At first, Apex Legends Mobile seems like an ill-proposed idea. After all, Apex on the Nintendo Switch didn’t work out as well as we’d all hoped, and it’s a struggle to properly experience the best parts of Respawn’s battle royale on that platform due to the lack of horsepower. However, Apex Legends Mobile is not a direct port of Apex Legends; instead, it is its own standalone experience that is extremely polished and well optimized for iOS and Android. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying my time playing on my tiny screens -- and that’s coming from someone who is not usually a mobile-first gamer. In fact, in some ways I found myself liking Apex Mobile more than I do the PC and console version, given the current state they’re in.
Apex Mobile isn’t cross-platform compatible with its sibling but it’s not a big departure, either: it uses the same basic formula of playing in teams of three, and of the 10 Legends available at launch, nine are the originals from Apex Legends’ launch: Bangalore, Bloodhound, Caustic, Gibraltar, Lifeline, Mirage, Octane, Pathfinder, Wraith. Having the original group available feels fine, especially since these Legends are still highly viable in the original game – and they’re even more so here without the additional Legends who were dropped in the PC/console version after launch.
The 10th is a first: a platform exclusive named Fade, who is pretty reminiscent of Ovewatch’s Tracer in that he comes with a recall ability that blips him back to where he was a few seconds ago. He makes a great solo-player Legend because his kit is built to really benefit his own survivability and maneuverability. While his ultimate throws nearby enemies into a void where they can’t take or receive damage, if you’re in trouble you can also step into the ult’s radius to enter the void and become invulnerable yourself. So Fade’s entire kit can really serve to keep him surviving as long as possible on his own.
Releasing Fade as a mobile-only Legend is an interesting decision since I could see his movement abilities being used in creative ways on console and PC. There haven’t been any platform-specific Legends before, and while I understand wanting to entice established Apex players to try out Mobile, it feels a bit odd and unfair to the community that’s made this game as successful as it is. In any case, the collection of the 10 Legends in mobile are more than enough to pick from, especially since in this version of Apex the abilities don’t seem to matter as much as basic gunplay and outshooting your enemies. And the less clutter you have with different Legend abilities on smaller mobile screens the better, so this roster feels appropriate for what Apex Mobile is right now. But this also makes Fade being a mobile-only Legend feel like a bit of a waste.
The main limitation at the moment is the fact that Apex Mobile doesn’t currently have full controller support (I was able to connect PlayStation and Xbox controllers via Bluetooth and they did work at times, but not consistently) so you have to play using the touchscreen of your phone or tablet. I played on an iPhone 12 Pro Max, which is now a year and a half old, and the performance was smooth – I rarely got any stutters and the environments loaded in quickly with barely any texture pops. I only had one experience of lagging with too many effects in one of the busiest areas in World’s Edge (in the location Fragment) in my few hours of playtime.
At the same time, textures look detailed, and I’m able to make out what items are on the ground without zooming in. In fact, it looks how I expected Apex Legends on the Switch to look, and honestly Respawn might’ve done better to release this version on the Switch instead of overextending the console version. The maps have been adjusted slightly to fit the environment of mobile and keep the rotations through their locations feeling natural. The UI looks a lot like the PC and console version, just fitted to a smaller screen with minor tweaks, so it’s very easy to look at and understand what’s happening. The menus are easy to navigate and you can collect all of your completed daily and weekly challenge rewards with one click of a button.
While adjusting to playing with touch controls isn’t awful, it definitely feels a bit cramped and difficult to use the full potential of Apex’s movement. You can rearrange your screen controls as you want, setting your virtual thumbsticks, crouch, jump, fire, and ADS buttons however you like. This setup is pretty nice, but because Apex is so much about movement mechanics, all of your buttons need to be kind of close together so you can quickly press one after the other for the proper combos. Because of this, I found myself accidentally firing or punching the air way too frequently while running or trying to loot or move quickly out of fights.
Apex Mobile does use the core Apex movement really well, including its standout signature run-and-slide move that gives you a slight speed boost, and the movement combos are all there… just a bit harder to hit. But all things considered it feels pretty good, and it’s as close to the non-mobile game as could be reasonably expected.
To make up for the fact that Apex’s interface can feel a bit crowded on a phone screen, a third-person perspective is available that you can switch in and out of at any time. It took a bit for me to get used to but it feels pretty smooth in this mode. (Not that I want it on other platforms – it would feel out of place.) There definitely is an advantage to playing in third-person in that you can see way more of your surroundings and peek around corners to spot enemies who can’t see you. That advantage is so impactful that playing in first-person almost always feels like you’re doing yourself a disservice. However, you can choose to play in locked first-person or third person before you queue in, so it is separated in the same way that PUBG separated its lobbies on PC by perspective – you’re never forced to play against people who can do something you can’t.
Aiming weapons on the smaller screen is a bit harder as well and again, I found myself accidentally firing earlier than intended due to the cluster of virtual buttons on my right side. The best way I found to deal with that was to just aim and fire as I directed my aim to enemies and let the auto-reload hit as I kept my aim focused on them. Probably related is the fact that the time-to-kill is a bit faster on Mobile, which honestly felt fine since it takes a bit longer to fully line up a shot with these controls.
One of the nice things Apex Mobile does is automatically pick up loot and open doors so you’re not constantly having to move your fingers around the screen while trying to move forward and around. However, it doesn’t just pick up everything around you, only the same ammo type that you’re using at the time. Once you equip a weapon, it’ll auto-pick-up that ammo and healing items until it fills the amount of slots it takes up in your inventory.