Looks like thanks to the IGDB data we have "updates" for some games in here—nice for games like Teamfight Tactics which are changing a lot from season to season multiple times per year. Only this latest set (#14) is here at the moment, but it's well-timed to throw a review on it as it winds down.

While the great fundamentals of the game remain intact as always, this particular set was a slight misfire in the grand scheme of things, as the development team attempted to limit new ideas to make this one easier for more casual players who may have jumped on board with the Arcane tie-in set. However, for the very large dedicated playerbase, it feels a little stale playing with synergy concepts that we've largely already seen before, even if some returning ideas are things I liked. They also struggled a bit with balancing consistently, with some patches having a great range of playable comps but others feeling frustratingly limited.

In a game like this with a very strong community, the amount of fun the pro / content creator players are having trickles down to everyone else, as there is less fun content to engage with while pro players have preferred privately practicing for the Esports World Championship's different competition format and not doing as much streaming and posting of videos. Even as a player who usually sits in the level below the content creators, I've had less motivation to stick with this set consistently and found it tough to keep up with after the initial burst of excitement.

However, there are some really strong bright spots in the set which did help me have a lot of fun for a while. There are small things like an occasional prisoner's dilemma style gamble for extra gold, but most notable are the set's legendary units, which include several fresh ways to scale and improve your endgame board. The highlight is a new version of Garen, who breathes some new life in the game's trait system by allowing your units to be "modded" with another trait's power without actually innately having the trait or using an emblem item to add to your count of that trait. I first thought this would just break the game, pretty bold idea, but it works surprisingly well with an intuitive user experience and a nice tie-in with the set's theme.

That theme is all about "hacking", with other core game systems like the shops, augments, or item carousel occasionally giving the player access to more decisions or resources. TFT previously tried a similar idea called "encounters", and this version builds off learnings from that by making them things that help you out a bit and add a little extra variety without ever really being frustrating or disruptive like encounters sometimes were. It's not the most exciting mechanic, but once they got the balance right it is at least pretty fun and better than several others. The theme is also somewhat nicely represented visually, but doesn't quite hold up to super strong themes in recent memory like Inkborn Fables and Remix Rumble.

There are some other changes and notable things with this set, but the idea stays pretty much the same that it landed overall as a set that feels a bit like "filler". It's not going to be anyone's favorite and definitely lands in the bottom half for me, but at the same time it's definitely not one of the worst, just playing it very safe and having just enough stuff going on to be worth spending some time with for those who love the game.