Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3

Games
#71

It works really well in couch coop. Occasional camera issues but there is a learning curve. Really fun though. If you need to power level I can give you some tips.

  1. Not hard at all, there is more than enough time plus there an onscreen button prompt. For instance if I do Ms. Marvel’s ‘Giant Foot Spinny Thing’, my son will see the button ‘Eyes Wide Open’ flash if he’s in range.
  2. Nope, that’s the best part about couch coop. You can talk it out. The difference is instead of switching to 3 other characters you only can switch to 2. We usually indicate our backup character beforehand but it usually goes out the window when we are losing lol.
  3. We never tried online. Never seem to work for us and with our limited playtime we didn’t want to sit in the lobby waiting. From what I understand each group brings their account and their character.
#72

Just finished the main story. I’m torn between enjoying the huge variety of playable characters and all the mannerisms & references to the movie characters and situations, and not enjoying the moment to moment combat gameplay or upgrade system. I don’t mind the skill upgrades, but the ISO-8 and Alliance Enhancement systems are slogs. I’ve never been a fan of upgrade trees that force players to grind out dozens or hundreds of individual small % upgrades one at a time, and this game didn’t change that for me.

Basically I like the presentation and the effort to bring all these heroes to the game, but not a fan of the action itself. I feel like at its heart this game is a crappy little 90s beat-em-up wrapped in in a warm blanket of some modern design sensibilities and lots of love.

I only have 4 high level heroes (Grax, Gamora, Starguy, and Crystal), since they’re all I played, but I don’t feel like running through everything again (or grinding rifts) for all the others.

#73

Stuff xp pellets into their mouths!

-Tom

#74

Knowing I might not want to go though again, and also wanting to finish the story with little fuss, I took all my unused pellets (basically all I ever collected) and fed them to my main, Grax. I leveled him up from 40 to 54 just before the final fight(s) and then breezed through them.

I’m positive I can earn tons more, and if I go through again it will be with 4 new characters.

I’m still on the fence about going back for rifts and such. I had just finished the game after playing all day when I wrote that last night, and I think I was feeling more burned out on it at that moment than I otherwise would be starting off fresh. A day later and I’m already wanting to try a few new heroes.

#75

I’m sad that you can’t even get your main’s name right. You stuffed all those xp pellets into his mouth and you still don’t know his name. :(

-Tom

#76

And to think I was actually embarassed I couldn’t remember Starlord’s name last night, seeing as how he’s the star of the movies and all that. It didn’t even occur to me I had Drax wrong this whole time.

#77

So I’ve had this for a while now and played off and on only recently made it a way in and am now a chapter 5 I think. Attlatin or whatever Inhuman-berg is called. I’d read you mention that you can go back to any previous chapters to try and find the rifts and stuff I’d missed. It sure seems like they wanted you to go back and play in previously completed areas. But every time I tried this I saw

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with big fucking red letters saying I’m about to lose my story progress. So every time I stopped and just played on with my story and never went back to earlier areas. After this thread was recently bumped I read about going to previous chapters yet again and again stopped at the Big Fucking Red Warning. After a bit of hesitation I finally reread it and thought maybe i can get back to my most recent Shield point too. And so now I’m going back to try and get some of the things I’d missed. And yes, I can even get to my most furthest along story point back in Attlatin.

Dear game, don’t warn me like that!!! Fuckers.

#78

Ugh, yeah, that is really misleading. I can’t tell if they just mean “progress since the last checkpoint” or “progress in the sense of you’re going to be backing up to an earlier point in the storyline so you’ll have to jump ahead to your previous checkpoint if you want to pick up where you’d left off”.

I guess they didn’t expect people to think of the story as discrete levels separated by cutscenes? Which is odd because that’s exactly what it is.

-Tom

#79

A random question about Captain America in the comics, just to feed my curiosity.

Two days ago I started playing Captain America so I could level him up to 20 and complete a solo rift mission with his name on it. While playing through other missions I noticed that one of his Synergy attacks (his default X power that lets him block with his shield) will allow another hero in the party to shoot a beam/gun at his shield while Captain America reflects the beam/bullets towards enemies and mows them down.

If I remember correctly, this same move was done in Avengers 1, with Iron Man lasering Captain America’s shield while Captain America deflected the beam in an arc, wiping out a bunch of enemies.

I’m curious if this is a move he used in the comics (or maybe cartoons) before Avengers 1 came out.

#80

I’m pretty sure this ability appeared in one of the earlier Marvel Ultimate Alliances. I remember seeing that moment in the movie and thinking, “Hey, that’s from that game I played!”

#81

I just completed my third run-through of the base campaign. I played with different heroes each time and currently have 12 of my 34 unlocked heroes leveled up to 40~58. I played through the campaign once on Friendly and twice through on Mighty (and did lots of rifts with my first two teams so far), but except for damage output and sponginess of enemies, I can’t tell the difference as far as experience, money, or loot awards are concerned.

