izigame.me

Okay, I'm not quite done with the game, but I'm also kinda finished, while being impressed. This isn't my type of game, but I do like Civ 6, and XCom 2- and yeah, Marvel... Big shame, liking the best form of profitable media out there. TBH, Buying this game on discount, with characters like Storm and Wolverine made me forget I knew nothing about the titular group! If you're old like me, this game may bridge the gap on some newer runaways you may enjoy as well. Except a few of them; some of them are just annoying little catchphrases, repeated over and over until you want to take their webbing and string them up, with them always talking, just dumping the same ideas and narrow conversations over and over and over again, so yeah, I'm gonna give it a week or two off.... Really going to evaluate looking up the ending or pulling myself through to finishing it up.
On sale, I'll say it's worth it, but there's some major inconveniences in the game, mostly in the upgrading and management of cards in a series of menus across various locations. The game is mostly played from the Marvel heroes' secret hideout, which acts as an menu system in many ways, unboxing and converting and enhancing and combining, all taking place in different rooms within the "no running" corridors. It's a drag on time, but it also encourages the dating- I mean, "relationship" system where you make friendship points by flirting and earning skimpy outfits for poolside lounging. When I first heard about this system, it seemed fun (and there are narrated and documented moments between characters like Blade and Morbius (who's actually kinda cool in this game) that do work) but that quickly falls away when 90% of it is small talk drivel, and only Deadpool willing to take the pillow talk beyond where I'm willing to go. Sadly, the biggest hit is Peter Parker, who has ZERO story here and becomes the co-worker you avoid in the hallway. The actual overarching story is quite engaging though, and that's what was really pulling me along; Avengers, Legends and the Suns getting all dark to take on some vampires and lovecraftian monsters.
I'm not a deck-builder fan, but this gameplay was interesting. Using environments, hero combos, and shaping your deck is a lot of fun, and fighting the battles requires you to use your head and treat every fight as if it were a puzzle. It's not a perfect puzzle, but there were several times I restarted a battle simply because I knew by the end of round 1 that it was not looking good for 616. Once you do get into a flow, the gameplay loop can be very satisfying, especially when you have the surrounding wilds of the home base to explore for a more 3rd person exploration experience, rewarding you with costumes. Costumes that require style, or skill, or sick points, or something like that to unlock, which requires more grinding in the combat arenas, etc, etc. Jumping between the two does help the monotony, but I also feel like a stiff board running around forest models.
The main problem is the pacing and length. There's a bunch of lore, I didn't read most of it. There's a ton of talking, I skipped most of it. This is a fun design that could've been streamlined down into a more narrative focused experience, but instead you have to go collect things around the building so you can discover things that people simply just won't tell you until you've plucked 10 flowers from the garden. I would've EASILY taken a screen system similar to XCom 2's, or at the very least provided an option to do these tasks on one screen. Perfect version for me, the game would play in 3rd person as you explore environments (collecting bathing suits or whatever), and then bam, bad guy jumps in, battle pulls out into overhead, choose your crew, bonuses, etc, start and finish fight, and move on down the path.
For an example. I have a powerful Captain Marvel card (she's dope in this game), and I want to make another copy of that card, so I can combine that card, in order to upgrade that card. Now, there could be an option that says "spend 10 random currency coins, 60 attack points, and 30 heroic points to upgrade this card now," but there isn't. So take yourself down to the underground forge, buy yourself up one card from Tony Stark, climb yourself back up them stairs, go to the outside forge, different than the underground one because this one has Blade, go into the pause menu and unequip the original card (you see, you can't combine it if it's currently equipped, so you have to remove it first) and replace it out for some reason, and then and go to- UH OH, you don't have the needed Blueprint to do that. Go back down to the forge, find out that you don't have enough of the OTHER skill points to make the needed blueprint, run across the building to Agatha's cauldron (not MCU version), and exchange out your points and that money that never gets explained, until you have enough to buy the blueprint, pay off Blade to make the combination, and enough to give that card a modifier afterwards, which is also in another menu!!! WHAT!? WHAT? Why? Stop making me jump through hoops every time I want to try a new deck strategy!
So, anyways, it's fun, but it's also kind of a mixed bag. Worth the sales price, and as you can see from playtime, it's kept my attention and lost it at various points as well. May update if I return, but at this point, I can't. The cookie-cutter ending we've been crawling towards for the past twenty hours is getting to be too much, and I'm tired of racing to get to an ending as predictable as a Scooby Doo episode. I know this sounds negative, but until you take Wolverine around an arena, just MOPPING THEM UP, dropping light poles on stragglers, all while wearing his original blue and yellow design- you truly haven't lived. There's magic in this game, but man, it's surrounded by a lot of darkness.