After almost half a year, League of Legends's unique style is doing better than ever.

It seems as though February may be a month of looking back, as we just recently took another look at NCsoft's Aion to see what they were (or were not!) doing almost five months after their launch in September. Riot Games' League of Legends was also launched within a similar time frame, but their story (and update schedule) is a much happier tale. In fact, no other game, MMO or otherwise, has ever undergone such immense changes over the past few months as Riot Games' fantastically popular free-to-play MMO-RTS hybrid, League of Legends.

We originally took a peek at League of Legends a few months back, and it was there that we deemed this game to be the next step in DotA / MOBA genre. It's been a very quick five and a half months since we wrote that article and, after our revisit to the land of LoL, we know for certain that this particular gaming genre is in some very, very capable hands.

Perhaps the most impressive improvement to League of Legends has been the sheer amount of hero depth that they have brought to the game. Perhaps one of the most amazing things about their huge roster has been that all of their heroes are fresh and have unique personalities for each and every one of them (aside from Katarina, who sounds like she's reading straight from the page and attempting to fake an accent at the same time). We just got the scoop on LoL's latest hero, Mordekaiser, and he's just one of many who were added since League of Legends' closed beta tests.

The biggest addition (obviously) since we visited League of Legends has also been the implementation of their Riot Store, which allows players to purchase any champion of their choice for anywhere from $2 to $10 a pop, thus allowing them to pick and choose their favourites. Or, if you want to try them all, you can purchase a pack for most of the heroes, although Riot has yet to bundle the newest ones. Riot also features a rotating line-up of champions that they swap out weekly, thereby allowing players to have the chance to play a hero before purchasing it.

Of course, League of Legends wouldn't be called a "free to play" MMO-RTS if they didn't stay true to their word, and, to be honest, they may be one of the very few "true" F2P games that means it when they say that they don't sell superpowers for $50. Champions can also be purchased for "Influence Points," which is basically an in-game currency for League of Legends, and is given out for wins and losses. After about two dozen games (most of which are quite short in comparison to the longer DotA games), players should be able to purchase one or two of their favourite heroes - forever. We've begun to save up for Mordekaiser as we speak!

As well, Riot's "rune" system, which allows players to purchase special runes that grant minor bonuses individually, but add up to fairly substantial boosts at level 30, is the only item in-game that can't be purchased with cash - only Influence Points. Of course, it's true that players who purchase their champions via cash are free to focus purely on buying Runes with their IP (rather than spending precious IP on Champions), but even with the Rune system, players can easily fill their books with Level 1 runes, which are much cheaper than Level 3 runes, but are much more cost-effective than their higher level siblings.