I’ve been unlocking various heroes to figure out the which ones I like best for an eventual Superior run. Hopefully, Superior difficulty will have better ISO loot. Currently I’m dropping basic ISOs in hero slots but I haven’t yet had to upgrade or craft any at all in order to succeed just yet.

Right now my teams are composed with the exact same strategy in mind: One hero that excels at Stagger, one hero that excels at single target damage output, and two other random heroes that are around the same level as the first two. I haven’t had a reason to change this up just yet, but figure that will be more important as I tackle higher level rifts in the future.

The heroes I’ve played so far:
Drax 58 (Mained)
Gamora 48
Star-Lord 48
Crystal 48

Captain America 48 (Mained)
Wolverine 42
Luke Cage 42
Ms. Marvel 41

Captain Marvel 40 (Mained)
Iron Man 40
Hulk 40
Spider-man 40

I’ve had no early biases or preferences for certain heroes (Except for Blade, all my favorites are DC anyway), and only selected these guys because the first team was the default (except I swapped out Groot), and all the others were the lowest available levels when I selected them (6 or 7). After I level up all the tiny guys I can work on the ones that start off at higher levels.

My favorite campaign map so far is the Black Panther map, with the jungles and tomb. It has my favorite enemies, and except for the laser-cat run, it has the fewest annoying ground obstacles (like mazes, traps, or ooze geysers etc). I also like the enemy composition and densities here. Those snipers can pack quite a punch if you don’t take care of them, and the area denial guys make certain battles iffy.

As for rifts, my favorites are the Rush/Wave trials, with my least favorite being boss fights. I don’t enjoy scripted boss fights in most games, so there’s nothing new there.

#82

Add 4 more heroes to the groups that have completed the campaign. They’re currently level 40. I have no idea what there needs to be so many versions of Spiderman, but three of them fought together, led by Thor, in this go-round.

Thor 40 (Mained)
Venom 40
Spider-Gwen 40
Spiderman (Miles Morales) 40

Of all these creatures in the game, these guys (below) are my favorite to beat up. Not because they do anything interesting, but they actually look like the sorts of goons I’d expect to see in a comic book. And they always show up in large groups.

Alpha Primitives:

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I really enjoyed Thor this time around because of his utility. He flies and he’s got super strength. It means I don’t have to swap to a different hero when doing certain things. I’m not a fan of his default Ability, Thunder Strike. because it locks him in place for a few seconds and if an enemy moves around the ability tracks too slowly to keep up, but he is great at staggering and stunning.

Miles Morales was also great because of his electric webs all over the floor. I didn’t notice anything interesting with Gwen or Venom that the other two didn’t already cover. I only grouped 3 versions of Spiderman together because they were all my lowest level characters (6 and 7) at the start.

When I’m done testing out heroes like this I’ll push deeper into Superior difficulty and the challenge rifts.

#83

RE: Hawkeye

I’ve been leveling up a group the last couple days. They’re currently level 30, and my main is Hawkeye (my favorite character from the one Avenger movie I’ve watched). Well, after 30 levels I was convinced the game version of the character was terrible. It felt weak, unfocused, didn’t synergize well at all, and a couple of his powers were a little too fiddly (because of ground targeting). But all that has changed because (after 30 freaking levels) I finally realized the cause for a certain anomaly I kept witnessing but couldn’t put my finger on, occassionally I’d see massive critical damage attacks I couldn’t explain.

Here’s what I finally figured it out: Hawkeye can combo his own abilities together and get team synergy with himself. It requires chaining certain abilities together, and it’s a massive EP drain, but it suddenly elevates him to useful status. I’m no longer underwhelmed so much as annoyed that it’s taken me this long to figure out.

He has two synergy attacks he can trigger all by himself (that I know of). I don’t know the names of all the different synergy attacks themselves, but here are the skills he can use to trigger the huge AE crits they deliver:

  • Scattershot -> Piercing Shot = big booms in a tight space.
  • Exploding Arrows -> Shock Value = big booms in a wider area.

It’s actually a gamechanger for this character, because he was doing just terrible 1v1 against bosses and elites.

Anyway, this is my 5th or so full team of 4 that I’ve been leveling up through the campaign, and now I can’t help but wonder what other heroes that I’ve played might have had similar functionality. Nobody else on my current team can do anything like this, so maybe not many.

#84

Man, I played a bunch of this during the holidays, but then moved over to Fenyx. Went back to this last weekend and hit a wall at the end (I think) of the Wakanda area. All my dudes are at least level 30 and I went from slowly but surely moving thru areas to just getting crushed in Wakanda. This change happened between levels it felt like. Ugh.

I’m playing on whatever the easiest level is.

And even the Rifts sure seem a little too hard. I hadn’t done but a few previously, but I would think my level 30 dudes and dudettes would clear a Level 10 or so Rift with ease. Eh, not so much.

There is the distinct possibility that I kinda suck.

