Marvel: Avengers Alliance

Marvel: Avengers Alliance is an action-adventure game based on the Marvel universe. Players take on the role of ordinary agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., fighting alongside numerous familiar superheroes in three-person teams against a variety of enemies. The game features hundreds of heroes, each with unique abilities. Players must time their skills precisely to secure victory. Six classes await unlocking, each with its own strengths and weaknesses; utilizing these relationships strategically will lead to easier wins. The game also offers diverse gameplay modes including PVP, special operations, and daily missions. Completing these missions earns rewards that can be used to acquire and develop your favorite characters.

Gameplay:

Players control an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and can customize the agent by gaining experience, leveling up, and equipping their agents with weapons and uniforms obtained within the game. The player can team up with two of 166 Marvel heroes in the game, each with their unique skills and abilities. While some heroes are locked and can only be recruited on some occasions, most of them are available for general recruitment, and can be bought with "Command Points", one of the currencies that appears in the game.

Gameplay consists of turn-based fights that pit the player's agent and heroes against one or more waves of three or fewer enemies, with each character having unique attacks. There are six character classes: Blaster, Bruiser, Scrapper, Infiltrator, Tactician and Generalist. The first five classes have a specific strength and a specific weakness to one of the other classes, in a rock-paper-scissors style. Blasters have guaranteed critical hits against Bruisers and ignore their defense stats. Bruisers increase their statistics when they attack or are attacked by Scrappers. Scrappers have a second automatic attack (follow-up attack) against Infiltrators. Infiltrators gain the ability to counter enemies' attacks after attacking or being attacked by Tacticians, while the latter gain an extra turn when they attack or are attacked by Blasters. The Generalist class has no special strengths or weaknesses against other classes. Some playable heroes can switch classes during the game, and a character's class may be changed with alternate costumes. The player has access to uniforms of all the classes.

Features:

Tactical battles with clear strengths and counters: At its core, Marvel Avengers Alliance runs on turn-based fights where your agent teams up with two heroes. Encounters play out in waves of enemies, and success leans on smart matchups rather than fast reflexes. The game also uses multiple character classes with defined advantages and disadvantages, which adds a satisfying layer of planning when you are deciding who to bring and when to use specific attacks.

Roster-building that centers on your S.H.I.E.L.D. agent: Progress is tied to developing your customizable agent while expanding a collection of heroes. Heroes have distinct skills, some are locked behind recruitment, and the game supports ongoing growth through training and unlocks. There are also collection-style mechanics tied to earning specific items, which can be used to bring additional characters onto your team.

Different ways to play, from limited-time challenges to PvP: Beyond the main flow of battles, Avengers Alliance includes Special Operations that run as limited-time challenges and reward a new hero for completing a set of tasks. There is also an opt-in PvP tournament structure, plus daily missions with a time window, and a simulator that focuses on challenge fights and a villain archive with bios and practice battles.

Free-to-play pressure and content considerations: While the game can be played for free, it encourages spending on stronger items and equipment, plus options that speed up access to quests and characters. Combat is consistently about fighting, and it can show light blood effects, but it avoids gore and defeated enemies disappear. Parents should also be aware of occasional mild profanity and some character outfits that are more revealing.

Useful Tips:

When you first get into the game, there are a lot of things you need to understand. While the tutorial does a half decent job of explaining what you need to know, there are things that I really think should be made out clear as a bell to new players, so you know better and thus don't waste time/money going through things like a lot of the rest of us have.

The first thing you should familiarize yourself with is the resources of the game, of which there are five: Silver, Gold, Command Points, Shield Points, and Unstable ISO. The sixth icon is Lockboxes, but that's not exactly a resource and we'll get to it eventually.

Silver is the most basic of the resources, the easiest to farm for, and the one spent on most things. Most importantly, you'll need a hefty chunk of coin for leveling your Heroes, as the price for them grows with each level, Maxing out at 300,000 to get to lv 12. You can also use silver for research, buying items from the store, and upgrading your Flight Decks, but we'll get to that in a bit.

Gold is basically the resource that is, more or less, what real money equates to. You CAN pay for Silver, but it's so easy to gain so why bother? Most of the gold you'll get if you're not paying for the game will be from Leveling up, the occasional daily spin, and a few events here and there. A LOT of the things in this game can be bypassed by gold, and if you're willing to lay down the money, you can easily gain high power for little effort, but otherwise, Gold should be saved and horded. The reasons? We'll get to that in a bit.

