Marvel Rivals, the latest AAA video game release from Marvel Games, developed by NetEase Games, launched just over a week ago to a large and enthusiastic player base. Marvel Rivals is a 6V6 team-based superhero, third-person shooter game. Players assemble an all-star Marvel squad - selecting from a cast of 33 playable characters at launch - and battle in destructible battlefields across a continually evolving Marvel Universe. The game is multiplayer only, but it's not lacking in story to back up its gameplay. In the game's lore, two versions of Doctor Doom have caused countless universes to collide in the "Timestream Entanglement", birthing new worlds and crises unknown. Now, heroes and villains alike find themselves in battles and alliances as they attempt to thwart both Doom's from obtaining dominion over these realities.
Gameplay
Let's start by breaking down the most important element of any game - how it feels to play. To put it bluntly, this game is ridiculously fun. As mentioned before, there are 33 playable characters at launch - with more to come in future updates and seasons - and they all have their own attacks, abilities, and ultimates to master. Every hero (or villain) will fall into one of three categories - Vanguard, Duelist, or Strategist. Vanguards are the typical "tank" class type, Duelists are the quick significant damage outputs for a team that aims to rack up KO's, and Strategists are the standard "healer/support" class whose role is to keep everyone on the battlefield as a team pushes through or onto an objective.
Each character feels wholly unique and has a nice variety in their attacks and movements without feeling too difficult to learn. Everyone navigates the map differently and engage in combat in their own way, making it crucial to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each class and character within that class. While there is a bit of a learning curve when playing a new character, the game makes it fairly easy to get a basic grasp of what the player should be doing. The real learning curve comes in going from understanding the basic gist of a character to then taking that gameplay to an upper level.
There have been a lot of voices in the community since launch shouting about this hero or that villain being "broken" or "overpowered" but, the thing is, people are saying that about basically every character. When every character is broken, no one is. This approach adds to the chaos and pure fun of the game right now. Every hero is a blast if the player takes the time to master their style of gameplay.
The balance of teams can be a bit frustrating at times - most players will auto-select duelists - leaving a team composition that could desperately use another (or just one to start) Vanguard or Strategist to even out the playing field. Some argue that role lock (forcing players to select a specific class type if the team is missing said class type) is the solution, but I think this would ruin the fun and freedom that the game currently offers. People should be allowed to play the characters they want to (especially in casual), and if they keep losing because of an unbalanced team composition they'll be more likely to branch out and try those other classes themselves, rather than being forced to.
Art Direction & Lore
The art direction for this game is simply top-notch. The team nailed the character designs for 95% of the characters (if not 100%), and the overall style is just genuinely pleasing to look at. It's got a classic Marvel feel to its characters and map designs while still being its own unique thing. NetEase has done a fantastic job at creating a visual language for their game, sticking to it, and bringing a new version of a Marvel Universe to players. It just looks fantastic on all fronts.
While this is a multiplayer game only with no story mode, NetEase have not skimped on the lore. There is a lot of lore packed into the menus and dialogue of this game. All the character interactions both before and during matches are gold. They are true to each of their characters while also dropping hints and tidbits on the state of this version of the Marvel Universe. It's subtle, well-executed world-building on an interactive scale.
Then the lore gets kicked into high gear when exploring the menus. Each hero has a general lore excerpt that's about two paragraphs, but then NetEase takes it another step further. Each hero also has three (so far) stories that are full-on short stories. The first of these three is unlocked automatically with the other two set to release at later as of yet undisclosed dates. These stories are not huge, but they're certainly not insignificant either. It takes a handful of scrolls to get through them all and they cross-reference each other. They establish each version of the characters in this world and what they've been up to and where their missions are heading going into the future.
This type of world-building is incredibly expansive and impressive, just reading through a handful of these stories creates the feeling that there are years worth of seasons NetEase could build upon here. There's mention of Magneto and Scarlet Witch traveling the multiverse to bring every mutant they can find to the island-nation of Krakoa, there's a brewing war between Hela and Knull, there's the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda researching Chronovium, and of course, there's the ever-present threat of not one but two Doctor Doom's.
Launch Pains & Future Plans
When it comes to launch pains... there basically weren't any. It wasn't perfectly optimized for PC right out of the gate (it took me a few hours of tinkering with settings to find the optimal results for my rig) and I do still experience some frame drops on certain maps, but overall it's been exceptionally smooth. NetEase has already released one patch to help some of the bugs that were immediately noticed and promises to stay consistent in releasing both small and large-scale patches and updates when needed to further optimize the player experience.
Servers have been incredibly consistent, which is saying a lot considering the game peaked with over 440 thousand concurrent players on Steam on launch night. I experienced one - just one - match where lag made it impossible to finish, and it hasn't happened since. The matchmaking is legitimately the fastest I have ever seen in an online game, it's borderline instant.
I've gone far too long without mentioning that this game is FREE. It's completely free to play. It's available for download on PC (Epic Games Store & Steam), PS5, and the Xbox Series X|S. It costs literally nothing but hard drive space and an internet connection to play. So, of course, there are going to be microtransactions for NetEase to generate some kind of revenue.
There's been a bit of pushback among some of the player base over the price of the cosmetics offered in-game. Don't get me wrong, they aren't cheap. The in-game currency equates to around $1 for every 100 Units, and the cheapest costume skins are 1,600 units, with the most expensive bundles of costumes + sprays, emotes, etc. going all the way up to 2,400 units. It's not an insignificant amount of money, but it also isn't that far off from the pricing of cosmetic skins in other free-to-play games. It's comparable, at the least, and of course completely optional. All of the in-game purchases are for purely cosmetic changes. There is no pay-to-win going on here, and you could in theory also achieve the same cosmetics through grinding out challenges in-game over a long period, though that would admittedly take... a while.
So, Marvel Rivals is operating on a now familiar live-service free-to-play battle pass model, with cosmetics available in their shop and endless levels to grind through. We're now a week into Season 0 which will be just one month long and is confirmed to be about half the length of normal seasons going forward. Season 0 already offers a ton of great content, with 4 new costumes and in-game currency as rewards.
Looking forward it's exciting to speculate what characters will be added to the game (a handful have been leaked for those curious) and how future seasons will introduce new maps and story beats as time goes on. Probably my biggest complaint is that the map pool as it stands isn't huge - featuring just eight maps across three game modes - but that's something that can be expanded on as new seasons roll out.
The Verdict So Far
Marvel Rivals is just about everything I hoped it would be on launch. It's a fun, energetic game with a ton of life and an awesome gameplay loop. There's a super solid community that has already grown around it and only seems to be getting larger by the day. It's a fresh, engaging new Marvel Universe for new and old fans to dive into. NetEase feels committed to continuing to deliver quality updates and clarity to the players, and the lineup of future content is seemingly endless.
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