It sometimes feels like Marvel is working towards a future where there will be a free-to-play game for every possible genre. The quality of those games has run the gamut from the bland Marvel: War Of Heroes to the surprisingly enjoyable Marvel Future Fight (Free). Somewhere in the upper end of that range sits Marvel: Avengers Alliance, a rather fun game with a battle system pulled from turn-based RPGs. The one thing that ties most of these games together aside from the license is that no matter how well they start off, they all seem to end up becoming worse over the long run. The original Avengers Alliance is probably the worst example of that, with its poorly-implemented PVP, serious issues with cheating players, and completely broken character balance. At a certain point, it felt like Marvel Entertainment just gave up on it.
That makes it a little tough to review the sequel, Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2 (Free). It’s pretty decent in its current state, offering the same strategic battle system that should tickle the fancy of anyone who enjoys RPG combat, considerably improved graphics, and a less punishing PVP mode. It has its share of issues, though, and I could see the game ultimately going hard in either a positive or negative direction depending on how well Marvel supports it. Its lengthy soft launch period should mean that the nuts and bolts are essentially hammered down at this point, at least. For example, I doubt its extensive variety of monetization techniques are going anywhere. The stamina system won’t be getting tossed out, and neither will the multiple random lottery systems for getting new characters, abilities, and upgrades.
What worries me is that at the moment, the game is extremely generous relative to similar games in this sub-genre. Even though you’re at the mercy of a sometimes capricious “gatcha" system for getting new heroes, between free pulls and semi-frequent hand-outs of the premium currency, it’s not that hard to get just about every character in the game if you’re playing over a reasonably long term. It’s also not terribly difficult to clear all of the missions in the game, especially on normal, without paying a cent. After finishing a mission on normal difficulty, you can play it again on a higher difficulty setting. That gets pretty tough, but with careful planning and good strategy, even the hardest missions are possible with what the game hands you.
The character balancing is still pretty shaky in this sequel, and there are certainly a few characters who can break the game open right now, but I do want to note that there are far fewer useless characters than the first game had. Just about every character can fit a useful role if they’re joined up with the right team members. The balance issues are less of a problem in this game thanks to some significant changes made to the PVP mode. In the first game, trying to maintain your rank was nearly impossible even before the cheaters arrived. The PVP mode allows players to take on the teams of other players controlled by the computer AI. In the first game, if the AI lost, your rank slipped, so you’d constantly have to check in and fight extra battles to secure rewards. Even then, it was up in the air as the last hours counted down on any given round. In Avengers Alliance 2, that’s no longer a problem. Once you’ve attained a rank, the reward associated with it is yours, and the only steps backward that come from losing occur only if you lose by your own hand.
The battle system isn’t wildly different from that of the first game, in spite of the prettier graphics. You no longer have a generic Agent character to take into battle. Instead, your two selected team members are joined by the leader of another player’s team. This works just like it does in other social RPGs like Puzzle & Dragons (Free). Using another player’s character will earn them some extra resources, and that naturally works both ways. The benefits are greater if you’ve befriended that player, but even if you have nobody to kick back and try to lift Mjolnir with, you can still choose a helper from a random list of other players. As before, the heroes are all sorted into different types, with each type strong to one type and weak to another. Yes, it’s basically Marvel Pokemon.
Luckily, when you’re playing a mission, the game will give you a heads-up as to what kinds of enemies will be showing up, so you can stack the deck provided you have the right types available. That’s probably the most important consideration early on, but there are a lot of other factors you need to think about as well. Each character can acquire a variety of abilities and you’ll have to choose a precious few to bring into battle with you, so you’ll want to carefully think about how those skills will work against the enemies you’ll be facing, as well as how those abilities might interact with the rest of the team. You’ll also need to decide which Iso-8 crystals to equip to each member of the team. Those crystals give stat bonuses and other useful effects, and some of them make more sense for certain heroes than others.
The complexity is satisfying, and that’s just the preparation and party building segment. The actual turn-based battles themselves are well-done, as well. There are so many different effects, buffs, debuffs, and so on, that it can be awfully bewildering at first. Once you get the hang of how combat flows and learn some of the jargon, though, it’s as solid a turn-based system as you could find in any fully-featured RPG. A lot of its wooliness, I suspect, is likely down to needing to somewhat faithfully represent the abilities of the many heroes the game will eventually include. If we lived in a magical world where dreams came true, I would love to see a more traditional RPG featuring the Marvel characters and this battle system. It does its job properly.
The leveling system is less traditional and more typical of modern social RPGs. There are all kinds of currencies and items to collect if you want to fully open up a character and their abilities, and like the battles, it’s a bit much to take in at first. Characters have levels, star rankings, abilities with their own star rankings, equipped crystals, and more, and each of those things is leveled up in a slightly different way. Again, after you get into the swing of it, it’s not that hard to manage. I suppose from a design standpoint, the benefit here is that you’ll have something you can upgrade after almost every fight. It’s a simple bit of pleasure, but I’m too big of an RPG fan to deny that I get a tiny kick out of any stat upgrade I can squeeze out.
There are more systems I could talk about, but I think I’ve at least demonstrated that the game isn’t shallow. In fact, it’s rather well thought out, more than you would expect from what could have easily been a simple cash-in series. I’d love to recommend the game emphatically. I wish I didn’t have to worry about the game’s friendly balance being up-ended at some point in the future if it doesn’t monetize well. A few little tweaks in the wrong direction could make this game an absolute nightmare. In the here and now, it’s pretty fun, especially if you’re into turn-based RPG combat systems. It has some nasty bugs, leading to semi-frequent crashes, certain characters are hideously overpowered, and the whole thing feels like it’s running a little slower than it ideally should, but it’s a good time for Marvel fans. I mean, unless you like the X-Men. They won’t be making an appearance in the game anytime soon, apparently. All is Inhumans, hail Blackbolt.
At least at the moment, Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2 is a player-friendly free-to-play game with a well-designed battle system and satisfying party-building choices. I sincerely hope it stays that way, and I would like to see the developer address things like crashing issues and balancing out some of the more overpowered characters. Although it cut a couple of things from the original game that I liked, I feel like this is a considerably better game all-around. It’s worth checking out, but I’d get in on it quickly if you’re interested, because it could easily end up going down the same road as the original game.
