Apex Legends launched out of the shadows of Titanfall 2 back in February 2019 to huge support. It has the feel of Titanfall, an expansion of the lore following the main series’s story, and a coherent battle royale game focused around different legends with different abilities. While Apex has dealt with its fair share of issues, from gun and character balance, to the very shaky launch of the new season, entitled Legacy, the game is still running as strong, if not stronger than ever. That’s the point though, because even though this new season didn’t start on the best of terms with players, this may be the season that breaks Apex into the mainstream, and even gets eSports running.

Let’s start with talking about what went wrong. Legacy has seen the introduction of a new character, Valkyrie, a ton of quality of life changes, like character nerfs and buffs, and a whole new game mode. For anyone who hasn’t gotten around to playing Apex yet, the game featured a single game mode: a 60-player battle royale. While different events would take place within the battle royale mode, it still only featured the one game mode at any given time.

Players were justifiably beyond excited for the introduction of the new arena game mode. A 3v3 mode where players buy guns, equipment, and abilities at the start of each round, Counter Strike style, but the equipment does not roll over. The issue starts with the launch of the season though. With so many players trying to jump on at the same time, buy their new battle pass, buy the new character, and play the new game mode all at the same time, everything broke.

While yes, you could play Apex without too much issue, the servers were fine in that regard, you weren’t able to purchase the battle pass for at least a few hours unless you were lucky. The same thing went for Valkyrie, or any other legend you may not own at that point. Let’s say you were able to get in and get on to purchase the legend though. Well that’s exciting because, like me, some people were actually able to get their hands on the new legend with the right amount of patience and luck. However, this is where the second issue lies. For at least six hours after Legacy‘s launch, most people were unable to play any characters beside the original six that were in the game.

That being said, once servers started to catch up with everything, it became increasingly apparent how needed this new update was. Let’s start with the nerfs, buffs, and quality of life changes present in Legacy. Characters like Lifelife, Horizon, Octane, and to some extent Loba, all saw nerfs to their abilities. Most of this came from their pick rates with high ranked players. Lifeline used to be able to revive teammates with her drone as opposed to stopping to actually help, which she still does, but it no longer provides a big shield that blocks all bullets.

For the other legends, the changes mostly came down to an increase in cooldown times. Loba for example, has an ultimate ability, a black market that lets you take any two items from a large area, which now takes two minutes to charge. It isn’t all doom and gloom though. With Loba’s secondary ability, a bracelet that she can throw to teleport, you’ll get a huge buff like being able to move at full speed, and actually teleporting you to where it looks like it should.

Some guns in Legacy have seen the effects of these changes as well. The P2020 pistol had its rate of fire reduced, while the Spitfire LMG had its recoil increased dramatically. After using it for a few matches, it became apparent that I was no longer going to kill anyone with the gun. Time to main the Devotion I suppose! All assault rifles had their headshot damage reduced as well, while the 30-30 repeater actually had its leg damage multiplier increased. With all the changes made to guns, it’s likely you’ll see people trying out more guns finally, instead of just using the Spitfire and Triple Take, which has been shoved into supply crates only and can’t be found on the ground anymore.

Now comes for the BIG changes though. First off, in Battle Royale you will always spawn with basic equipment, a white shield, helmet, knockdown shield, as well as healing items. This is likely to stop games from going so fast. By the end of Season 8, there were way too many games where half the teams or more were already dead by the time the first ring was closing. The second big change is the addition of the arenas, the aforementioned 3v3 mode that is undoubtedly the reason so many people were playing Legacy at launch.

If there was any doubt to begin with that arenas were already going to be popular, that has surely been squashed. Arena matches are quick, no longer requiring you to dedicate over twenty minutes to a match if you have any intention of winning. After playing both incredibly aggressive and defensive matches, as well as having matches that go for three rounds and matches that go for eight rounds, it’s a fair assessment to say that the average time of a match can be from five to ten minutes.

So not only are matches quick, allowing you to hop in and play quickly before going to work, school, or just before a show you want to watch starts, but they’re tactical and incredibly competitive. This is the biggest, most important thing about them. Arenas will likely see the spawn and rise of competitive matches, gamebattles, and MLG competitions, and eSports is basically all Apex needs to get bigger than it already is.

With servers now cleared up and people able to play the legends that they actually want, as well as people learning the changes to their favourite legends, guns, and everything else, now is the time to respark an interest in Apex. The Legacy update has done so much more for the game than most people reason. Hopefully in the future we will see the inclusion of ranked and possibly even clan battles to the arena. But for now, be happy with the huge push that has been made to make the game even better.