Command Points are the resource that are used to buy the Heroes in the game. They can and should be farmed for (more on that later) though if you want to, gold can be turned into Command Points at a rate of 1 gold for 2 command points. General consensus is that while it's ok to turn gold into Command Points, it should only be done if you haven't unlocked the areas that allow you to farm for them easily.

Shield Points are the other resource, along side Silver, that is used for your Heroes to level them up. This resource is mostly obtained from going to your allies cities and clicking on their buildings, gifting them to each other, and clicking the 'Get Bonus' option when you see your friends post accomplishments from the game on their walls. You can also use them for research, but again, we'll get to that in a bit.

Lockboxes, though not a resource, are something special. Given out as rewards during events such as the Special Ops and PVP, occasionally obtained as a daily gift reward, Lockboxes are there to give you the chance at comic book covers. These covers, when you've collected 8 of them, will unlock a special hero, all of which have been/are villains of the Marvel Universe/the game itself. Lockboxes have a 7% chance to hold a cover if you open one, a 100% chance to open a cover if you open 10, can duplicate previous covers that you have (in which case they'll give you a 10,000 silver if that does happen), and can also carry pretty much anything else in the game including weapons, socketable iso, and one time use items.

Player Comments:

Like most of the reviewers on here I purchased Marvel: Ultimate Alliance on a pure nostalgia kick.The Ultimate Alliance series along with its predecessor, X-Men Legends, were really fun to play (and replay) with my friends back in the day. All of them are still definitely my favorite style of co-op games, i really appreciated how each player can pick a character to match their own playstyle.You feel like hanging back and blasting fools from a distance with projectiles? Done.Wanna mow through 'em one by one like a tank? Go for it.

Oh, you prefer to stick to the skies and rain down haymakers? No problemo!The flexibility in how you approached each stage was (and still is) awesome, countless hours were spent playing through the story with different combinations of teams and it was cool to see how certain team combos were given boosts i.e. Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-men etc.Unfortunately, when it comes to this port on Steam, i'm just not interested in spending more hours than the few that i already have on an otherwise great game... as you will see in other reviews, controllers are virtually un-usable due to the button mapping. The fact that the game is still being offered for purchase with this major issue is insulting to the series and to the community. It's like expecting people to pay for a car that they can barely drive and having no issues with selling such a sub-par product... even on a sale it's questionnable.I hope that Steam will increase their standards for what they allow to be sold on here. With this major issue, it would make more sense that you tell the publisher to fix it with a patch or otherwise remove it from the store completely if they fail to do so within a given time. In its current state, it's honestly not doing anyone any good, and hasn't been for a long time.

First of all to address the negative reviews, I played this game solo on an xbox one s controller through two playthroughs one on normal the other on hard, there was no bugs it worked great, the RT on my controller wasn't working and I fixed it using This Guide however using a second controller on local coop wasn't fixed for me but it was fixed for others, am pretty sure there's something on my end I should do but didn't put the effort to find out what.Now to the game, if you're not familiar with the franchise this was originally released in 2006, it is not a 2016 game that's just a remake and my opinion since I played it when it first came till now hasn't changed, this and the second are the best games that portray the marvel universe, with its simple gameplay and the huge roster of superheroes available to pick from and their multiple hero powers to switch through, the game is so much fun I did 2 playthroughs and I could still do more . They put together a really nice story combining there multiple characters and they show you in the end through cinematics the effects of your choices in optional misions, I don't follow the comics much so I can't compare its accuracy to them.There's a bit of a grind here to unlock everything but you can move your progress through playthroughs and after I finished my second run it was easy to get currency and unlock stuff so if you're like me and wanna try em all dem heroes to their full potential, it is possible.

One of the best Marvel games of all time. More of a blast with friends in local co-op than solo though. Packed with missions, enemies, plenty of different heroes to use which all have unique moves & specials. One of its tragedies is the fact that it's completely gone from digital existence. The Steam key for both games is around $1,500 which you can buy an entire PC with. Hopefully one day it will be back.

Final Verdict:

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a great game for role playing game lovers and superhero fans alike, combining a rich story and action alongside a great cast of heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe. Build your perfect team, upgrade their skills the way you want to play and unleash cinematic combos on the worst enemies imaginable to stop world ending schemes!