Sound
First let’s start with the soundtrack. The game offers a lot of cool remixes to the old school, and newer versions of mvc, mvc2, and street fighter franchise soundtracks. Some of these tracks do go unappreciated because the sounds characters make are much to loud to appreciate the soundtrack. For example, Guilty Gear is, in my opinion, the only fighting game that really has a perfect balance of stage music and character sounds. Fortunately Capcom has provided a nice gallery mode that allows game music enthusiast a chance to listen to all the tracks.
Graphics
The game isn’t lacking in the graphics department at all. When I originally saw the style, I was very worried that the Capcom characters wouldn’t fit the comic book art style. However, from Amatarastsu to Zero look amazing. The art style is a new take on the water color style that appear in games like: Ultimate Spiderman and Prince of Persia 2008. I am even more impressed that the art style stays consistent; even during an insane hyper combo. Characters aside, the stages are a huge step up from mvc, and mvc2. The stages are composed of active sceneries that are detailed down to the rocks on the walls.
Gameplay
I hope you brought out the popcorn folks, and don’t forget the salt because I have a ton of things to say on this section. When I had first learned of the simplified, Tasunoko-esq, button system, I was highly dissapointed. Now that I have played the game for some time, I am even more dissappointed. I understood that capcom wanted to take a new approach to the way MVC3 would be played. But I find the button system the equivalent to playing ddr with your hands. Even in mission mode, most combos are composed of this ‘tap tap tap’ combos that are cool to look at but boring to execute. Mission mode further supports my point because if you into the Mission for every character, they have the same beginner combos. The only variation lies in the later combos, which only change because everyone has different supers. Unlike in mvc2, most people will be executing their combos like the next guy.
When gamers first pick up the game, everything will be new and exciting; however, this feeling quickly fades when gamers comprehend on the mechanics and realize that every match will almost be played the same way. Everyone comes out like metaknight from Smash Brothers Brawl; guns blazing and constantly repeating the same moves over and over again with little to no variation. Now if the person is winning, they will continue with their metaknight strategy. If they are losing, they turn into chungli from Super Street Fighter 4; an aggressive turtler. This is mainly due to the fact that majority of the cast can operate from almost full screen. I would go through the whole cast, but I will just mention the most popular characters: Arthur, Taskmaster, Storm, Sentinel, Modok, Magneto, dr doom, trish, hsien -ko, deadpool, and dante. Furthermore, even characters that you would think would not have this ability; have some shape or form of it. For example, Captain America and his annoying ass shield.
I do have something good to say about the fighting system, but it isn’t what most people would expect. The timing of execution is much stricter and I do appreciate that.
Replay Value
Ironically, this game has a pretty high replay value. But, not the kind we are used to from Capcom. He replay value of this game is more like Final Fantasy and Dragonquest, rather than Street Fighter 4. This game is great to play if you would like to collect things and unlock all the goodies in the gallery section.
Final Thoughts:
Overall the game is definitely worth playing and purchasing. In the long run, this game will not live up to the hype and glory of MVC2, but it will have an amazing run. Recently Capcom patched the game. With this patch, Sentinel has lower health, and Akuma’s infinite has been removed. This shows me Capcom has high expectations for this game and that they are listening to their fans. But this in conjunction with the boring combo system, the game might end up only being enjoyable with frequent updates and content additions. Not that this is an overall bad thing. I just was expecting a more complete game; especially from Capcom.
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Character roster seems a bit lacking. A large descent from 56 characters. I understand that it due to what Capcom calls “balancing” aka giving everyone 100% combos and shenanigans. At least above 40 but 36 is something I’d expect from Street Fighter and that cast is still more diverse. (Didn’t include DLC) As a matter of fact SSF4 has 35 characters! I do agree with stricter execution but you could’ve mentioned online and the lack of SPECTATOR MODE…had to rage a bit. Also the lame netcode. Blazblue has an amazing netcode btw. Unlocks could be a bit harder as well. You can unlock everything aside from endings through playing alot of training mode. Great Review….TEAM SP
Take into consideration that you’re talking about Super Street Fighter 4, not the original which only had 25 characters compared to MvC3’s 36. If you want to add Super’s cast in then you’d have to include the DLC characters already out and planned for release.
Also, while MvC2 did have 56 characters, it was much easier to have a bigger roster in that game since most of the character sprites were ripped straight from their respective games. Take a good look at Morrigan, she looks much more out of place than other characters. MvC3 had a new engine and the character models were all made from the ground up, it only makes sense that there are going to be less characters. I think 36 is still a very respectable number, especially when other current fighting games have much less, Blazblue being one example. (I love Blazblue though)
I also don’t agree that the game has replay value akin to RPGs like Final Fantasy. The replay value of MvC3 doesn’t really differ from other fighting games and is actually right up the genre’s alley. There are other fighters that have unlockable endings, characters, and galleries. Again, I’ll use Blazblue as a recent example. I would even say Blazblue has a closer tie to RPGs since it at least has a real story behind it.
But I do agree about the lack of spectator mode. I was pretty disappointed, and even slightly offended, that Capcom put the game out there without it. There’s no reason a current fighter that has online gameplay shouldn’t have a spectator mode.
To add on to what Prota said, the roster size shouldn’t even be that much of an issue. A lot of the more memorable fighters (SF2, KI, Darkstalkers, the earlier vs. games) all had rosters well below 20 that worked just fine. I don’t mind a big roster with high quality characters, but you won’t see me go anywhere near let’s say Mugen where the character quality is dubious at best.
I don’t find myself replaying the game either in a fighting game sense or a RPG sense, so I disagree in that regard. If I go back to a fighter, I’ll be more likely to return to the classics, but that’s just me. Still got my fingers crossed for Cyclops in MvC3 <_<.
I must of worded something wrong. I meant to say that this games collectibles are similar to an RPG. MVC3 has an attractive factor for those who play to collect things. I didn’t mean to say the game is like an RPG. Blazeblue is similar to an RPG but breaks the mold because it is an excellent fighting game. MVC3 needs some changes to be made before it, my opinion, shines as an excellent fighting game.
The collectibles are okay for those who enjoy collecting things, but I still don’t feel that they differentiate themselves enough from normal fighting games. Other fighting games share the same types of collectibles as MvC3, it doesn’t really do anything special in that department that makes it more like an RPG rather than a fighter. Actually, the collectibles fall in line with previous entries in the VS series. MvC also had collectible endings and gallery pictures, but I never felt those items to be RPG-like.
MvC3 is very fun game, and I really enjoy it, but it does have a lot of issues it needs to deal with. I understand that giving all characters access to 100% combos is a sort of “balance”, but at the same time I feel that’s the easy way out. Look at Skullgirls, the creators are trying their best to bring balance into the game and find solutions for things like infinites. It takes the fun away a bit when one hit means you just lost your character, even at full health. Don’t get me wrong, I love the VS series, but I wish it went back to its roots. I still think the earlier games, like Marvel vs Street Fighter, had it right.