This is crucial, I need to know right now.

I might die.

yes

Yes and no. It's far more Diablo than the MUA games were...and it's fun.

Baller.

@lordxavierbritish: I'd say, absolutely not.

The trappings are the same, but the gameplay is ridiculously limited. All of the cool combo attacks from MUA 2 are gone. The different attacks and abilities you can throw points in are pretty generic. Nice that they're pretty different per character, but the gameplay is still just click on thing to die. And all of the fun costume stuff that MUA had is there, if you want to pay around $8 for each one individually. And the story is really, really boring and just slightly longer than MUA 2.

It really just seems like a crappy featureless test version of MUA 1, before they made it a better game.

It is not. Combat is kinda dull, and everything feels uninspired and flat. And I don't like the MMO aspect of it either. But it's free to play, so you can check it out yourself without any great investment. Maybe you'll like it.

Imagine if all of the characters in MUA but four of the lamest most uninteresting ones were stripped out of the game and any character you had any interest in actually playing were hidden behind a ridiculously high paywall that you had to spend a crap ton of money to get access to. Now imagine if the gameplay was boiled down to the most generic and boring combat an action RPG has seen since Space Siege, and mission designs straight out of the worst WoW clone fetch quest/go kill 20 and come back ridden games. You now have Marvel Heroes.

Ultimate alliance for my money is a better game. Even MUA 2 for what it was is better. The ability to do team up moves and the ability for things not to feel like it is absolutely stupid and ridiculous is a bit more there.

I am enjoying Marvel Heroes thus far but it suffers from the same thing Guild Wars 2 did, too many users fighting Event bosses, forced instances with other players. On the surface that sounds very cool, makes things feel more epic. But in execution it never works well. Event bosses turns into giant FPS hell and you just sit there with 50 people (most of whom are using the same hero you are using to break the immersion) trying to kill a single boss. The instances case you often get paired with the exact same hero you are and another immersion breaker. There is also cases where you can get instanced with a party who has already cleared most of the dungeon sans the boss. It just isn't a very friendly system.

The biggest issue other than that though is the way they have heroes set up. You get your choice from 5 starter heroes. Thing, Daredevil, Hawkeye, Storm and Scarlet Witch. I ended up going with Hawkeye but there are a couple of alright choices there. However that is it. There are other heroes in the game of course that you can play as. But you have to either spend money on them (and it is a lot of money in comparison to just getting a hero) or hopefully get lucky and pick them up in drops. Essentially whenever you defeat a boss whether it be event boss or story boss, aka a named super villain there is a CHANCE you could drop a rare item like a costume or a hero. Costumes are super expensive as well. By super expensive I mean your looking at spending anywhere from 7 to 20 dollars for a single hero or a single costume pending on the current popularity and marketability of the hero. It isn't user friendly.

But at the same time, the game is free to play. For a free to play game, the combat and presentation is rather impressive. The combat from what I've experienced thus far does feel very unique and different per character, there is some solid strategy elements to some of the bosses particularly if you actually get the chance to do some fighting on your own or with only one or two allies on your side. It allows you to actually see some of the depth. It also has enough Marvel Universe stuff to be charming and engaging if your a Marvel fan. But Ultimate Alliance gives you better bang for your buck. Combat in it is comparable but it has team ups, there isn't as much chaos for event battles etc and you can choose heroes and costumes without the need to spend crazy amounts of money or get lucky.

I actually enjoyed it (haven't paid anything until now, but I will buy one character soon). But I'd say it is not MUA3, absolutely not. If you like something like Diablo or Torchlight, and if you like Marvel, you should like this. If you are unsure just try it (or watch the Quicklook).

i think it appeals to marvel and comic fans only.

you go to the official forum and many people are raving about this game.

I'm confused about everyone talking about this whole "multiple character breaks the immersion factor" crap.

I'm playing a goddamn ARPG where I want to beat the hell out of bad guys, get awesome loot, and then kick the shit out of more bad guys. Whether I'm grouped or not, it doesn't matter. I want to be Daredevil and knock the fuck out of a bunch of asshole AIM agents.

Where does "immersion" come in? The story? Are people actually following that? I've skipped every damn cutscene. If I was playing something more serious, I'd probably care more? Maybe?

Nonetheless, this whole "multiple characters" complaint is stupid. It's a VIDEO GAME.

I've played 70-something hours of the game and I've only seen the Taskmaster cutscene. I'm not sure that there is a story but if they do have one they shouldn't have hidden it inside motion comics.

There is actually an in-game justification for the gangs of identical heroes but they don't tell you about it until you complete the game XD

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm generally not a fan of such reductionist statements. It's like you're excusing major flaws with the product (even if that isn't entirely the case here).

It isn't like it kills the game. But I don't think you understand or simply don't get what some others might get in terms of power fantasy.

As a comics fan, I loved the Batman Arkham Games. Part of that is mechanics and gameplay and yada yada but another part of it is I wanted to feel like Batman. I wanted to play and feel like I was Batman. That is immersion. When I flew down did my shit owned some dudes did some detective work and beat up a villain I stopped and went "I"m the mother fucking Batman." It goes the same for this game. I want to feel like I"m "X" hero. It is a lot harder to "feel" like your X hero when there is hundreds of the same ones running around. It gets even worse on event bosses since there is a like 40 people on the screen all attacking Venom or Rhino and you just laugh at how ridiculous it is. Sure it's nonsensical and it's fun but there is no immersion. I don't feel like I"m Daredevil in that moment.

But I think you also misunderstand the point of these type of games in general. Playing a game with customization options you want to create "your" character. You want the character that looks and plays the way you want him to look and play. That gets ruined when you have tons of exact clones of your character running around. MMO's and games like that avoid it sometimes by having loot that changes the appearance and color kits and the list goes on. Creating something that is your own is part of the joy of leveling up and adding loot. Not everyone plays games just to "be awesome at killing shit" and to "own bosses with gameplay."

Also to respond to some other comments, the comic story stuff actually isn't bad. I wouldn't say it is groundbreaking but I honestly think it is worth your guys time to not skip through it. But it is one of those things that if your a Marvel fan you'd probably enjoy it more.

It was all a dream/simulation/alternate universe?

I think not. MUA acts as its totally different thing. Actually some of the things I enjoyed about MUA is

A.) Different combination of team ups you can do with some teams working better then others. You get stat boots for example if you have an entire team of original x-men or avengers.

B.) Team up moves that certain characters do. So far I've seen one with Colossus level 30 move teamed up with Wolverine in Marvel Heroes.

C.) Interactions between characters, whether it be story beats or just short conversations. Characters who have a relation might say different things to each other if teamed up or they cross paths. One of my favorite ones was a convo in MUA 2 when spiderman and green goblin had an interaction with each other. In Marvel Heroes I think the only level of in-game interaction I've seen was when my Colossus walked by a Jean Grey character and starting hitting on her.

I don't know Marvel lore well at all but there is some sort of Cosmic Cube which Doom is using to power himself up and when you defeat him it shatters, creating infinite pocket dimensions which are overlapping. This is primarily a justification for the daily missions and pvp endgame content but the text directly references the fact that you might see multiples of the same hero inhabiting the same dimension.