Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

The Avengers game looks basically the same, but on steroids.

Put something like 20 hours into this game already. Main team almost lvl 30. Finally realized you need to level characters to get Enhancement points for your talent/tech grid, so you basically have to go through the beginning stages over and over with all the characters to boost that shit up. Forced replayability, but almost forces you to play the other characters.

Ghost Rider is the only one so far that seems ridiculously powerful from the get go. Basically immune to fire, his abilities don't cost much, do a lot of damage, are aoe "ethereal" type which are the easiest to boost in the tech tree.

Debating capping the blue tree for the xp boost first, though the purple tree likely most useful up front... Meh. Lots of farming.

Played it 12 hours straight yesterday, didn't wipe until the Strange/Dormammu encounter.

Really wishing my friends had Switch's so they could come over and bring their controllers. If it was Xbox that'd be too easy.

Game is just as fun as the previous versions. Just as grindy, though. Story is also very predictable, but the voice acting is decent.

It's Team Ninja so there's some subtle nuance to the controls that makes is easy to play, hard to master. We'll see where I get after this next week of vacation with nothing better to do.

Nintendo Friend Code: SW-0771-7168-6411

Oh, if you're running through an area a second time, scenes that don't show the skip option, it you his the "+" button you can hit X to skip. After the 3rd or 4th time listening to Ultron yammer off I almost wanted to put a bullet in my mouth.

Last thing, I fucking hate how the buttons are all backwards on Nintendo from XBOX/PS4, both in their labeling and which buttons are standard for menu selections. Even after 20 hours I still keep hitting the wrong shit.

Infinity trials, farm the XP cubes. Only rewards once, but they're short, vs the hour it takes to clear a mission. I'm still working out the most efficient path. Need to open up more missions. If you bring a high level character, lower level characters don't get as much xp. Best to have a team of equal level for max gains. You also get the most xp from the character you're controlling.

Also just discovered a mean ass team: Wolverine, Psylocke, Nightcrawler and Gamora - gives a 16% strength group buff, which is the most I've been able to stack. Definitely focus on strength/purple nodes and ISO's. I happened to find a +500str ISO that I've buffed to 600str and makes even level 8 characters hit hard as shit.

I plan to eventually stack energy for Cap M to be able to Falcon Punch the shit out of things. Curious if there's an energy cost reduction or regen ISO, would be neat to have her be able to play like a laser beam wizard from Diablo 3.

How far into the main campaign are you? I haven't tried the Strange encounter again, went back to boost other toons to get more Enhancement credits. Curious if it's possible to beat Magneto/Mystique/Juggernaut scenario, since it let's you lose like when the Thanos minions beat the fuck out of you, but doesn't actually Game Over. Need to run that one again, too, now that I've got a group of 30's.

It's definitely a lot easier overall after you activate all of the nodes in the center hex. I've got half the purple hex as well (mostly the bottom half of it, focusing on strength, and melee/piercing dmg). As I mentioned above, I'm also considering the xp hex, but the requirements to get enough tokens to get the top end nodes (100 tokens) it makes more sense to me to have as much power before going for the xp boost, since most of the nodes in the xp hex aren't really power boosting. Guess we'll see who gets there first?

The hand area goes by pretty quickly. I intentionally stepped into the detection lights to spawn more mobs, lol. Not sure if there's some bonus for properly avoiding them... Kingpin was a push over. That said, lacking in durability certainly fucked me at the end of the Dark Dimension stage.

I've activated a shit load of nodes since Strange kicked my ass, so need to go back and do that mission/encounter again.

I'll also say the online coop is.... Dead? No matter which area I select, there's never any groups. They really should have created a matchmaking service with some sort of mob scaling. Otherwise you have to manually group up. I need to check out the discord channels to see if there's anything going on there. It's a game that plays so much better with a human controlling all of the characters. You also bring in your characters at the level you've built them up, which is why I initially focused all my effort into Cap M.

Wolverine grunting every attack is driving me insane. Or Daredevil going "pewpewpew". At least CapM doesn't have stupid emotes or attack audio.

Armadon said:

I wish this game was on another console or PC because the graphics are annoying to me. Plus I get some slowdown even when I have to switch docked. Still a fun game though.

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Slowdown? What? I've got 30 hours into the game and literally never experienced any of that. Are you running digital or physical? I'm digital.

Single player is a good 40 hours. You also have to go and do Infinity challenges to level up to beat the last chapter. My guys were just shy of level 40. Last chapter was also a good bit longer than any prior. Dormammu was a motherfucker, though. Pro tip, pick up rocks, let them charge up to gain the red glow before tossing at his shield. I brute forced it with Deadpool being the only one alive on the very last segment. Whatever works. The Dark Order are the hardest in the game. Not even Thanos or anything else you face in the last chapter.

Also, after you beat it on Mighty, it opens up the Superior difficulty, beat that, opens up Ultimate. So tons of replayability. Theres also a whole bunch of Infinity Challenges to complete.

You can change the buttons in the system settings, but meh, I've gotten used to it in all ways save the menus, and even then it's becoming more natural after 40 or so hours. Still annoying. I'm sure it's gonna fuck me up when I go back to my Xbox...