Apex Legends Review
I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never really been one to actively play battle royale games. Fortnite never entirely clicked with me and just felt kind of meh from a gameplay standpoint, Realm Royale was fun at first but slowly got worse as the development team made some really terrible decisions with it, and Ring of Elysium felt like one huge walking simulator only to get sniped from a huge distance away. For the most part, it just felt like these games were unfun and I often found more enjoyment in spectating my teammates than I did actually playing the game. It was definitely fun watching my friends pull off silly moves to kill the enemy and for us all to laugh over it, but never felt fun seriously trying to kill someone.
Going into Apex Legends though, I remained a little more optimistic. I heard it was being made by the guys who made both Titanfall games and was going to be set in the Titanfall universe. I immediately felt excitement, something I hadn’t felt with the other three battle royale games. Titanfall 2 was honestly one of my favorite games for having both stellar mechanics and fluid movement systems combined with a great story and stellar gunplay. To have any of this be included in this battle royale I thought honestly would be very fun. They without a doubt did not disappoint.
Environments
Immediately what drew my eye was the environments. The map felt very diverse with its tech and industrialist based feeling of the artillery battery and bunker, forested feeling of the wetlands and river, and the barren view of the deserts. They all felt very diverse and it felt quite unique landing in each of the different lands and adventuring through for some loot pickups. I did feel like there was maybe a little too much emphasis on the barren desert lands as compared to the others, but nothing that was too bad. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the job they did, it feels like there was a lot of passion and effort poured into the world to make it feel unique and living.
Weapons
The guns also were quite interesting and did take a while to get used to, but was to be expected considering how many weapons there are. A few of the weapons that stood out to me were the G7 Scout, Hemlok Burst AR, and Peacekeeper shotgun. Even besides those three, the rest of the guns still felt quite balanced and enjoyable to use. One that I’d consider lower but still pretty decent was the EVA-8 Auto, a shotgun that excelled but couldn’t ever reach up to the Peacekeeper for me. I also got the chance to try the Mastiff shotgun as well as watched a friend use the Kraber. Both are very hard to get (and I’ve only gotten one in my entire playtime) but are they ever worth it. They do tremendous amounts of damage with a minimal supply of ammo to balance them out. Overall, weapon balance seems solid.
Consumables and Attachments
The other loot you can obtain the game also felt pretty well balanced. The healing items didn’t feel too scarce or too plentiful, the attachments always seemed to scale well compared to their effectiveness (excluding a single sight), and ammo always felt more than enough when I was playing. There were about five different healing items and three different grenades you could get and they all felt pretty good to use, as well as that the attachments all felt useful in their own ways. There weren’t any that felt too underpowered or too overpowered for their rarities and I feel like this is definitely worth commending. Can only imagine how hard that is to do right as a developer.
Characters
When it comes to the characters, I found that they were each pretty enjoyable to use. They also felt quite unique and it made them feel spread apart and fresh when I picked a new one up. I found that I had three favorite characters to play being Bloodhound, Pathfinder, and Gibraltar. Bloodhound is a scouting character who can use different abilities to see enemy locations and to track things enemies have done in the past, including how long ago they did it. Pathfinder is an off support character who has some great maneuverability through both his grappling hook as well as a zipline that he can use to help his team go long distances. He also can scout certain areas of the map for different useful information. And finally, Gibraltar is a tank who can provide high amounts of protection for himself and his allies. He can also call down an airstrike to help clear an area of hostiles. In terms of the number of characters at launch though, I feel like there could’ve been more diversity there. As it stands there are three DPS characters, two tank characters, two supports, and a single scout leaving only eight characters at launch. Compare this to Overwatch from two years ago that launched with over double this many heroes and it leaves a lot to be desired. There are plans to improve this after launch, but it definitely could use some work.
Economy
As compared to other games published by EA, this economy really feels fair and balanced. As it stands right now, new characters are about $10, legendary weapon and character skins cost about $20, and loot boxes cost about $1 each. Normally these would be outrageous considering skins cost double the character, but this is balanced through the ability to create them with materials you acquire through play time. These materials come in decent quantity too, getting a few for every box. At the end of it, this premium currency (named Apex Coins) are really just to speed things up a bit for cosmetics mainly and are unnecessary if you want to play the game completely free.
Squad System
At launch, you can only play the game in a group of three. If you try to play it with any less than that, it will add random players for you which generally aren’t going to be the greatest way to go. I honestly don’t understand why there is no other way to queue up in the game at launch as I feel it’s definitely something that could’ve been done easily. It also would’ve proved easier for people like me who just want to play the game solo for the most part without the added random players. I hope to see them add this in the future.
Verdict
Apex Legends is a very enjoyable experience that will keep you coming back wanting to get your next win again and again. The environment felt very unique depending on where you were, the weapons were really fun to play with and didn’t feel underpowered, the attachments and consumables all felt pretty good to use, and each of the characters felt unique and fun to play. There are definitely a few issues such as the amount of characters and squad system that definitely do need to be looked at and worked on. Overall though, would definitely recommend this game to Titanfall and battle royale fans alike.
