The Backlog: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

Wolverine can't stop smiling cause Disney's acquisition of Fox allowed him to be in a game again.

I need to start this out by saying something that I feel a lot of people talking about this game haven't really said. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is NOT a sequel. That 3 at the end might make that rather confusing, but in spite of having the name of an existing series and being numbered, it is not an actual sequel to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2. It is at best a spiritual successor.

This is not me saying that the game is bad, but the fact is that the previous games were developed by Raven Software and Vicarious Visions while published by Activision. This game is developed by Team Ninja and published by Nintendo. Basically Disney/Marvel just licensed the IP to someone else who had nothing to do with the series. If you're thinking, that doesn't mean they can't make a sequel, well the game ignores that the previous games even exist. Dr. Doom shows up in the expansion and they treat him as a newly introduced character even though he was the villain of the first game and died in the ending.

With that said, what is the weirdest thing about the gameplay compared to the previous games is they didn't even try to implement a combo system like the first two games had. In 1 and 2 you could do a variety of combos with different effects but mixing up what order you did light and heavy attacks. In this most characters just have a single combo chain consisting of 3 light attacks and have a solitary heavy attack that can be used to finish a combo before the 3rd hit. There are some exceptions like Punisher (who is DLC) where he has a ranged combo chain from hitting heavy attack repeatedly.

The new ultimate attack system works fine for what it is. The game however has a new equipment system, that along with the grind for resources to "enhance your alliance" make me think this game was originally gonna be intended to be a live service game. Especially because the equipment is Iso-8, the Marvel McGuffin for all their free to play games.

Those unaware, Isotope-8 is a crystal like substance that enhances super powers. Even though people who don't actually have super powers can use it because reasons. From my recollection the first game to introduce it was the Facebook game "Marvel Avengers Alliance" and I'm sure it's been in most if not all the mobile games.

In any case this game gives each of your heroes multiple slots to stick Iso-8 into on their character screen. Some effects are useful while others feel meaningless. Either way it's annoying upgrading the stuff because you need credits, shards, and other Iso-8 of the same color you need to sacrifice by feeding into the one you need to upgrade. Basically forcing you to repeat missions that drop a color you need over and over again.

This isn't much of an issue if you just intend to play through the story a single time on the easy (Friendly) or normal (Mighty) difficulties, as merely doing some of the side content and DLC will cause you to get overleveled for the part of the story you're currently on. But for those who wanna ramp up the difficulty after they've beaten the game and have all the characters unlocked, this might be annoying.

My team for most of the game

Last issue I have is a bit of a nitpick, but I can't stand this stagger bar thing they added to the game. It would be fine if it were just for bosses but a bunch of stronger goons have them as well. The stagger bar is essentially a secondary health bar that you have to empty out in order to do more damage to them and potentially stun them for longer. The issue with this is unless their stagger bar is empty their attacks can not be interrupted and they are incredibly damage spongey. Worse yet it often feels like it refills too quickly, where if I staggered them with an ability with a particularly long animation, I almost can't get any hits in before they are no longer staggered.

With all of that said, anyone who read this far probably thinks I hate the game. But I don't... I actually loved it. But it's a deeply flawed game that I feel I need to warn people about if they're considering picking it up now as late as this is after the release.

This game probably features the largest Marvel roster of any non Gacha game and they all feel like they should. My enjoyment of the game admittedly was probably massively boosted by Venom being unlocked in the middle of the 2nd stage in the game with the first stage really just being a short prologue level.

The game was annoying early on before I unlocked many challenges (or was far enough to access the DLC), but this game becomes considerably more fun once you're overleveled a bit and the enemies stop feeling like damage sponges. I'll probably go back and play more later after I've caught up on some other games. Especially since you don't unlock Dr. Doom until you finish the expansion.

The simple fact is that as flawed as this game can be at times, the core gameplay itself feels good and honestly it's probably the best Marvel game in recent memory. With the Marvel Heroes MMO being run into the ground before it eventually was shut down and Marvel Avengers being a complete mess, the only other alternatives for this kind of game is essentially mobile trash. You have no idea how many hours I poured into Marvel Puzzle Quest just to have a Marvel game to play and this in spite of all it's flaws was a massive breath of fresh air.

If you have a Switch and really like Marvel then this game is a must have. I give it a Chimichanga out of 10.