Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order Review

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
Developer: Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja
Publisher: Nintendo
Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch
Available on: Nintendo Switch

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 Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (MUA3) released July 17 exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. This game’s surprise announcement at Nintendo’s stellar February Direct seemed to have come from nowhere.  Since then, the game has been featured at Nintendo’s E3 2019 showcase in which the full playable roster was revealed. Now that the game is available for purchase most are wondering if they should pick this game up today. If so, you’re in the right place! Below is my in-depth review for MUA3 in which I cover every key aspect of the game. Through my time with the campaign and most optional trials, I’ve played roughly 25-30 hours. Starting off the review is what I believe to be the game’s strongest element: the story.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is the perfect example of a game that’s not sure whether to place emphasis on its story or mechanics. While the game itself is a brawler which typically focus on gameplay, MUA3 primarily leads with its story. The story plays off of the recent MCU movies’ success and tells its own rendition of the infinity saga. Starting off with the popular Guardians of the Galaxy investigating a small disturbance, the story then quickly escalates. Characters from every corner of the Marvel Universe make an appearance from the X-Men to Avengers, to the Inhumans.

The story itself took me around 10 hours to complete on a normal difficulty setting. I can say without a doubt that the game’s story is a fun, exciting one that I honestly enjoyed. However, despite a short play-time I still think that the game went on a little too long. MUA3’s story includes characters and locales from most major MCU movie, but most of them came off as hollow shells. While the game’s story is fun and interesting, it pales in comparison to the popular MCU movies. It seems developer Team Ninja tried to make the game ride off of Avengers: Endgame’s success to no avail. I would much rather watch Endgame four times in a row than play 10-15 hours of MUA3’s sub-par story. Yet, the story would be more bearable if it had not been paired with the game’s monotonous combat system.

As mentioned earlier, MUA3 is an action/brawler game that features multiple playable characters with unlockable skills. Each character can jump, has a light attack and heavy attack, and four unlockable attacks that require energy to employ. While the light and heavy attack options are generally the same, gameplay shines through each characters four unlockable attacks. When players hold the R button they choose any of the four that are available. If players hold down the ZR button they can pull off powerful synergy attacks. These synergy attacks allow characters to perform ultimate attacks with other teammates. While energy is required to use these, energy is quickly acquired through enemy drops and simply using basic attacks. This means that combat is pretty straightforward and not that difficult to pull off.

However, because of poor game design players must complete boring objectives like “defeat every opponent”. While there are occasional environmental puzzles and gameplay variations, there simply is not enough to support a 10-hour campaign. To put it bluntly, the game is generally boring with little in play to implement game design and story elements. In most sections of the game I usually just walked through the swarm of enemies in order to find the next story beat.

Despite a weak campaign MUA3 also features a mode called Infinity Trials in which players are given a certain objective to complete. I enjoyed this game mode more than I enjoyed the campaign. While the campaign is repetitive and boring, Infinity Trials offer interesting challenges that test players skill. For example, some trials require players to defeat enemies with a certain character or to complete a previous boss battle under a certain time. Each trial has a different objective with three smaller objectives that players can meet in order to win more rewards. The rewards from Infinity Trials are essential for upgrading the dense skill tree.

 Speaking of skill trees, MUA3 has one of the densest skill trees I’ve ever seen in a video game. Because there are so many skills to unlock, each one actually does very little to increase stats. One skill might increase energy by 2.0% or another will increase characters’ health by 4.0%. In order to unlock a skill players must pay a certain amount of in-game currency and skill points, yet if players complete Infinity Trials they speed up the experience.

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Final Thoughts

While the game is not completely broken like some other new AAA games, it certainly could’ve used more polish. The story itself is fun and interesting, but the gameplay doesn’t support a 10-hour adventure. If the story was the focus and if the journey to the end was shorter the game might be more enjoyable. The Infinity Trials offer interesting new objectives that I wish were in the core game rather than a separate mode of play. And while the skill tree might come off as an interesting feature, it is definitely a flaw. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is a game that should worked, it had everything going right for it. Unfortunately due to weak design and boring gameplay this game will almost surely be lost to time.