Apex Legends Mobile Review

~Alek Williams

By now, most of us have tried our hand at some type of competitive battle royal or looter shooter, whether it be in Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite or the fast-growing world of EA games’ Apex Legends. These games bring a unique, intense feeling, dropping you into the game world with the bare minimum, to loot and shoot your way to victory. And surprisingly, Apex Legends Mobile brings all the same feelings of its console counterpart along, while sporting its own unique set up and exclusives.

One thing that really stands out when starting Apex Mobile is the ability to rearrange your HUD. You can arrange your preferred layout (I’m a three-finger kind of guy myself). After which, you’ll be free to try out the all the guns Apex has to offer.

Royale Arsenal

Veteran Apex players will notice that the available arsenal is back to the basics of when Apex first launched. This goes for the map and most legends or playable characters as well. However, at the time of writing this, the action title is in its second season. Each season, EA Games releases a new, original and mobile exclusive legend, with the newest being Rhapsody. Moreover, Apex Mobile does bring over two of its more popular PC legends—Loba and Octane.

Season 2 offers a wide variety of challenges, rewards and exclusive content to play around with. The battle pass gives a wide variety of weapon and legends skins, emotes, sprays, banners and character cards. As you level up the pass, you receive two at a time within small intervals. After collecting 10, you’re able to use them to unlock a legend. Another exclusive character is the void assassin, Fade. Although it appears you can only unlock him and Loba through making an in-app purchase. While there is an option to use character cards to unlock them, I found no way to obtain these cards. Unlike the game’s PC counterpart, the title offers no freely earned currency, apart from the seasonal currency used for the limited-time seasonal shop. That said, after you dive into your first few matches in King’s Canyon, you’ll be able to unlock all but these two characters.

While playing Apex Mobile you may notice that you receive two types of experience at the end of every match. One of these is the well-known profile experience that gives various rewards upon reaching higher levels. The second and newer aspect is legend experience. As you level up your legends, you’ll gain skill points that allow you to gain bonuses, like longer range with Path Finder’s ultimate after scanning a beacon, extended ultimate time with bloodhound after each kill while it’s active, and faster reload speed for all allies if within range of Rhapsody’s ultimate. You can also unlock apex packs and profile accessories as well.

But if You’re Not in a Diving Mood

Apex Mobile brings the same suspenseful gameplay as you would expect from any Apex title. If you take a short look through the different game modes, you’ll be met with a multiplayer tab that, also provides daily game modes, such as, Hack. If you’re a fan of Valorant or CS:GO, you’ll probably enjoy Hack, as it’s essentially the same set up. While they can be a nice change of pace, your settings get reset every time you log out. Said game modes feel fast paced, but bland and for the most part you’ll be fighting with, and against, bots. One thing they are good for though, is quickly knocking out challenges that require damage with a certain gun type or challenges requiring a certain amount of kills.

The Real Hard-Hitting Question

From its unique gameplay to special characters and gameplay elements, Apex Mobile is perhaps one of the best mobile shooters to date. It’s easy to learn but hard to master gameplay kept me wanting more. Apex Mobile is a mixture of modern popular looter shooter elements that blend perfectly, and even outshines the original title in some ways. Though it does have its downsides with a large number of bots to pad out matches, and minor glitches. That said, it’s still provides an incredibly enjoyable mobile gaming experience.