Apex Legends Mobile, Coming

Apex Legends Mobile Game Review

Foreword

Perhaps fans of tactical competitive games still remember the dark horse miracle created by Respawn in early 2019. At that time, when the major manufacturers were fighting fiercely in the field of tactical competitive games, a game called Apex Legends, with its different gameplay from traditional tactical competitive games and a more refreshing game rhythm, quietly emerged. When it was born, the prestige was unparalleled for a while.

Three years later, Respawn and Tencent Photonics Studio Group brought this game to the mobile terminal, trying to make waves again in the tactical competitive mobile game market.

A delicate balance of reduction and simplification

In the impression of most people, the operation requirements of tactical competitive FPS are too complicated for mobile terminals, let alone Apex Legends with many complex skills such as tap-strafing and super-glide. This means that Apex Legends mobile has to compromise with the mobile phone and simplify some of the mechanisms or operations of the terminal game to adapt to the mobile terminal. However, if the operability of the game is excessively weakened in pursuit of simplicity, it will be very different from the original.

Fortunately, Apex Legends mobile has found a delicate balance between the restoration of the end game and the simplified operation burden.

On the one hand, the game restores the core charm of Apex Legends by transplanting all-round game content of the PC. Although Apex Legends Mobile only has ten legendary heroes and one map, which is relatively scarce compared to the client terminals’, this game reveals a taste that is very familiar to old players, both in terms of gameplay and image details.

In the game, the skills, types of firearms, and shooting feel of legendary heroes are almost the same as the PC version. The only difference you can intuitively feel is the increase in weapon ammo capacity and the amount of damage required for armor evolution. But in essence, these changes are only designed to balance the frustration caused by the mobile terminal, or to encourage players to participate in the battle as much as possible, and have no impact on the core experience of the game.

On the other hand, this work has made just the right simplification for the operation logic of mobile games. As long as players practice a little, they can also reproduce the various movement skills in the PC in the mobile game. For example, after holding the sliding, the player can directly connect the jump with the upward swipe of the finger, and easily complete the most basic movement method - sliding jump.

However, Apex Legends Mobile is not visually pleasing with the screen UI and virtual buttons in the game and it looks very crowded. And because the virtual buttons crowded the screen, the distance between each other is not too big, so it is common for me to accidentally touch the fire during the game. Fortunately, Apex Legends Mobile provides two preset templates and the function of freely adjusting the buttons, so that players can adjust themselves and choose the most comfortable operation method.

It is worth mentioning that the adaptation of Apex Legends Mobile to the gamepad has brought me a lot of surprises, basically restoring the gamepad keys, but the fly in the ointment is that there is no vibration function.

Apex Legends with PUBG flavor

Perhaps it is the joint development of Photon and Respawn. Apex Legends Mobile more or less makes me smell like PUBG. The most obvious part is the addition of many convenient auxiliary operations similar to those in PUBG. For example, long-pressing the move button and swiping up can trigger continuous running, automatically open doors, open supply warehouses, and automatically pick up items, etc., which greatly reduces the operational burden of players.

In addition, Apex Legends Mobile is not just a simple port from the PC side to the mobile terminal; this work also adds new game content on the basis of Apex Legends.

First of all, Apex Legends Mobile launched an exclusive legend-FADE on the basis of 9 original legendary heroes. The gain of his passive skill to increase his movement speed after sliding gives him the characteristics of high mobility. Tactical skills similar to Tracer’s flashback ensure the survivability of FADE, while his ultimate move plays the role of field control and pursuit. This allows FADE to assume the role of the dash hero in the three-person squad.

For legendary skills, Apex Legends Mobile has added a skill point system similar to talent tree upgrades. Players can improve the legendary level by completing the game, and can obtain the corresponding hero's skill points, which can be used to unlock talents or emoji, head stickers and other costumes.

The skills that can be unlocked in the game are divided into three types: general skills, finishing skills and exclusive skills. After being fully unlocked, each skill has 3 skills with different buffs for players to choose from. And for the same hero, different skill combinations are used to form different genres to further expand the strategy of the game.

In addition to the increase in legends and skills, the game also launched an additional 6V6 team competition mode based on the two modes of PC tactical competition and arena. In the team competition, players can freely choose heroes, firearms and others to fight fiercely with others, which is quite like the Apex version of Overwatch.

And you can also experience several other classic maps (some areas) in the PC through the rotation scene. Similarly, Apex Legends Mobile has also launched some special PVE gameplay for players to target practice in the arena to enrich the player's gaming experience.

In three aspects, new heroes, changes to the legendary skill system, and the addition of new modes, Apex Legends Mobile has allowed me to experience a differentiated and fresh experience on the basis of retaining the original charm of PC.

Sadly, optimization issues in Apex Legends Mobile have affected some of my gaming experience. Although the mobile phone is already better than the recommended configuration for the game, in the ultra-clear picture quality, we still often experience 1 to 2 seconds of lag when parachuting to the ground. And after playing 3 to 4 rounds, as the temperature of the game phone rises, there will be obvious frame loss when encountering a melee scene, which often makes us very distressed.

Epilogue

Overall, although Apex Legends Mobile has obvious optimization and bug problems, it is still a work worth trying in all aspects. It can not only restore to a considerable extent, letting experienced players enjoy the fun of high-intensity games on their mobile phones but also bring new players a more enjoyable fingertip competitive experience with simpler operations and a more exciting battle rhythm.