What if Deadpool was Diablo?
Marvel Heroes is a free to play action-RPG with slight MMO hooks, so it hits 3 of the more recent trends in video games. Marvel Heroes was developed by Gazillion Entertainment and David Brevik, the man behind two of the most influential action-RPGs, Diablo and Diablo 2, is behind the wheel of this wild comic themed adventure.
Marvel Heroes starts you off with a decision that will shape the way you play the game forever, which of the five starter characters do you want to play as. You get to choose from, Hawkeye, Daredevil, Thing, Scarlet Witch and Storm. I went with Hawkeye as I like the ranged/archer type. From here you basically play Marvel Heroes like you would any other action-RPG. Every character starts off with a power/move that you will use as your main attack and one that takes spirit, this games mana equivalent(yeah I think it’s dumb as well). As you level up you will get two skill points to spend on moves/powers that you would expect to fit with the character that you chose. My main problem, and it is really nitpicky, is that a handful of moves seem to be repeated in multiple character’s skill trees. For example both Hawkeye and Daredevil have the same roll move.
So you are probably wondering “Ryan where does the MMO stuff come in”, and that’s a great question. Each chapter dumps you into a decently sized area which will be populated by appropriate enemies and all of the players that happen to be playing at the time. From this area there are main “dungeons” and side “dungeons” and if you choose to you can jump into these “dungeons” with 3 other players, random or friends. I chose to not do this, because I like to explore the areas and I have missed entire boss fights when choosing to enter an instance with random players.
While outside in the main area there will occasionally be special missions called event missions. This could be anything from defending a certain area for a set amount of time, defeating a certain number of a certain enemy type or a boss fight with villains that are not fought through the story mode such as Rhino and Madame Hydra. Defeating the bosses during these missions, as well as during the story mode, will get you medals. These medals give you certain stat bonuses that relate to the boss you got them off of. Also bosses have a higher chance of dropping rarer loot, including characters.
And of course just like all action-RPGs you will get loot, lots and lots of loot. It’s even color coated in the colors you are likely already familiar with (white, green, blue and purple). All loot is character specific and while playing as a certain character the loot for that character does drop more often but it is likely that you will also see loot for other characters. Also loot does not have any cosmetic effects. This is kind of a letdown for many fans of action-RPGs but I understand why it is how it is and it does not really matter to me. Again just like many other action-RPGs the loot will have stats on it that can increase any of your stats as well as give things like health regeneration and extra skill points to certain powers.
But you don’t just get items that can be directly placed on your character, you also get crafting items. The crafting system is poorly explained but once you use it, it makes sense. You can use these crafting items to add defensive and offensive affixes to your costumes, upgrade the loot that you do have to make the stat boosts better and to craft potions that can be used during battle. Every item you craft also costs credits. This was the part that I thought was poorly (or not at all) explained. I suggest putting all of your junk loot into your crafter and ignoring all other vendors except to buy health packs. The loot you get by playing is much better than the stuff the vendors will sell you.
The real talking point of Marvel Heroes is their free-to-play model. There are probably as many free-to-play models out there as there are people, some of them work, but most of them don’t. I believe Marvel Heroes is somewhere in the middle. As mentioned earlier you get to choose from five b or c tier Marvel characters, but what if you want to kill hordes of dudes as Iron Man? Then you have to pay $20.
At the time of this review there are 21 characters in the game. Each character costs between $6 and $20 with the more popular characters (Ironman, Thor, Spiderman) costing more. This model makes sense to me but I do have a few problems with it. My main problem is price. $20 for a character is kind of steep. I believe they should lower most of the prices by $5 or give you something else in addition to the character. Other than characters they sell plenty other things. Costumes, boosts and S.T.A.S.H pages being the others. If they gave you their S.T.A.S.H page, S.T.A.S.H being your base’s treasure chest, and/or one costume with the purchase it would be an easier pill to swallow. Then again they say that every single character is able to be dropped as loot but these are extremely rare and I have not seen one outside of the two story related ones (one for beating the first mission and one for beating the game, both random starter characters)
Even beyond that you cannot test out any of the characters before you buy them. This is a big problem if you drop $20 on Deadpool and realize that he doesn’t fit your play style or you just think he sucks. There is a training area in the game but it can only be used by characters that you already own. This is a huge oversight in my eyes. Right now if you want to find out how a character is you have to go to places like YouTube or the Marvel Heroes forums.
But despite all of this I do think Marvel Heroes is a fantastic game. As a person who doesn’t really like comics and is indifferent towards action-RPGs I went into Marvel Heroes expecting to hate it. That is not the case. Having spent 30 hours in Marvel Heroes before spending a dime you can definitely get plenty of enjoyment out of it for free. I have now put in over $100 into it and still do not regret how my money was spent. If you go into it and end up being happy with a starter character or just one “premium” character you will definitely get your money’s worth.
Video review here.
