After a quick, five month run in Early Access on Steam, Battlerite Royale has hit it’s full free-to-play 1.0 release. I learned of the game prior to picking up a copy, though the purchase price unlocked all champions and gave some founder bonuses, so I’m not peeved about the free-to-play full release. I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve had with the game already, and wrote some impressions on it back in November when I first got started. This isn’t exactly just throwing the game out into world though, as this 1.0 update brought with it some significant changes.

You can read the full patch notes here, but I’m going to take a moment to go over some of my thoughts having played for a few hours post release.

The first thing I noticed that had changed was bits of the UI. There were some new details added, but also introduced is the concept of a “season” which seems to be popular with online multiplayer games as of late. Most lobby based PvP games have something like this where you earn rewards by playing, but if you buy a special pass for a monetary fee you’ll unlock even more skins and things and typically these items are “exclusive” to that season — this creates more desire in some players I’d assume. This season ties in with a new star leveling and season leveling system, which you’ll see more of below:

Quests are of the same “Kill 4 Players or Break 100 Loot Orbs” variety, but newly added are season quests. Complete these and get stars. Get ten stars and move up a season level which corresponds with the battle pass and extra goodies. Basically it comes down to just playing the game and you’ll earn some stuff one way or the other, but there’s an option to throw some money at the game to earn extra rewards. There are also a couple of packs you can outright buy that provide new skins and mounts. Alternatively you can earn in-game currency and buy chests which will get you some skins and avatars and mounts, etc. It’s a typical free-to-play model and I don’t really see a need to spend money to have fun.

Another big part of the new patch was the release of three more champions to choose from. Strangely enough, they are all ranged characters, and that has thrown the distribution of melee/ranged characters off a bit, but I’m sure there are more champions being ported over from Battlerite, along with brand new creations coming down the pipe. I tried all three and enjoyed both Oldur and Taya quite a bit. Pearl seems too support oriented to be viable solo, and it appears that there is still only the option to duo and you have to have someone on your friend’s list to even invite them. I’d imagine that an auto fill for duos or a group queue should be something in development, but I haven’t read anything about that specifically yet.

The map has been revamped a bit, and you can see one of the brand new zones above, and the ice sure is slippery. This is the north end of the map, they also added a new trader’s market zone at the south end and the extra space seems to help you avoid those early skirmishes allowing you to gear up a bit before fighting. There were other tweaks such as the movement speed of characters across the board, and more specific champion adjustments that you can check out on the patch notes I linked to above. Overall I think it was a successful early access run and that the game feels like it’s in a good spot. Outside of adding more characters/skins and perhaps continuing to expand the map, I would only suggest the matchmaking for duos and perhaps a group of 4-5 queue.

If you haven’t checked the game out yet, now’s the time — it doesn’t get any cheaper than free!