This new chapter of fortnite brought on so many changes, and unfortunately, a majority of them were not that great. First and foremost, the new game modes: LEGO fortnite, fortnite festival, and rocket racing. This was all revealed during a pretty cool live event at the end of the prior season, but I guess the spectacle made them seem a lot cooler than they actually were. LEGO fortnite is just an open world survival game, I spent a bit of time in it but it's not all that fun. Rocket racing is the worst of them all, so bad, I refuse to touch it. I don't know WHY it's bad, but people say it's bad, and I trust the collective online consensus on this one. The only acceptable one is fortnite festival which is basically guitar hero. Cheap rhythm game, but it can be pretty fun. What sucks is you have to buy the songs you actually want to play, otherwise you're stuck with the daily rotation or the epic originals (most of which are ass). You can play part of a song in battle royale as well like an emote; killing someone then singing Buddy Holly is an INSANE power move.
As for the meat of the game, battle royale, it got noticeably worse. Snipers are broken. They've always been strong, which is kind of a necessary evil, but what made them so strong is the complete removal of hitscan on every kind of assault rifle and DMR. Utilizing hitscan was the best counter against snipers, but now the only way to counter a sniper is with a sniper of your own, which means by the final few circles, everyone is gonna be carrying a sniper. Sniping can be fun, and I won't get mad at it a lot of the time, but when most of your matches are instakills from sniper headshots or dying instantly to sniper headshots, it gets irritating really quickly.
Modding benches are cool but WAY too limited. This seemed to be a big selling point of the season based on the trailer, but in reality, you'll never be seeing one most games. There's only five on the map: 4 at the boss locations, requiring you to kill the boss beforehand, and one on the island which spawns in after the first few circles. Weapons have a chance to drop with a mod already on them based on rarity, but it's rarely going to be customized entirely to your liking without a bench. It's great when you do get a chance to modify your weapons, but most games, you're stuck with whatever you get.
Weapon pool and loot was subpar. Like I said, snipers were a huge problem, but there wasn't much you could really do about that. Ballistic shields were pretty annoying, as well. You technically could counter them by shooting the player's feet or in the eye hole, but that's hard to do with a gun that will inflict any meaningful damage because of bullet spread. The grapple blade was good for movement and countering ballistic shields, but because of how vital movement was for evading snipers and beating the shields, you basically lost without one on hand. Pump shotguns still either inflict zero damage or one shot, but I always get one shot while my opponents barely get grazed. Meanwhile, frenzy auto shotguns were so busted that you should never play this game again if you don't think of picking one up the moment you see it. DPS is insane and it has a large mag, only downside is the reload time (which you can decrease a hefty amount with mods). Medallions were neat, giving you regenerating shield in exchange for your spot on the map being revealed.
I don't want to say that cosmetics were bad this season, not at all, but I think anyone who survived the great item shop drought of December 2023 - February 2024 should be given a medal. There were some standout new skins, like the massive TMNT collab, Cell, Frieza, Raiden, Ernie the giant chicken, and some others that are decently cool. We even saw a return of John Wick to the shop after over 1,000 days of being gone, along with two new styles. However, aside from those, every other day, the item shop was absolute shit. Rick and Morty was in the shop three weeks in a row. Generic and boring skins returned every week as well, likely for the LEGO fortnite compatibility. Epic, please, I have money that I would LOVE to spend on you, all you have to do is put good items in your item shops. Even going into season 2, the shop is barely better. At least the battle pass was good, Peter and Snake are some of the best collab skins to date.
I don't know, this season had a lot of explosive moments, but overall, it had a LOT of problems. I still had fun with it, but man, snipers and ballistic shields made both long range and close range fights unbearable. Midrange fights were still good, but no hitscan sucks. The new game modes are mostly bad and I will never touch them again. Festival is fun, at least. This kind of felt like a filler season. I don't know why, but it kind of just... existed. I'll remember it for the cool collabs, but between the map and the weapon pool... I'd rather not remember the actual gameplay aspects of this season. Kinda fun while it lasted, I guess.
As for the meat of the game, battle royale, it got noticeably worse. Snipers are broken. They've always been strong, which is kind of a necessary evil, but what made them so strong is the complete removal of hitscan on every kind of assault rifle and DMR. Utilizing hitscan was the best counter against snipers, but now the only way to counter a sniper is with a sniper of your own, which means by the final few circles, everyone is gonna be carrying a sniper. Sniping can be fun, and I won't get mad at it a lot of the time, but when most of your matches are instakills from sniper headshots or dying instantly to sniper headshots, it gets irritating really quickly.
Modding benches are cool but WAY too limited. This seemed to be a big selling point of the season based on the trailer, but in reality, you'll never be seeing one most games. There's only five on the map: 4 at the boss locations, requiring you to kill the boss beforehand, and one on the island which spawns in after the first few circles. Weapons have a chance to drop with a mod already on them based on rarity, but it's rarely going to be customized entirely to your liking without a bench. It's great when you do get a chance to modify your weapons, but most games, you're stuck with whatever you get.
Weapon pool and loot was subpar. Like I said, snipers were a huge problem, but there wasn't much you could really do about that. Ballistic shields were pretty annoying, as well. You technically could counter them by shooting the player's feet or in the eye hole, but that's hard to do with a gun that will inflict any meaningful damage because of bullet spread. The grapple blade was good for movement and countering ballistic shields, but because of how vital movement was for evading snipers and beating the shields, you basically lost without one on hand. Pump shotguns still either inflict zero damage or one shot, but I always get one shot while my opponents barely get grazed. Meanwhile, frenzy auto shotguns were so busted that you should never play this game again if you don't think of picking one up the moment you see it. DPS is insane and it has a large mag, only downside is the reload time (which you can decrease a hefty amount with mods). Medallions were neat, giving you regenerating shield in exchange for your spot on the map being revealed.
I don't want to say that cosmetics were bad this season, not at all, but I think anyone who survived the great item shop drought of December 2023 - February 2024 should be given a medal. There were some standout new skins, like the massive TMNT collab, Cell, Frieza, Raiden, Ernie the giant chicken, and some others that are decently cool. We even saw a return of John Wick to the shop after over 1,000 days of being gone, along with two new styles. However, aside from those, every other day, the item shop was absolute shit. Rick and Morty was in the shop three weeks in a row. Generic and boring skins returned every week as well, likely for the LEGO fortnite compatibility. Epic, please, I have money that I would LOVE to spend on you, all you have to do is put good items in your item shops. Even going into season 2, the shop is barely better. At least the battle pass was good, Peter and Snake are some of the best collab skins to date.
I don't know, this season had a lot of explosive moments, but overall, it had a LOT of problems. I still had fun with it, but man, snipers and ballistic shields made both long range and close range fights unbearable. Midrange fights were still good, but no hitscan sucks. The new game modes are mostly bad and I will never touch them again. Festival is fun, at least. This kind of felt like a filler season. I don't know why, but it kind of just... existed. I'll remember it for the cool collabs, but between the map and the weapon pool... I'd rather not remember the actual gameplay aspects of this season. Kinda fun while it lasted, I guess.