As the battle of the battle royale rages on with PUBG and Fortnite coming in as clear favourites, there seems to be a new competitor on the block. Apex Legends, from Respawn, the creators of Titanfall has come in guns blazing and made quite a bang since it’s surprise launch a week ago. Amassing over a million in less than 24 hours and 10 million in a mere three days; making it one of the most popular in the genre. The gameplay has taken a lot of inspiration from it’s source material, Titanfall 2. Fast paced gunplay and sliding forms the core of your Apex Legends experience but what truly sets it apart is its unique characters or legends as they’re called and of course tier-based looting. Similar to Overwatch, each character has its own unique passive ability, active ability and an ultimate. Finding the right combination and learning the nuances of each individual is what will help players climb up the ranks to become champion. As of now there are eight total characters with two locked initially.
Each round starts with 60 players or 20 teams of three players each leading to a much more stable server side experience compared to the likes of PUBG and Fortnite. The early phase of the game is quite dynamic with a supply ship with access to instant loot flying to a part of the map and a special hot zone with high tier loot that changes every game. The only part of the game that might end up being a downside much like in fortnite is the tiered weapon system, means a shotgun vs shotgun match would be uneven based on the rarity of each players weapon and attachments, unlike PUBG.
Apex Legends is free to play and follows a monetisation model close to post launch Overwatch with lootboxes, weapon skins and character skins. Right now there is no pay wall with the two locked characters both available for in game credit and paid credits as well.
Overall, Apex Legends seems to be on the right track and barring a few disconnection issues, it’s had a near perfect launch despite no beta or prep time which is surprising considering it’s a multiplayer game of such massive scale. I hope there are better cosmetics, but more importantly a steady flow of new characters every few months and of course a new map down the line.
