While the world waits for Titanfall 3, Respawn’s Apex Legends continues to thrive as arguably the best battle royale game. These massive shooters require equally massive audiences, so the jump to mobile gaming seemed inevitable. After getting some hands-on time with the upcoming Apex Legends Mobile, we walked away feeling as though we had played the full Apex Legends experience, to the point where it almost overwhelms this smaller, new platform.

A New Legend

Apex Legends Mobile is a new, standalone battle royale game for Android and iOS. It’s not like Fortnite, a game that's the same on phones, tablets, PCs, and consoles. If you want a portable version of the original Apex, stick with the Nintendo Switch version. This also means Apex Legends Mobile features no crossplay or cross-progression with its siblings.

Instead, Apex Legends Mobile is closer to Call of Duty: Mobile, Diablo Immortal, League of Legends: Wild Rift, or PUBG Mobile; it tweaks the familiar experience to suit the new platform. Don’t worry, it’s still a first-person battle royale where you drop into the expansive arena, scavenge for weapons, and compete to be the last squad standing. It’s not as dramatic a simplification as Rocket League Sideswipe. That said, subtle changes improve the experience for mobile users.

Depending on the game mode, you can freely swap between the default first-person perspective and a new third-person perspective to give yourself better environmental awareness. You can also tell the game to visualize sounds, so you can see where shots are coming from when you can’t use your headphones. Before you begin a session, Apex Legends Mobile asks how experienced you are with these types of games. Your answer may turn on suggested assists, such as automatically picking up loot or firing weapons as soon as you start aiming. I also felt like I had a more forgiving amount of health and shields. Battle royale games feel less frustrating when every random skirmish isn’t a frantic automatic death sentence for new players.

However, even if you precisely tweak the layout to your liking, the touch controls aren't ideal for such a complex game. To survive, you must quickly and strategically aim, move, sprint, slide, swap weapons, activate special attacks, pick up items, ping locations for teammates, help allies respawn, and perform other actions. The icons for performing those actions overwhelm and clutter the interface. 

You can adjust to these annoyances. Apex Legends’ gameplay remains satisfying enough to withstand this lesser experience. It does a better job at rewarding skill than Fortnite, its wacky powers make the game less boring than PUBG, its exquisite gunfeel clearly comes from an excellent shooter pedigree, and other games continue to steal from its innovative team communication features. Still, we hope the mobile game eventually gets the full controller support that the developers say they have only experimented with so far. At least you won’t have to worry about playing against opponents using a mouse and keyboard.

A Familiar Legacy

Even though this is technically a new game, Apex Legends Mobile’s modes and content will feel instantly familiar to veteran players. After only a couple of matches, I had access to both World’s Edge and Kings Canyon battle royale maps (note that Kings Canyon won't be available at launch). In addition, you can expect limited time events and various deathmatch modes. 

On mobile, seasons are shorter and players rank up faster. The mobile experience calls for a quicker pace. New seasons will also reveal new bits of Apex lore and story, like a snazzy game show framing device I saw during my play sessions. The season hub explains and lets you view all of the current new content at a glance. 

Of course, Apex Legends Mobile is a free-to-play game. As you progress through the battle pass (or spend money), you’ll unlock cosmetics including exclusive mobile cosmetics. You’ll also unlock additional characters. At launch, nine Legends return from the main game largely unchanged: Bloodhound, Lifeline, Pathfinder, Bangalore, Octane, Gibraltar, Wraith, Caustic, and Mirage.

Apex Legends Mobile also has an exclusive new Legend named Fade. I don’t know enough about the story to explain this guy’s whole deal, but his playstyle focuses on mobility, his passive ability "Surge" boosts his speed at the end of a slide. Meanwhile, his special attacks make use of Wraith-style Void abilities to zip through time around the battlefield or lock enemies in place. 

Mobile devices no longer have anything to prove when it comes to raw graphical power, but it’s still great to see that Apex Legends Mobile also looks as appealing as the main game. Characters and environments may not be as detailed, but image quality is sharp and frame rates remain high with minimal online lag. Characters display all their animated charm as you select them from a menu or activate finishing blows on downed opponents. If you want to save battery life, you can adjust graphical quality options. However, my iPhone 13 provided hours of playtime using the recommended settings. 

Android players need a device running Android 6.0 or later, 3GB of RAM, 4GB of storage space, and a Snapdragon 435, Hisilicon Kirin 650, Mediatek Helio P20, or Exynos 7420 CPU. iOS players need iOS 11 or later, 2GB of RAM, 4GB of storage space, and an A9 CPU.

Reach the Apex

Apex Legends Mobile has the unavoidable awkwardness that you'd expect from bringing such a demanding shooter to mobile, but it maintains so much of the core battle royale game that the experience is more impressive than disappointing. Apex Legends Mobile releases on Android and iOS on May 17, but like any proper game as a service, that’s just the beginning. Expect plenty more changes and updates from there as the developers interact with the hungry community.For more check out these Apex Legends tips and tricks. And for more in-depth video game talk, visit PCMag's Pop-Off YouTube channel.