[Editor's Note: With Apex Legends' recent release on Switch, we’ve taken a fresh look at the whole game in 2021. This review replaces our original from 2019, and you can find our new Switch-specific impressions below. Read more on IGN's re-review policy.]
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Apex Legends is the only battle royale where I can launch myself up into the sky and dodge bullets in the air while throwing a mini black hole at an enemy squad as my teammate simultaneously rains a hellfire of mortars down upon them. Since its release in 2019, Apex has continued to grow and evolve in exciting ways, adding both more content and fresh new ideas to a genre that too frequently feels derivative. The fast-paced matches never fail to get my heart racing as I jump, slide, and dodge bullets while hip-firing a sniper rifle to win a 1v1 duel and revive my teammates. Mobility, versatility, and teamwork combine for a thrilling and rewarding feeling that I haven’t experienced from any other battle royale.
While the structure here is familiar – drop into a large map, pick up randomly scattered loot, and fight inside an ever-closing circle to be the last team standing – it’s the 16 playable characters (called Legends) themselves that keep Apex from feeling like your run-of-the-mill battle royale shooter. Where traditionally you start a battle royale as a blank slate and have your role defined solely by the gear you luck into, here each has their own set of special abilities and strengths that you can choose from to fit your personal playstyle. I especially love how different Legends can interact and work with each other on a three-person team to get more out of those powers than they could alone. For example, if someone on your team is playing as Caustic or Bangalore and tossing smoke bombs around, choosing Bloodhound for their ability to see through the smoke and highlight nearby enemies will be a natural fit.
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And even though some Legends do feel stronger than others in certain situations, I like that who would win in a toe-to-toe shootout isn’t always going to be what determines your victory. The abilities can be used to amplify your own knowledge of where enemies are with Bloodhound or being able to get a height advantage with Horizon. But Apex relies on your personal skill more than the specific moves of your Legend, particularly when compared to a hero shooter like Overwatch where abilities really matter while building a good team composition with restrictive roles to be filled.
Each Legend also has a backstory built off of the same world from developer Respawn’s Titanfall series. Apex takes place 30 years after the events of Titanfall 2 and further expands that already compelling universe through a continuous story that progresses with each major event. While you may not see much of it in the middle of a match, it’s still told well through comics and cinematic shorts that include in-world explanations for how the Apex Games you’re fighting in came to be, how each of the Legends found their way into them, how they are affiliated with each other, and even how they all interact outside of the Games. There’s great creativity and lore being explored here, and considering the Titanfall games never really got their due it’s exciting to see Respawn continue their universe through Apex.
Skill Or Be Skilled
I really appreciate the fact that if you get into a fight with an enemy who has a fully kitted-out weapon and you have a gun with no attachments, you still have a chance to win the encounter based on skill alone. In Ubisoft’s battle royale Hyper Scape, part of the problem with the gunplay was the fact that unless you had a level five weapon, you couldn’t really put up enough of a fight to come out alive or even truly damage your enemy no matter how good your aim was. Fortnite does a better job of rewarding skill over gun rarity, but the level of a gun is still a significant factor. In contrast, all of Apex’s weapons are viable without the best attachments, which makes it really stand out as a game of skill.
Apex has a wide arsenal of extremely satisfying futuristic weapons (some directly taken from Titanfall) that test your aim more than your luck. If you’re into long-range fighting, there’s a varied collection of sniper rifles that run the gamut from lighter burst shots to slow but heavy-hitting slugs, or if you prefer to get up close you can choose from an array of SMGs and shotguns. Every other season a new weapon is added, increasing the assortment of guns to choose from. Gun attachments allow you to further personalize a weapon to your preference in how it handles rather than straightforward damage increases, making how you use that weapon more important than what’s bolted onto it.
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A battle royale should be about testing your skills of survival, and adapting to changes both in and out of a match is a huge part of that. Each season update, which changes things up every few months, comes with weapon adjustments that keep the gunplay everchanging. For example, in Season 6, the SMG R-99 was removed from the ground loot pool and put inside special loot packages that randomly drop during matches, while the previous drop weapon the Devotion was brought back into the ground loot pool. This change was implemented after the Volt, a new energy SMG, was introduced for the season, encouraging previous R-99 main users to use the Volt in its place. In the currently running Season 8, the Mastiff shotgun is the strongest close range weapon that most players are using, with a midseason update giving it a slight fire rate nerf in an attempt to keep the weapon viable but less dominant. While these consistent updates can occasionally be frustrating when it feels like I’ve just gotten the hang of the previous season’s strongest weapon combinations, I do appreciate that the changes and balance tweaks help keep one weapon from being stronger than the rest for too long and generally make each gun a good choice in fights.
Apex’s armor system stands apart from other games too, pushing a fairly simple concept far forward with the introduction of Evo Shields (a super cute name for its evolving shield tiers). With the exception of the Gold shield that heals you for double the amount with smaller heal items, there are four tiers of shields. Only the first three can be found during a match, and after that, you must “level up” your shield to the next tier by dealing damage to enemies. What I really like about this system is that dealing 100 damage while you have no shield at all will even automatically earn you the lowest tier, so if you don’t find something right away you’re still encouraged to fight through the initial drop.
I love the feeling of earning new armor, encouraging me to push more fights earlier so that I can level it up – that’s opposed to armor mechanics in other games that can sometimes make taking fights feel like a mistake because even if you win you’ll come out weaker than you were when you started. You can still armor swap through looting better options or taking it off of enemies you’ve killed, but the idea of having to work for the best tier makes fights feel more rewarding throughout. Also, the sound effect that plays when your armor levels up is extremely satisfying.