Apex Legends has started its big fifth season, introducing a new character and new mechanics to the game. After some early server troubles, I managed to hop right in and I played a few hours. So, what kinda stuff can you expect in this new season? Allow me to tell you!

One of the first things you’ll see in the main menu is a new “Season” tab. This tab includes all the season pass stuff, as well as the new Quests that Season 5 introduces. Like I previously speculated, the Quest stuff actually leans heavily into the narrative and world of Apex Legends, offering players big narrative segments. In the very first one, we’re given a short story of Loba gathering all the other competitors (sans Revenant) to convince them to go on a quest with her to put this special relic back together. I actually think that it’s charming and gives Apex this edge in character that other battle royales lack. In fact, I think that they should go all in and make these segments visual novel segments.

To advance the story, you have to collect treasure packs. There are 45 of them and you can only collect one each day. Besides some ordinary prizes, packs can offer the chance to participate in a Hunt. Hunts are unique quests that takes you to the night variant of King’s Canyon, where you have to collect something and get out. These Hunts pit you against the Prowler enemies that Bloodhound introduced via their trial in the last major update, which will do their best to stop you from collecting relic pieces and advancing the story. While I generally like the idea, I kinda wish there was more challenge to getting treasure packs besides just finding them randomly in crates. I feel that you need to put more work into getting clues to make it feel like a quest, you know?

Moving into the game, you’ll see a new version of King’s Canyon. Skulltown and the Thunderdome have been completely destroyed and have been replaced by Salvage, a big oil-rig-esque area. Additionally, the Wetlands have been replaced by the Capacitor, which looks like a big arena with smaller buildings strewn about. I don’t feel that I have played enough in these new areas to get a good read on them. Though within the few hours I played, the whole Salvage area still feels as busy as Skull Town, so that place still lives on in spirit.

Now let’s address the new character, Loba. So, her passive allows her to see any nearby epic or legendary items through walls. This can help players zero in on places to loot or figure out if a place is worth looting. It’s real basic and rather fitting for her thief archetype. As for her active ability, as her character trailer demonstrates, it involves her tossing out a ring which she can then teleport to. This active presents a lot of applications: she can use it to flank enemies, she can use it as a quick escape, she can use it to reach higher elevation, etc. The important thing to remember, though, is that it works on projectile rules and that it needs to be aimed at level ground.

Loba’s ultimate, Black Market Boutique, is an unusual one. When deployed, it creates a “black market” that can be accessed by anyone. Anything within the radius of the black market can be accessed through the black market and teleported right into your inventory, though people can only take 2 items from it. You may wonder, “why use this when you can just loot a box directly?” I can see multiple uses for this.

For instance, if there are death boxes out in the open, looting becomes risky since anyone can easily waltz in while you’re busy taking stuff. Loba’s ultimate instead enables people to access whatever is in those boxes from a safer location, provided it’s within range. Additionally, it can presumably access objects that are outside of the play circle, which can be a useful tool toward the endgame where venturing outside of the circle for loot takes off a lot of health. Overall, it’s an interesting (if situational) ultimate.

It’s too early to say where Loba fits into the meta of the game. She looks like she can be an effective flanker to rival the likes of Wraith and Pathfinder, especially considering his changes. I feel like her ultimate definitely becomes more valuable toward the endgame if the team is low on supplies.

Another Legend worth talking about with this update is Mirage, who has seen a much needed rework. Let’s start with his passive. Mirage’s passive is largely considered to be the worst in the game in that he gets cloaked with invisibility for a few seconds after being downed. The problem is that it does not last long enough to provide him an adequate escape, plus, it’s flat-out useless in solo mode on account of nobody being around to revive him. Now, however, his cloak gets applied to some other things.

When Mirage revives someone, both of them will be cloaked, which allows for safer revives in dangerous situations. Additionally, he’ll be cloaked when using the respawn beacon, so he’s less vulnerable than an average character normally would be when using it. However, the cloak does not extend to self-revives, so his passive is still functionally useless in solo situations. With that said, it’s still an improvement over what he used to have.

His active ability can still make hologram decoys, but they now have way more utility. When he sends out a decoy, he can now take control of it and it will copy any movement he does. While it can be hard to control what is essentially two Mirages at once, effectively using it means that you can create a much more compelling body double to fool enemies. His ultimate is also upgraded so that instead of creating a bunch of stationary holograms, they can also copy everything Mirage does by default, which is way more disorienting.

This change sacrifices the brief invisibility that allowed Mirage to sneak up on enemies, but that was flawed anyway. People could figure out there was an invisible Mirage somewhere the moment they saw the ring of stationary dopplegangers, so again, this was a net positive change. The new Mirage changes really helps make him into the weird trickster character he should be in concept. However, it is of course balanced out by the fact that using things effectively is hard to pull off. As people get used to Mirage’s reworked abilities, though, I imagine that you’ll be seeing him a lot more in matches.

A bunch of other characters got some tweaks. Crypto’s drone had the ability to tell how many enemy teams are around by looking at a banner, but Crypto players were unable to communicate that without voice chat. Now, the banner can be targeted with a pings so that non-verbal players can notify teammates, and as one such player, I welcome this change. Fellow recon character Bloodhound, had their active ability further buffed, with it having a longer duration and lower cooldown. There are more special bins for Lifeline to open, Caustic gas no longer slows down teammates, Octane’s ultimate which throws down a bounce pad for people has a lower cooldown, and the duration of Gibraltar’s shield has been lowered.

The most notable change outside of Mirage has to be with Pathfinder. Pathfinder has been known to be a tricky character in that he can throw out grappling hooks to easily escape from engagements or to reposition. However, that has now seen a significant nerf. The cooldown for this ability changed from 10 seconds to a whopping 35. On one hand, it’s a much needed nerf given how much of a terror he was. However, I can see some people saying that the nerf is too harsh, given how large of a change it is.

There’s a bunch of other smaller changes with regards to weapons and quality of life stuff, but I recommend just checking out EA’s official post on season 5 if you want to get into the nitty-gritty. For the most part, I really like this update and I’m excited to see where the story content goes.

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