“Apex Legends Season 4” has been off to a fantastic start since its launch on Feb. 4. With a new legend, map changes, weapon and legends balancing, and even some quality of life improvements, season four seems to be living up to the hype Respawn Entertainment to which it has built up.
At the time of writing this, Feb. 11, there have been a few fixes to ensure some of the new implementations stuck, but none of them have been intrusive and were taken care of in a timely manner. Without further distraction, let’s get into what makes this season of “Apex Legends.”
The new legend this season is Revenant, a robotic assassin whose abilities are deceptively effective when properly understood and mastered. His passive, Stalker, allows you to crouch-walk faster than other legends and climb up objects for longer durations.
This passive can seem mundane at first, especially because his long climb can still feel quite short, but it is one of the best tools in his arsenal. Crouching during combat as Revenant doesn’t lessen your mobility, allowing you to dodge a few key shots and strafe attack as well.
His other ability, Silence, also has a few things about it that the game doesn’t explicitly tell you. Silence is a projectile weapon ability, dealing 10 damage when an opponent makes contact and disabling all their abilities for a 10 second duration. Already, this ability comes off as a powerful tool in Revenant’s kit, but it gets better. Silence lasts for a few seconds after it lands and will stick to any surface, allowing smart Revenant players to cut off doorways and entrances on the fly.
Finally, his ultimate, Death Totem, is another unique entry in “Apex Legends” roster. Death Totem allows for Revenant and his team to essentially have two lives when active, as activating the totem and then being killed returns the user back to the location of the totem instead of causing them to be simply knocked down.
It does have a balancing drawback that when you return, your shields are at the same capacity as when you activated, but your health is next to nothing. This means Revenant players will need to use this ultimate strategically, as returning to a totem placed in the enemy’s line of fire makes it useless. It also has a limited range and duration, the penalty for exiting or running out of time as you lose its effects.
All in all, I find Revenant to be a welcomed addition to the game’s growing roster of legends. He seems to be very balanced right out of the gate and rewards smart players.
Map changes this season are also welcomed, as they cut out a lot of dead space and difficult bottlenecks from the previous version. World’s Edge in season four sees two brand new locations, Harvester and Survey Camp, and redesigns of iconic areas like Capitol City, now Fragment West and Fragment East. These changes spice up the map flow and make the map feel different yet familiar.
Legend and weapon balances were added, the big changes being to sniper rifles and energy weapons. Sniper rifles now have their own ammo type, removing them from their previous categories.
With energy weapons, the Devotion is now a gold drop gun while the L-Star is among normal drops and can be outfitted with varying attachments in the game. Bloodhound has the most notable change as far as legends go, his ultimate ability gaining five seconds to its duration for every knockdown dealt while active.
A small addition made, but one that was influenced by the community, is randomized skins being an option for players to put on their legends. You can also select the skins it chooses from, allowing you to show off your favorite gear more often.
“Apex Legends Season 4” has been a blast to play since launch, with new battle pass rewards having me coming back again and again. If you’ve been taking a hiatus from “Apex Legends” or are looking to jump in for the first time, take it from me: now is the time.
