The first semifinals of OGN Overwatch APEX Season 2 brought an incredibly close and action-packed match between South Korean teams RunAway and LW Blue. Some maps were crushingly one-sided, but for every moment that could be considered sloppy, there were two more that were phenomenal. And in a full best-of-five set, RunAway's Ryu "KAISER" Sang Hoon pulled the rest of his team across the finish line.
Things started off well for RunAway, taking two quick wins on Lijiang Tower. KAISER continued to impress as he has done all season on Reinhardt, pinning key targets by charging them down or deploying incredibly well timed Earthshatters that saved team members. LW Blue came back on King's Row, however, as Song "janus" Joong Hwa showed that KAISER was not the only talented Reinhardt player in the studio and brought it to a 1-1 tie.
Hanamura was well-contested, too, and RunAway snowballed success into a win. Despite being dangerously close to not even capping the first point, the team got the cap and then stormed through the rest of the map. LW Blue took the first point with ease but failed to win the Assault map despite how well LW Blue's Park "Saebyeolbe" Jong Yeol performed on Roadhog and Tracer.
LW Blue had better luck on Route 66 in Game 4. Both teams completed the map with only one minute on the clock to force a timebank stage. Usually when teams are in this situation, they're only pushing the payload up to the gas station and seeing who can inch out more, but LW Blue was able to push the payload all the way up to Point B, which secured it the map and forced Game 5.
KAISER played his Reinhardt to perfection on Eichenwald in the decisive match. On defense, KAISER kept his shield up as often as he could, pinned down damage-per-second players and wiped LW Blue off the map.
But the real play of the game came on offense.
RunAway stopped LW Blue meters from finishing the map, which meant all that RunAway had to do was complete the stage. What better way to do it than land a clutch five-man Earthshatter from the team's most clutch player? KAISER gave his squad a ticket to the finals with that last ultimate, and RunAway took it for a 3-2 win.
RunAway will face the winner of Meta Athena versus Lunatic-Hai for the championship title of OGN APEX Season 2.