#85

I’ve been getting back into this lately as well and that happened to me as well. I was about level 28 on my team and getting wrecked so I went back to the early Infinity Trials and beat a few of the low level ones to get the XP cubes. Then I used those to bump up a few levels and that did the trick. I’m rolling with Black Panther, Storm, Deadpool, and Cyclops for what it’s worth. Some of those early Rifts have tricks to them too which isn’t just about levels.

#86

If I remember correctly you’ll want to be 35-36ish at the end of Wakanda. And there’s no real penalty other than a little repetition for just going back a world or two and running through it again to level up before running Wakanda again.

As for rifts, don’t let the level of the Rifts fool you, some are terribly difficult for their level. They can technically be done with the right team and the right synergies etc, but some types of rifts are buttloads easier at the same level.

I’m not sitting in front of my Switch at the moment, but the first group of rifts has a level 14 event (at the very top center) and the second set of rifts has a level 24*(?)ish wave event at the very bottom/bottom left. These are by far the easiest (but still give okay exp) for your level because you’re mostly just murdering waves of easy enemies without any timers or attack penalties or anything hanging over your head.

You probably already know this, but this goes for any new players too, pay very special attention to the rules for each rift. it’s easy to start one up and not notice that your basic attacks and abilities are only doing 1% their normal damage because it’s an EX rift or something, where you’ve got to use extreme attacks. Same goes for Abilitiy/synergy rifts, anything but those will do 1% of their normal damage, and you have to use abilities only, unless you simply need to spam basic attacks to charge up your EP or something.

Grinding rifts this way can still take time though. To raise a bunch of your heroes 5-6 levels each or whatever can still take many, many runs through various rifts.

There’s also a trick you can use if you need to heal up in a pinch in battle. if you have XP cubes sitting around unused you can eat just enough of them to level your damaged character. This will heal them up to full. This is mostly helpful when there just aren’t any red orbs dropping and you’re super close to winning/losing and don’t want to blow it.

#87

Ohh, thanks for the quick responses. I think part of my problem is I’m kind of terrible at the synergies in fights. Regardless, I’m gonna hop back in and try to grind a little on some of the rifts. Didn’t realize I’d somehow gotten to a point I was being outleveled. Wakanda sure seems like a huge jump in difficulty.

#88

I’ve been running the campaign so often and leveling up so many heroes that I’ve run out of Ability Orbs, which means I can’t rank my newer hero’s abilities until I grind out more orbs.

I’ve decided to put together a special team to run a bunch of rifts and gather more orbs, but I wanted to come up with a theme for the team. Because it’s February that means it’s Black History Month, so I went with that. My new team is:

  • Falcon
  • Black Panther
  • Storm
  • Luke Cage

Unlike the Women of Marvel bonus, there’s no special team bonus for being black. But these 4 still have a decent team bonus total of 17% (4% Strength, 10% Resilience, 3% Energy). I think the highest I’ve seen so far is 22% with another team of mine, so this is far up there too.

I haven’t unlocked Blade yet or he would totally be my main in this group, since he’s my favorite Marvel hero. And I recently played a lot of Miles Morales so he’s a back up selection in case my team lacks something he’s got.

I figure I’ll run a bunch of rifts that award Ability Orbs and try out the Gauntlets if they offer any too. I only just discovered gaunlets a day or two ago so I’m not sure what they give yet.

I’ll probably main Storm for these runs because I’ve mained a ton of melee characters and want to switch it up a bit.

One very minor thing about the game that I noticed is how good it feels to claw through a pile of enemies. Team Ninja did a great job utilizing the Switch controller’s HD rumble features. Different attacks feel different, and shredding a dozen enemies with someone like Wolverine just feels unique and great. It’s a subtle touch that adds a lot.

#89

Currently doing my first campaign run on Superior difficulty and I’ve hit a roadblock on the M.O.D.O.K. fight in Wakanda. My current team is level 59, 59, 59, 68, but I regularly die when he’s around 30% health.

I haven’t put a whole lot of thought into my ISO-8 upgrades at all, and except for simply keeping stuff slotted in the empty spots I haven’t fine-tuned anybody in that regard. I’m wondering if my time would be best spent just leveling up more in Rifts, maybe changing my group comp (I like my current one though), or min max/maxing my ISO-8 enhancements.

If I change my current party I’d have to level a hero or two up to to these guys, and my other heroes are level 40.

And I hate the idea of spending resources on ISO upgrades on heroes I won’t main forever. It’s this indecision that keeps me paralyzed on this front. I’d rather all my gold, powder, and gems just sit in a hole and rot than get wasted on upgrades I might not use on other teams. This is why I have 5,000 unused potions at the end of RPGs.

#90

Apparently someone at Team Ninja felt sorry for the way Cyclops was treated in the X-Men movies and made him a freaking maniac in MUA3. I’m only just now getting around to him and he’s been gathering up S+ scores in rifts ever since.