The End Game of All Battle Royale’s

Apex Legends Review

Apex Legends Review

While not for me, I can see the appeal of the high skill ceilings, frequent content updates, and more in this battle royale that has carved its way into its own niche in the genre. Off-Brand.

These thoughts were compiled in 2022, and may not reflect the current status of the game. Though, in an effort to preserve all of my writing on the Medium platform, it has been republished.

My recommendation (or lack there-of) for Apex Legends is almost purely based on my subjective opinion. Apex has a lot to offer players and is one of the mega pillars of the battle royale genre. It’s got good (enough) support from the developers, a killer parkour based movement system, pretty decent gun play, unique and inclusive heroes, fun hero abilities, extra game modes etc. All while being offered for free! So it really is not half bad of a game if you decide that you want to throw yourself into it for any length of time.

The reason I’m not recommending Apex, as opposed to some other battle royales on the market, boils down to one thing: your time investment.

Apex Legends is A LOT to take in. It’s built such that it wants to be the only game that you obsess over. There are so many things that you have to slowly get accustomed to, least of all is likely the bullet drop, which is horrendous, but needed in Apex’s vast open spaces. You need to find a character whose ability and kit are fun to use, and even as a free player this can take some time. After that, you might need to learn how to counter other characters and their abilities in the current meta of the game. Once you’ve got a handle there, you’ll want to learn about the 15 (or however many) guns that you’ll pick up across the map, and on top of that you have to learn what scopes work best for you, what mods you need for those specific gun configurations, etc.

There’s always something in Apex that you could be learning about, that you SHOULD be learning about, so that you can be at the top of your game at all times. At the time of writing, I have put down about 15 hours, and I’m still not entirely sure about what guns are “meta” right now, what drop locations are popular, and I still don’t entirely understand what’s happening with bullet drop. I’ve killed less than a dozen players, and maybe have downed a couple dozen. I’ve never won a game.

There’s a lot to research and I could watch boat loads of YouTube videos to catch up on some of these things, maybe even load into the training room to get a better handle of guns, or I could find some type of senior player as a mentor, but that all costs me valuable time, that I could spend just playing the game, or other games.

The inherent difficulty makes me believe that Apex draws an elite crowd of players that stick around season after season, which is excellent news if you’re competitive and want the challenge. For me however, even with a coordinated group of half decent players, honestly trying to outwit the other players, the closest my squad and I have been able to get is 2nd place. It feels like we could get to the top! But the time requirement to be able to match the skill of these other players is so far out there, I’m thinking that it just might not be worth the grind! I’ve got tons of games in my backlog that I would rather put my focus on than this. There are other battle royales that I think have an easier learning curve, that would be more worth my time in that sense as well.

Again, it’s all totally subjective. There’s a ton here to sink your teeth into, which makes it an exceptional deal for being free. Despite my gripes, I’ll probably still squad up with some friends from time to time to play it. But the dedication required to even begin to hit that skill ceiling, where you can feel like you’re just as good as some of Apex’s weakest players… I can see it’s a bit too far out of my reach with the amount of time I’d be comfortable dedicating to the task. Your mileage may vary.

In that vein of your mileage may vary: There are some game breaking bugs and glitches that have kicked me from matches mid-game, while playing on my desktop PC. It’s an issue that’s been reported about by me (and the community) ever since its launch on the PC platform. At the time of writing, it doesn’t look like it’ll be solved anytime soon! But on the flip side of things, it works flawlessly on SteamDeck, somehow, and I have yet to run into such an issue.

Overall, Apex Legends is a good game, with a large time investment and high skill ceiling, which ultimately makes it not for me. For other players out there who think like me, and play games like I play, I don’t recommend it.

Originally published at https://backloggd.com.