3 years after its release, Apex Legends is still the best Battle Royale in 2022

Apex Legends started 2019 strong and just got better and better over the following 3 years. Therefore, the game is now a real hit for Studio Respawn and Publisher EA. MeinMMO editor Jürgen Horn, who is already looking forward to the next season like a small child, thinks so too.

Apex Legends came out of nowhere on February 4th, 2019 and I still remember that day. It said “Jürgen, you play PUBG and Fortnite, don’t you want to take a look at the new Battle Royale from the makers of Titanfall?”

I played the game immediately after work and knew even then “this will be my new favorite game”. From there, PUBG and Fortnite were uninteresting. There was just something missing when you didn’t have pings, no heroes, no respawn beacons, and no bounce teams.

Even when other games partially adopted these mechanics, Apex Legends was always the original, in which these features all fit together optimally.

In the 3 years since its release, Apex Legends has continued to evolve, which is why it can still be found in the top games of the battle royale genre.

But what makes Apex Legends so good that it’s still rocking hard in 2022?

The name Apex Legends says it all here, because the game was already the “Apex” (Latin for “summit”) of Battle Royale development when it was released. The developers took everything that was cool in BR-Games and developed it constructively and consistently. Here some examples:

Jump Teams: An important aspect of BR-Games is that you jump out of a plane unarmed together with the other players and then quickly look for equipment on the ground. Stupid only when the teammates jump off somewhere else despite the agreement and land all over the map. In Apex, you basically jump off together as a team, and if you don’t intentionally drop out, everyone will end up in the place that the “Jumpmaster” chooses.

Pings: Communication is essential in BR games, but not everyone wants to talk live via voice chat and typing in text chat is not advisable in the heat of the moment. In Apex Legends, for the first time, you could “ping” locations, items, and enemies, letting the team quickly know where to get something or where enemies were spotted.

Respawn Beacons: Battle royale games get a lot of their excitement from the fact that you’re permanently eliminated from the game after you die. Stupid only when you have bad luck at the beginning of the game and your comrades then have to continue playing outnumbered and it is probably already clear that they will lose.

In Apex, on the other hand, you can pick up a kill’s token and revive it at any time at a permanently anchored respawn station. With good teamwork, you always have a chance to turn things around without losing an important aspect of BR games.

Most of these features have now been adopted from other BR games and some have been further developed, which in turn shows the tremendous influence Apex Legends had on the entire genre.

There was also an excellent mix of gunplay, movement and the special skills of the individual heroes. The gunplay comes, among other things, from the feedback that top shooter guy shroud gave at the time.

Everything fits in Apex Legends. The flow of the game is pleasantly fluid, but not as hectic as in Hyper Scape or as leisurely as in PUBG. Warzone is just about as good as the gameplay, but suffers from a confusing mass of weapons and other problems.

Therefore, Apex Legends was also the top alternative for numerous BR fans who eventually got fed up with Warzone and migrated in droves. Even people who didn’t really like Apex Legends, like Dr Disrespect, had to grudgingly admit that it’s a good game.

That’s why Apex Legends will still dominate the genre in 2022

Even if Apex Legends had its problems and difficulties, it has developed consistently and constructively over the past 3 years. In addition to the Battle Royale mode, there is now a much faster Arena mode.

In addition, with Season 12 there is a completely new mode called Control, which is something like Domination from Call of Duty. In this mode, which offers infinite respawns, you can optimally test the special features of the game and gunplay even as a newcomer. This makes Apex even more of a universal shooter franchise that appeals to fans of all shooter subgenres – not just battle royales.

Since Apex Legends – thanks to admittedly quite expensive microtransactions – regularly flushes a lot of money into publisher EA’s coffers, Apex continues to be well promoted and mentioned benevolently in the quarterly reports.

Therefore, the developers will probably have enough resources to develop new content for Apex Legends in the coming year. So there should be at least one more map, more modes and tons of new legends and weapons and upgrades.

There’s also no way the weapons will become inflationary, since Apex Legends puts a few superior guns in special care packages every season that rarely appear in the game. Therefore, even with umpteen new weapons, the basic pool of shooting irons is always clear.

In the past 30 days (as of January 27, 2022) Apex Legends had been released on Steam alone (via Steamcharts) an average of a quarter of a million players online. But since it’s also played on consoles and via the EA Launcher, the actual number should be much higher. So if the developers continue to ride this wave of success, nothing stands in the way of Apex Legends being successful in 2022.

But enough of my crushes. What do you like about Apex Legends? Or do you see things completely differently and have your problems with the game? Let us know in the comments!