Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 Review (David / Waveshaper)
The game was indeed relased in a terrible state, but it's been patched and is (almost) flawless now, so don't belive the overwhelmingly negative reviews! It usually comes from people who did not bother to change their vote after the game has been fixed.
TLDR, what is this game like?
It's a LEGO-console Diablo-ish team based action RPG, where you always control a team of 4 heroes (or this time, vallains!) and you practically go forward on linear maps filled with mini sideways leading to the many collectibles that can unlock new characters, art, audiodisc, dossiers about characters and the MARVEL world itself.
How is it compared to Ultimate Alliance 1?
The gameplay changed in many ways while feels exactly like MUA1. The same control patterns, grabs, throws, whatever, but characters are much more diverse. Ultimate abilities are gone, however instead you have Fusion abilities that allow a unique super powerful skill-duo of 2 heroes, with not entirely but relatively very, very much unique combinations of 24x23 heroes, such as spreading Iron Man's most powerful laser all over the screen with Wolverine's claws or mirror it back from Captain America's shield for a much stronger single and controllable beam, etc. with 24x23 combinations.
The gameplay's "feel" in general is much more fluid, characters have more unique abilities with less overlapping compared to MUA1, but they also have only 4 abilities instead of 4 choosable out of 7 (but they change if you upgrade them, visually and mechanically too!), and the gameplay design also shifted from less but stronger (more RPG-ish with resistances etc.) enemies to far, far more many that die easier, and I can tell you that slicing through 10-30 enemies with a metallic tornado controlled by Magneto while Human Torch makes the entire whirl burst with flames (or Gambit making each metal piece charged with explosive force) is uncomparable to MUA1's single ultimate abilities.
There have been some simplifications after MUA1, most of them are great but some are not so welcome.
The combat is much better, there are way, way less empty filler talking (in fact: 0) with a far better Secret War + Civil War storyline that is actually very enjoyable and the new slightly Mass-Effect-ish conversation systems allow for a lot optional talk that isn't written in a tiresome cringeworthy way like before, so definitly huge improvements here. The "gold" you collect is finally automatic and each hero gets it separately so you can upgrade everyone at the same time and never going to feel like "I should have played him/her much sooner, he/she is too weak at this point of the game" like in MUA1.
Having only 4 abilities per hero is I say acceptable in exchange for the Fusion abilities and having more Unique heroes, but sadly everyone has only 1 unlockable alternative costume. At some point in the game you have to pick a side in the Civil War and some heroes naturally belong to your enemy, so they can potentially go locked (templorarly, don't worry just wait for the story to unfold!) and their alternative costumes won't be unlockable until you replay the game again and pick the other side (registration of superheroes or fighting to stay anonym), and this can potentially be frustrating to some. It was for me too for a while, but as much fun as I'm having with MUA2 I'm definitly replaying it in the future if not instantly after finishing it, because your hero progression and unlocks carries over to new game+ on higher difficulties, so I'm not really bothered by this limitation on a few heroes, rather encouraged to play more instead.
The PC port: at relase and now.
MUA2 had an absolutely garbage relase, but it's been fixed up nicely since. Main problems were controller compatibility issues (adressed, though pay attention the store page says PARTIAL controller support, so the layout is not customizable!) and the game was absolutely unenjoyable because of terrible sound issues making everything sound like your neightbour is drilling the wall (this also has been adressed and is perfect now). Regarding performance, you can easily achieve 60fps and play through the entire (very enjoyable) game, however there is some strange fps swinging when the game randomly drops to 40-50 fps from 60 even if you are standing still doing nothing, so there is that miniature drop that happens a few times (like 2-3 times every 5 minutes) but really you won't feel it, because the gameplay and the animation isn't working in a way that would make it annoying like in an FPS, personally I wouldn't even notice it by now if not having fps written in the corner of the screen. Also the game starts in Windowed Mode for some reason, just Alt+TAB away and back and it's fixed!