Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends has taken the gaming world by storm since its initial release in February. This new addition to the Titanfall series had garnered almost over 25 million players worldwide and after a month over 50 million, beating out Fortnite’s beginning player numbers.

Some have called Apex Legends a knock-off of Fortnite, but it clearly has found an audience that prefers it to the titan of the battle royale genre. So what makes it different from your basic battle royale game? Well, there are several differences that make the game much more unique, but let’s go over what Apex Legends have in common with other battle royale games.

Battle Royale Qualities:

Similar to other battle royale games, such as Fortnite and PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds, the player is dropped in a battleground where they battle against other players until their team is the last one standing. Throughout the game, the player picks up weapons, health items, and other forms of loot in order to have a better chance of winning.

Loot varies from normal (level one), rare (level two), epic (level three), and legendary (level four) quality.

There are also in-game cosmetics for characters and weapons the player picks up while in a match. These can be bought through in-game currency, real cash in the form of microtransactions, or through unlocks after leveling up a player account.

Cosmetics can also be attained by playing for a certain amount of time and winning a lot of games during seasons. Seasons are periods of time in battle royale games where players grind to get the high tier cosmetics to show off their skill and experience.

Gameplay:

Unlike other battle royale games, there is no single player mode. Instead, each game places the player in a squad of three and they play until their squad is either eliminated by another team or the last one left in the match. In each match, there is a total of 20 squads with 60 players.

Since the overall map is smaller compared to other battle royale maps, there’s much more combat between every squad playing.

Apex also breaks the mold in team communication by adding a ping system for people who don’t own microphones or just don’t want to talk. With single or multiple pushes of a button, the player can ping a location they want to go, a good looting spot, and enemy locations.

Legends:

Taking a page from games like Overwatch, Apex Legends allows the player to choose from nine different legends from the Titanfall universe that possess unique abilities. A player can choose characters such as Bloodhound — a technological tracker — or Octane, a high-speed daredevil and the newest legend added to Apex Legends, that suits their personal playstyle. Each legend also has a backstory that gives them depth and unique personalities that are reflected in their abilities.

Each playable character has three abilities: a passive ability (that does not require a button input), a tactical ability that requires a button, and an ultimate ability that can be charged over time.

Weapons:

To go along with a diverse character selection, there are multiple different guns ranging from close range to long-range weapons that the player can pick up. Each gun falls under four ammo types: light ammo, heavy ammo, shotgun ammo, and energy ammo.

The player can snipe their enemies from afar with sniper rifles like the Triple Take and Kraber. Players can keep a medium range with an R-301 Carbine assault rifle and the M600 Spitfire light machine gun, or get up close and personal with the Peacekeeper and EVA-8 Auto shotguns.

Throughout the map, there are also various gun attachments for each weapon type that can help with recoil, sight, and weapon capability.

Respawn Entertainment and the Community:

Respawn Entertainment likes to listen to feedback from the community and implement “buffs and nerfs” to weapons as well as legends that are too weak or too strong in the Apex meta. To go along with this, Respawn posted a game roadmap of events, new legend releases, and season releases for the game’s first year for the player base to review.

On the streaming platform  Twitch, there is a competition called “Twitch Rivals” in which popular streamers play games like Apex Legends to win different prizes. These streams gather a lot of viewers from all over the world and help bolster the popularity of games such as Apex.

So far, the game has a large number of players and a committed fanbase that play almost every day on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Game Progress:

As of now, the game is doing extremely well in its first months of release. There is some controversy in the gaming community about if Apex has the potential to beat the popular game known as Fortnite, but only time will tell. Both games appeal to completely different audiences and it’s up to the player’s game preferences to choose which is better.

While Apex Legends emphasizes skill, players should still give the game a try.