Here are my thoughts/criticisms on the Apex Campaign.
Story
I personally think that a lot of potential was missed. Missions were very short and could be completed in a few hours even alone. Hoped it connected more to the East Wind campaign or more background elements were explained regarding Tanoa.
We only got to see a few remote villages of Tanoa and not what the whole location had to offer.
For trying to make this as casual as possible, not many background/story elements were explained.
Gameplay
For the relatively short story, I thought the missions and cut-scenes were well designed. There was a good attention to detail such as placing objects in the background etc. Objectives were OK too.
THE RESPAWN SYSTEM. WHY?! I understand dying in the campaign and restarting from last save (It was perfectly fine during Eastern Wind) but WHY is there respawn in a single player part game. Every time I died whilst playing alone, I wanted to uninstall Arma and kill myself in real life. During jungle combat, EI would spot me way faster and a lot of time would get the jump on me. Say I died 5 times moving in a jungle path, WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT A TOTAL of 2:30 minutes looking at the map. This is very immersion breaking, pointless and a waste of time. Not to mention it means 0 penalization other than self-frustration whilst waiting 30 seconds over and over again.
Not to mention that in singleplayer, you can miss action/objectives by being dead. For example in the 1st or 2nd mission, have to clear a compound. I died but whilst respawning the AI, moved in and cleared the compound for me.
Please never do a system like this for single-player content again. At this point I would rather not play the campaign than go through the respawn system again.
Aiming for Casual Audience
Skimming through this thread and playing the campaign, I have noticed and it seems that respawn system/campaign was designed/implemented for casual plebs and to give the campaign a wider audience.
According to Steam achievements:
0.2% Have completed the campaign with friends
0.2% Have completed it alone
0.5% Have completed campaign (Killed Warlord)
Surely if it was designed to have such wide appeal or making it incredibly easy, a larger number of players would have completed it?
Graphics
Tanoa looks beautiful.
Sound
Background sounds and weapons make the story fairly immersive.
Overall summary
Short story with missed potential. Worst respawn system I have ever seen in a single-player part of a game.
