to bond with your friends. Then make them hate your guts after realizing that you talked them into downloading a Riot game that only wants you to suffer.

This game consists of two teams of five. One team tries to plant a spike and let it detonate, while the other team tries to prevent that. You can pick from a small plethora of agents to play as. Each agent has a dedicated set of abilities and a position on the team such as sentinel, controller, initiator, and a few more. There are multiple modes that you can choose from, but they all have the same base gameplay. These options are great because there are modes that only take around 15 minutes, while full games can take more than 30 minutes.

Why did I download Valorant?

While in the middle of a dry spell of new game releases towards the end of 2020, I was bombarded with video after video of Valorant gameplay and finally decided to give it a try. Since it was a free game so I knew the worst that could happen was I would waste a few hours.

As anyone could imagine, I was terrible when I first started playing Valorant. I didn't look up anything about any of the playable characters before I started playing, so I of course picked Jett because I thought she was the coolest design. I found out very quickly that to properly play Jett, you need to know what the map looks like.

After swapping over to Sova, it was far easier to use my utilities. I still heavily struggled to figure out the maps, my brain could not connect the defense and attack sides of the map. It took a while to get comfortable with all of the maps and get used to what all of the agents could do.

I would say that for the first few months, I would only play Sova or Sage. I learned my abilities, but my aim was still pretty awful so I was constantly missing shots and dying in my games. I would say those first few months were definitely not the most fun for me, but then I did what anyone else would do. I told my friends to download this fun new game I found!

Growth and development

After I got a few friends to download Valorant and start playing with me, I started playing a lot more. Between the small group, we had a range of experiences. One friend came over from playing competitive Overwatch, one played a lot of COD in the past, and two had no previous experience with first-person shooters, like me.

By playing the game more often, I was able to better learn the maps and what agent had what ability. I still could only get pity kills in my games but I was improving! I finally started to take the game a bit more seriously because I was getting tired of dying first every round and spending more time spectating my friends instead of playing. I started watching videos that gave tips on how to improve my aim and where to keep my crosshair. I also watched a lot of videos explaining how each agent and position works and the best way to play. This is probably the thing that helped me the most in improving.

Thoughts now

After playing Valorant for well over a year now, I can say that I have improved a lot. I went from missing every single shot I took, to get somewhat consistent headshots. Nowadays, I can sometimes even get team MPV when playing Raze or Fade. I now main Raze, but if two duelists are already taken, I still feel very comfortable taking on other roles like Fade for initiating or Omen for a controller. A year ago, I stuck to one agent and was too afraid to play anyone else, but now I can pretty much play somewhat competently with at least one of each type of agent.

After I got into Valorant, my friend got me to finally play Overwatch with her. Since these are the only two shooters that I have really played, I can really only compare my experiences with these two games. I would say that I honestly think that Valorant is a lot easier to play than Overwatch, or at least to get into. Yes, you respawn in Overwatch so you get more playtime in each game even if you are constantly dying. Yes, some heroes in Overwatch don't make you use a gun, some throw out orbs or toss grenades so this would lower the entry-level of skills needed to play a character. Yes, you can swap to another hero in the middle of a match to try out different abilities or change play styles to better fit the match in Overwatch. If all of these are true, why am I saying that Valorant is an easier game to get into? I will personally say that Valorant is easier because the gameplay is a lot slower-paced. To me, Valorant was a lot easier to get the hang of. I learned the angels you need to watch and where players tend to hide. This one aspect single-handedly makes Valorant my top FPS.

I think Valorant is overall a good game. It took me a while to really get decent at the game and I'm still nowhere close to being considered great, but I can now enjoy most games I play.

Are you trying to get into FPS games or are you just looking for something new to try out? What are your thoughts on Valorant being someone's first FPS game?