Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

Review for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. Game for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 19/07/2019

One of the last acts of the good-natured president of Nintendo of America Reggie fils-aime before he retired in February 2019 he had been to bet on Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order stating how the landing and exclusivity on Nintendo Switch were a great opportunity. And it was: the last chapter (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, known at the beginning with the subtitle Fusion) dates back to ten years ago and not collecting exciting answers, Marvel had decided to shelve the project and put it in the attic to collect dust.



Let's face it: the Marvel series has never particularly shone nor will be remembered in the history of the video game, remaining only in the memory of a select few. It was, in fact, one rather light-hearted video game series, where the plot was the background of a orb barrel. A "superhero" dungeon crawler without obligation, which nevertheless returned a good dose of fun, especially if in company.

It is therefore normal that with theincreased popularity of superheroes, Fils-Aime (and Nintendo) were interested in the dying project and joining forces they wanted bring the third installment of this old series only and only on their console, the Nintendo Switch, complete with a blessing from Marvel. The exclusive titles are what define the consoles, after all, and therefore shortly after the announcement that the series would be back Nintendo chose to put their face on it, stating that it was a "great opportunity".

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 stands as a soft reboot of the series, but as a new starting point developed for the occasion by Team Ninja: there is no mention of the alliance of villains led by Doctor Doom (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance) and no Civil War seems to have ever split the superheroes in two factions (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2). In this round, the center of everything is well known and overused Infinity Stones - and where the Gems are the Mad Titan, Thanos, is never very far.



Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

As first-time players of the Marvel ensemble series (and even earlier), sadly we have to say that Ultimate Alliance 3 disappointed us and that the great opportunity proved to be a half successful experiment.

The first characters to appear on the screen are the Guardiani della galassia, brought to success more by the 2014 film of the same name directed by James Gunn than by the comics where they were born. Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon and Groot are as always in space orbit when they capture an abandoned ship of the alien Kree race. Once inside, and after taking down the first few threats that serve as a sketchy tutorial, they discover this ship hides the six Infinity Stones (Space, Time, Power, Mind, Reality, Soul) and that an alliance of extraterrestrial villains known as the Black Order has been tasked to retrieve them on Thanos' behalf. The gems end up on Earth, and the Guardians of the Galaxy soon come into contact with the Earth heroes forming the Great Alliance, with the task of recovering the gems before Thanos does. This is briefly the basic plot from which the third chapter of the Ultimate Alliance saga starts. Very soon this is what turns out to be the weak point of the entire structure of the game which, with a domino effect, ends up investing many other aspects such as writing and characters.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

The plot is more of a pretext than anything else and, although the macro-story always remains that of recovering the Gems, its division into chapters makes it appear segmented and linear at the same time.: on the one hand, the chapters are very different from each other in terms of places and characters, often too lightning-fast to be savored and characterized, on the other hand the modus operandi is always the same: one of the villains caught by the big Marvel basket has taken possession of a Gemma and must be shot down in its overly enhanced stone version. It is also obvious from the choice of the bosses that the authors of the game have decided to ride the wave of success of Avengers: Endgame and of the films that preceded the grand finale of the Infinity Saga, so everything becomes a festival of invited characters often alone for a quarter of an hour.



It is on the characters that the appeal of the game is based; pity that by changing chapter after chapter they are all sketchy and soon forgotten, contributing to one general poverty that does not allow any emotional charge. In short, the story flows but the heart remains flat: there is no pathos and everything is rather predictable.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

Writing was handled by Marc Sumerak, former cartoonist of the House of Ideas, whose negligence shines above all from the characters themselves. Bluntly, i dialogues between the heroes seem childish. It seems that speaking is not Captain Marvel, but a five-year-old girl who has recently donned the cape, curious but inexperienced. They speak with voices that are not their own and are not dubbed, asking questions that have almost always appeared silly and small minutiae not respected such as calling "her" to imposing rulers like (for example) Black Arrow. The lack of care is also clear from the fact that the heroes speak equally: there is not a single unique dialogue between the characters. Nothing will happen if Spider-Man talks to Venom (one of his archenemies) or if using Daredevil you will try to talk to the former flame Elektra (as it did in previous chapters), often coming to create embarrassing situations that should have been considered in the development phase, also given the apparent seriousness of the project (to be fair, it must be said that this cacophony occurs only during the "played" parts and not the cut scenes, in which the writing seemed suitable for the situation).


The gameplay does not differ much from previous titles: the ability to control up to four heroes of your choice from the rich roster of about 30 characters, from Captain America to Spider-Man passing through debut heroes such as Star-Lord, Crystal, has remained unchanged. Spider-Gwen and Elsa Bloodstone, thus forming a team with different bonuses depending on the members. Each hero has a light attack (Y key), a heavy attack (X), jump or fly (B) and four upgradeable special attacks (R, the first available immediately, the other three every five levels up to level 20 ) to be chained against hordes of enemies. If the peculiarity of the second chapter were the aforementioned mergers, or combined finishing moves between two heroes, here each character has their own unique move called Extreme, which you can perform either alone with L + R when the yellow bar is full or together with other heroes who have a full bar join the party (by pressing the L + R keys for each character) bringing devastation to the screen.


Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

The title veers towards a Sharper RPG cut through a vast hexagonal spherography to collectively empower the heroes instead of preferring an improvement to the individual characteristics that make a hero useful in battle (like Wolverine regeneration in the second chapter) and the use of some colored crystals called ISO-8 with which you can customize each hero and increase stats like strength, stamina, energy or more fancy effects.

One has been added to bosses and stronger enemies purple bar immediately below the red life bar, called the stagger bar. It is a key mechanic of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, as it must be emptied before starting to do massive damage to the enemy. It empties faster with heavy or so-called attacks Synergy attacks, i.e. special attacks in combo with another hero (ZR key), more powerful but more expensive on the classic blue bar. In our opinion, the wobbling bar looks like one of the most painful points of the game: it is in all respects a shield to overcome and once broken it does not pay off the player: the purple bar, in fact, is restored in the blink of an eye eye - too little for the efforts made and, especially in the early stages of the game, it is easy to get dry to the highlight, because all the power of the reigning hero has served to empty the purple bar. The wobble bar is essentially a boring and time-wasters mechanic that doesn't go well with the challenging difficulty of the title.

Strangely difficult in both ways ("friendly" for the less accustomed and "powerful" for the self-confident), in fact, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 loses that lightheartedness that characterized the stepbrothers in favor of greater strategy and frequent use of dodging (L key), while colliding with a difficulty made almost artificial for three reasons: one, the choice to include the wobble bar; two, a lack of clarity of the mechanics sbolognando the player to the advice section; three, the fact that - unlike the other titles of the sub-genre "with the cloak" - the heroes do not automatically level up. To remedy this, Team Ninja has inserted the so-called ESP cubes, objects that depending on the size (S, M, etc.) release experience to manually level up the heroes.

Let's take a practical example: Spider-Man is added almost at the beginning of the game at level 5 and it is decided to prefer other heroes to the Webweave. By mid-game, some characters (like the chapter) will be level 20 but you have changed your mind, you want to use Spider-Man. But Peter will have remained at level 5 and therefore will have to climb 15 levels through the cubes - hoping to have enough. The game, in fact, is quite precise and a level below the recommended one will make the game much more difficult and consequently the character much more fragile. In practice you have to do acareful selection of heroes: some will remain hopelessly behind or; if (rightly) you want to try most of them you will have to "waste" all the ESP cubes. available (not being able to enhance anything afterwards).

Compliance with the recommended level appears even more important for Infinity trials, missions and secondary challenges that certainly have the task of extending the experience in Ultimate Alliance 3. Often they involve re-challenging a boss already met (more powerful), killing 200 enemies, up to challenges with different malus and in "solitaire" in which you can use only one hero and be rewarded with an alternative costume. The only costumes that we managed to unlock - also due to these restrictions listed above - after two solo missions with Captain America and Spider-Man, alas, were mere palette swaps, or color changes without any other graphic effort. A great pity, which does not bode well for the costumes that we will unlock when we have the opportunity.

Present and welcome co-op, both local and online, with which it is possible to make a friend take control of a hero at any time. This kind of co-op titles take on another flavor - the only criticism in this mode is the camera, which doesn't help in a wild game like this.

The problems listed, finally, fall on the bosses, who are often multi-stage and with a mileage stagger bar, which end up being more tedious than fun, seeing is believing. Yes, maybe the point of the matter is that Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, due to some choices that make him trip over himself, ends up being too superficial and not very funny, becoming almost a layman like that.

Regarding the performance, Nintendo Switch holds up quite well the road test both in docked and portable mode although the loads, unfortunately, go from 30 seconds up to 37 sometimes to load the game or Infinity tests. The graphic upgrade is evident (it's also been 10 years) thanks also to the comic style of cell shading used for the characters and in general the hybrid console from Nintendo performed well during the frequent chaotic scenes without frame drops, but theThe apparatus is dated, with areas that are not easily explored and are always linear. In portable mode taking heroes for a walk leads to a drop in resolution to 540p from docked 720p (by eye). Corollate all bonuses such as information on the characters who appear commented by Rocket and the other Guardians of the Galaxy, original music and concept arts of the heroes who form the Great Alliance.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Review

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 could have been Nintendo's great opportunity and instead it turned out to be a bitter disappointment that does not satisfy the most demanding fans of the series, the causes of which can be found in a lackluster writing that trivializes the many heroes brought to the screen. Impassive storyline and seesaw gameplay overshadow the positives of the title altogether, getting bogged down in boring bosses due to the despicable stagger bar and a general struggle to try all the characters. Given also and above all the launch price, like a AAA title, by Marvel fans we would have preferred to see a greater seriousness instead of the frivolity (perhaps) born from the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and convinced, for this reason, in a guaranteed response of the title.

► Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a scrolling fighting-RPG game developed by Team Ninja and published by Nintendo for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 19/07/2019

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