Brought to the surface by the same who released League of Legends, Valorant is a first-person-shooting game where groups of five face off to see who has more strength, similar to the presence of League of Legends. One side starts as an attacker of sorts and the other fends them off by prevent the attacks from planting a spike that sends a powerful blast of electromagnetic radiation into the air. The spike can only be planted at certain locations on the map that players spawn in.
There are several categories of weapons that people can choose from. The sub-machine category contains weapons built for close combat giving it a very high rate-of-fire. The assault weapon category contains weapons build for longer range, which equips with higher damage over long distance but a lower fire rate. The shotguns are for extremely close situations where they fire very slowly, but fewer shots are needed to subdue the enemy. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the sniper rifles, equipped also with a slow fire rate, but they lack any 'spread' where the damage that they deal are concentrated at a single point.
Along with the myriad of weapons, there are naturally a vast amount of different strategies that people can use. However, a majority of players play it as such. On the defending side, two players are sent to each location that the spike can be planted. Another player stays in the middle or separates to one of the locations if they need help. Each player purchases a sub-machine weapon in the early times of the game while upgrading to better weapons in the assault weapon and other categories. On the attacking side, all players usually run towards the same site as to not decrease their firepower. At most, one player would split off to distract the enemy towards another site first.
Valorant was created in order to compete against another game created by the company called Valve. The game is specifically called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which sits with the top games in terms of player count. They both are targeted at players who do not have a strong computer capable of playing many games and are in the category of first-person-shooters. The two also have similar game mechanics that make it easy for anyone to transition between the two.
Valorant is a free-to-play game available now. However, similar to most modern games, it has several micro transactions that players can purchase not to affect their gameplay, but to show off a multitude of 'skins' that are essentially new models of weapons. Nothing except the cosmetic of the weapon changes.
One of the ways that people who do not like the game find to bash about is exactly those micro transactions. They like to laugh at people who spend their money purely for something that looks nicer instead of whatever the default is. Other players can see it yes, but in the eyes of those who do not like the game, it is merely a waste of time and money that can only depreciate in value over time.