Apex Legends is an up-and-coming, free game by Respawn Entertainment, launchable from Origins app. Many people may have heard of this game, and even played it. This game has impressed me.

Now, I am the kind of person who normally doesn’t enjoy playing battle royale games. I was never interested enough in PUBG to play it, and I think that Fortnite is a terrible game. But Apex Legends is unique in this respect. Even people who don’t normally enjoy battle royales seem to like Apex Legends. This is because it brings the best elements of a battle royale to the front, and it also has some interesting elements of a movement shooter.

A battle royale game, for those who don’t know, is a game where the player drops from the sky, starting with nothing, and collects items to become more powerful and kill other players. The last player(s) standing at the end of the game wins. The RNG (random number generator) seems to be what pushes many people away from battle royale games, because oftentimes people lose simply because somebody got better items.  Apex Legends feels less luck-based, however, probably because the outcome of most fights depends on the positioning and skill of the players, rather than the items they’ve found. Each weapon in Apex Legends has its advantages and disadvantages, based on things like range, damage, accuracy, and speed. Shotguns do a lot of damage up close but aren’t very effective from far away. Snipers reward good aim and allow you to do maximum damage from far away. Pistols let you be more mobile and have consistent damage. There is armor in the game, and in that case there is objectively better and worse armor.  But since armor is pretty rare, and will only give you a slight advantage in a fight, this doesn’t enter as a huge variable in luck. This all leads to a great element of battle royales, allowing it to be random but fair.

I’d like to make a short mention about a very interesting mechanic in Apex Legends. In most battle royales, when a teammate goes down, they will be in a downed state, where they can only move very slowly and cannot shoot. They can be killed in this state, making them permanently down and unable to play for the remainder of the game, although if their team wins, they will still win. They can also be revived from this state by teammates, in which case they will return to normal.  Apex Legends also has this downed state, but even after a teammate gets killed in this state, they can still be brought back to life if one of their teammates manages to grab the “beacon” from their body. This allows them to be brought back to life at a revive station with no items; however, this may alert other teams to your location.

Now, a very important part of Apex Legends is that it is a movement shooter game. This is a huge distinction, because in games like PUBG or Fortnite, it is more based on items and aim, and in Fortnite’s case building, than it is on mobility. Apex’s entire combat system is based on mobility, although maybe not the kind you’re thinking of. In many movement shooters, players are granted access to huge amounts of mobility, allowing them to move around very quickly, and sometimes the skill at moving is actually more important than the skill at aiming. Apex, however, is not based on moving around very quickly to dodge the enemies’ attacks, but rather moving into positions that will give you an advantage. For example, if you were using a sniper rifle, you would want to be as far away from your enemies as possible, and if you were using a shotgun, you would want to be as close as possible.

There are some downsides to Apex Legends, though.  Apex only has one mode, the battle royale, meaning that most matches start out the same. You can only queue up in teams of three, which can create very bad situations if you don’t queue up with friends, because if one of your team members disconnects, you’re at a huge disadvantage in all fights with other teams. There are microtransactions, but these are only for cosmetics, which you don’t have to spend money on if you play enough, so the game is not “pay to win” in any sense.

When looking at all the information, I come to the conclusion that Apex Legends brings some very unique things to the table at the battle royale scene. I would even say that Apex Legends is the greatest battle royale game that has come out yet. I give Apex Legends four out of five stars. It’s a very good game, with some room for improvement.