Apex Legends Season 15 review – Broken Moon knocks it out of the park, but stickers fall short

Apex Legends Season 15 is an impressive update with Catalyst and Broken Moon sharing the spotlight, but Respawn’s decision to add stickers has only tainted Eclipse and angered the community.

Although Apex Legends was released all the way back in 2019, Respawn’s popular battle royale is still thriving and continuing to build a passionate community of players.

With its fifteenth season arriving on November 1, Eclipse aimed to shake up the map rotation with Cleo’s Broken Moon, add in the long-awaited gifting feature, and of course introduce Catalyst to the roster.

While Respawn knocked it out of the park with the Defensive Conjurer Catalyst and the brilliant Broken Moon, the new sticker cosmetics have missed the mark completely, and instead tainted a near-perfect update.

Apex Legends Eclipse Key Details

• Price: Free
• Developer: Respawn Entertainment
• Release Date: November 1, 2022
• Platforms: Windows, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch

Apex Legends Eclipse trailer

Catalyst – A buggy but brilliant new Legend

With an intriguing backstory that’s tied to Broken Moon and a powerful kit that’s fueled by the mysterious but destructive ferrofluid, Catalyst or Tressa Crystal Smith has all the elements to become a fan-favorite Legend amongst the community.

Equipped with some of the most unique abilities in the Outlands, the Defensive Conjurer is capable of slowing down skirmishes and taking gunfights on her terms. This makes her extremely potent against aggressive third parties who are looking to take advantage of a weakened squad.

A well-placed Dark Veil Ultimate can completely thwart an enemy push, or at least force them to enter a gunfight blinded. Not only that, as her Tactical can be placed down for an infinite amount of time, masking the charges behind the Ultimate makes for the perfect trap, giving Catalyst the opportunity to rain down gunfire.

Of course, it’s also important not to forget her powerful Passive that makes it possible for the Defensive Conjurer to reinforce or rebuild doors. This allows Catalyst to pull off heals & shields during intense skirmishes when other Legends would be dead in the water.

Despite this, Catalyst hasn’t entered the Outlands without causing a few issues in the form of bugs. While some are more distracting than game-breaking, others have completely nerfed certain Legends including Wraith, who currently cannot see barricaded doors inside her Tactical and is slowed by ferrofluid despite being invulnerable.

Although there’s no denying these issues are frustrating, Catalyst as a whole has arrived on the roster as a balanced and fair Legend with an interesting kit. Her abilities can seem completely useless or unbelievably effective depending on how they’re used in a gunfight. This is a mark of good kit design as it puts the onus on the player to master her abilities instead of just using them on cooldown.

Broken Moon – Cleo certainly doesn’t disappoint

For a long time, one of the main critiques in Apex Legends is that due to hot drops and slow rotations, matches often slow down significantly in the mid-game. This leads to long periods of time on maps like World’s Edge and Storm Point where players simply cannot find opponents to fight.

Well, with Broken Moon, Respawn wanted to solve this problem and to the surprise of the community, they’ve managed to do exactly that. Boreas’ moon Cleo not only showcases a breathtaking skybox but also offers a faster-paced gameplay experience for players, allowing them to get into skirmishes more often.

One of the primary reasons for this is the new zip rail travel system than connects all the POIs together and makes it easy to rotate to different locations in a matter of seconds. After looting an area, players can hop on a zip rail and track down a set of enemies in an instant, maintaining a better tempo for matches overall.

Another key factor is that Broken Moon does not have a hot-drop area equivalent to Fragment on World’s Edge. This is because the map includes bigger POIs than ever before with more loot, and competitors no longer feel the need to land in central locations thanks to zip rails.

While areas like Terraformer and Perpetual Core always seem to host the most squads, you’ll never see the whole lobby dropping on a single POI, which is a huge positive.

Aside from a few expected bugs, Broken Moon is without a doubt the best-paced and most action-packed map in Apex. It’s clear the devs are taking lessons from their previous designs and because of that, Broken Moon has stolen the spotlight in Eclipse.

Gifting & stickers – A long-awaited feature overshadowed by community anger

While not the most exciting addition, gifting has been a heavily-requested feature for countless seasons, and Respawn finally delivered it in Season 15.

It’s now possible to buy cosmetics and bundles for your fellow competitors in the store as long as you’ve been friends for over two weeks.

Unfortunately, gifting has been somewhat overshadowed by the community backlash to stickers, a new cosmetic that can only be equipped on healing items.

Back in September, Respawn implemented an update that improved and changed the in-game healing animations. Players quickly noticed that more of the item was now being shown on screen, and speculated that a new cosmetic was on the way for consumables.

Well, they were correct and it’s safe to say that the majority of players are confused and angry about the addition of stickers. While the new cosmetic does not dilute the loot pool and is only available in the store, a lot of the community has slammed them as an unnecessary cash grab.

Even pros like Philip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen have spoken out against them and although Respawn gave two stickers out for free at the start of Season 15, all they seem to have done is taint Eclipse and overshadow the rest of the impressive content.

Battle Pass – A solid set of rewards

Respawn has certainly slowly but surely improved the battle pass over the last few seasons and Eclipse once again delivers a solid set of rewards. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for the devs to deliver a knockout reward pass that leaves players overwhelmingly impressed.

As always the pass contains the standard filler collectibles between tier 1 and 100 which come alongside a set of impressive skins at the main milestones.

However, before that, just unlocking the pass will immediately gift you with a set of epic Legend skins in Archon Catalyst, Shadow Sorcerer Seer, Astral Treasure Loba, and the Legendary Obsidian Night Havoc skin. All of these cosmetics look brilliant but the main attractions without a doubt come later in the pass.

At tier 25 you’ll be granted the Imperial Assailent Legendary Ash skin, a beautifully designed cosmetic that stands out from the crowd with its red and gold trim. After that at tier 50, you’ll receive the star of the show which is, of course, Mail Order Monster Revenant. This brilliant cosmetic gives the Synthetic Nightmare a top hat and is definitely going to be the go-to skin for Revenant mains in the future.

Finally, players will receive Laser Evicorator and Cosmic Cannon Charge Rifle skins in the final stages of the Eclipse reward track.

These round off a solid battle pass with plenty of value, but it still feels like Respawn is holding back when it comes to the rewards, we’d like to see them let loose in Season 16 and really try to impress the community.

Rating 9/10

Season 15 of Apex Legends is a blockbuster update that eclipses the content that came with Hunted back in August. Respawn has added a balanced and interesting Legend with Catalyst, introduced a heavily-requested feature with gifting, and completely knocked it out of the park with Broken Moon.

The new map is without a doubt the gem in the crown of Season 15 and alleviates the slow-paced and boring mid-games that have become a major complaint on Storm Point and World’s Edge.

Unfortunately, the relatively minor addition of stickers has only tainted Eclipse, dominating the conversation amongst the community. The unnecessary feature may have left a sour taste in the mouth of players but as a whole, Eclipse is a solid update that deserves to be celebrated.