Marvel fan or no, Ultimate Alliance is a fun RPG.
The storyline follows the Civil War comic book series where the US government launch a bill that all superheroes must divulge their true identity. This bill however has some disastrous consequences with some heroes signing up to the bill such as Iron Man and Mr Fantastic and others feeling it is morally wrong and rebelling like Captain America and Luke Cage. Both sides start fighting among themselves rather then keeping an eye on the villains they are meant to be fighting.
No matter which side during the course of the game you choose to fight with there will be a large cast of characters to choose from as well as fight against, some well known like Spider-man and Wolverine and others less known to non Marvel fans like Songbird and Iron Fist. Regardless of character favorites during the course of the game your party is limited to four characters though they can be swapped between at any point, useful if certain characters are more effective against certain enemy types or boss fights. Each character has his or her own specific move sets to pump points into when they level up like Spider-Mans web ball or Captain America's shield throw, many of the passive skills double up among characters however. The characters are all fairly balanced for the most part though some characters excel more at taking on groups of generic enemies and others are better for taking down bosses.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 has had some of it's RPG elements streamlined from the original game and all for the better. There are no longer items to equip to individual characters but instead boost badges can be used with abilities that affect the entire party such as +10% beam damage or +2 to all attributes etc. The boosts equipped can be changed at any time and their effectiveness is based on which party members you currently have and who they are fighting, they can make a lot of difference.
Boost badges can be found hidden around levels, in destructive scenery, dropped by bosses or by completing character specific challenges. These challenges tend to be largely beat up 50 enemies or perform a certain amount of successful fusion attacks with a certain character etc. These challenges do encourage the usage of characters you normally wouldn't use some of which are a lot better in combat then their base stats may appear.
Also new to Ultimate Alliance 2 are team based fusion attacks where two characters combine powers to do devastating attacks like Wolverine reflecting Iron Man's beam attack off his claws to hit all enemies in the area. There are 3 types of fusion to use, targeted which hits one specific enemy for a ton of damage, useful against bosses, and clearing and guided which destroy large groups. As each party member has unique attacks with every other building a balanced party to have a mixture of the 3 fusion types can be essential to victory, not to mention pretty fun to watch.
In between story missions there is the chance to explore various headquarters depending on which side you choose. In there you can talk to characters hanging around as well as have special conversations using certain characters with limited conversation options of essentially good bad and neutral. In these headquarters you can also engage in Marvel quizzes, see game artwork as well as character dossiers and challenge room missions which test your battle skills in a variety of different ways full of extra rewards.
Despite how fun the game is to run around and unleash super hero powers the visuals sadly let Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 down. Though an upgrade over it's predecessor for a PS3 game they just aren't all that pretty with only basic detail on a lot of the character models and equally bland textures. There is a lot of colour and some of the fusions look nice but this game will never be remembered for special visuals. The sound department is sort of similar in that it does the job but isn't brilliant. The music is fine but the voice acting is really hit and miss with some characters sounding dead on the part like Captain America, Spider-man and Iron Man all coming across as very natural in their performances and others like Dead Pool just sounding really forced, it could have been better.
This game is however fairly good value for money. The side choosing really encourages a different play-through to do each mission from a different perspective not to mention online co-op, the amount of boosts to collect, extra costumes, artwork and sound bites, some of which you can only get though playing on hard. Overall I spent about 60 hours on two completions.
To sum up, while Marvel fans will get the most out of this any RPG players should enjoy it. While not that deep or visually impressive, there is a large cast of characters to choose from and fight, the story is surprisingly well laid out and traveling through dungeons as a powered up herculean exemplar destroying everything in your path is immensely satisfying. A thumbs up.
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+ Large cast of characters.
+ Plenty of re-play value.
+ Fusions add a lot of flare to combat.
+ Story is fairly good.
- Visuals are mediocre.
- Voice acting is hit and miss.