Marvel Future Fight, a game that does Marvel justice

screenshot_2016-10-27-19-53-20 Like most of you I grew up loving superheroes and I have fond memories of Saturday morning cartoons.  My favorite was always X-Men.  Now as an adult, I am always looking for a game that will let me tap back into that love of Superheroes.  I have played several games and most fall very short of their source material.  Over the years I have tried them all from Marvel: War of Heroes, Marvel Contest of Champions, Marvel Puzzle Quest, and many others.  I have liked all of them when I first start.  Eventually, you hit that first wall and unless you fork over tons of money you will never get anywhere. Ultimately the game that I always go back to is Marvel Future Fight by Netmarble.

Marvel Future Fight is a Marvel based role-playing game (RPG).  It does not lack for variety with 96 playable characters and several gameplay modes.  Each character gets up to five skills for use in battle.  You control the battle with a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen.  Each level you start with a team of three characters and if you put related ones together the team gets a bonus.  This means a team with Hulk, Red Hulk, and She-Hulk will get special bonuses to run together.  Characters can go from one to six stars, with each star adding a skill and stats, making them more powerful.

The game uses a simple Rock, Paper, Scissors type of battling.  There is grinding for items and hero shards to power them up (called Bios) and plenty of other things to do.  Also, I say heroes but there is a fair share of villains available as well.  You can unlock characters like Kingpin, Bullseye, MODOK, Malekith, Thanos and Proxima.  This game has A LOT of characters and some will have you searching Wikipedia to see who the heck they are and where they fit into the canon.  They draw their inspiration from the comics, movies, and television shows.  Unfortunately, there are no mutants, Fantastic Four or X-Men characters.

screenshot_2016-11-09-22-43-34Before you read any further I want you to watch this newest release promo video for their latest release that coincides with the Dr. Strange movie.  Now that you are sufficiently excited to play the game let me talk about updates. They are constantly adding and changing the game. Take the latest release, for instance, they added Dr. Strange, Baron Mordo, Wong, The Ancient One, and Kaecilius.  In the release, to further a quest line they give you Dr. Strange for free.  They also added Hellstorm, Cleo, and Satana to the mix.  It is things like this that make me love this game.

When they do updates, Netmarble doesn’t just do the bare minimum, they go all out.  The character models are great and almost all heroes have at least one uniform that will change how they look and usually how a skill behaves.  With the uniforms, you can make Dr. Strange look like Benedict Cumberbatch and Thor can look like Chris Hemsworth. When it comes to playing each of these characters, almost every character can complete all stages of the game. Although it does get harder towards the end of the game.

Now to answer the question that is always on your mind when reading a review about any game like this.  Is it really Free To Play (F2P) or is it just another Pay to Win?  With this game, I can truly say that it is almost 100% F2P.  I say almost because there are two characters that are paywall characters, and you cannot get them without spending real money.  They are Carnage and Hyperion (Marvel’s answer to Superman).  To get both of them you will need to spend at least $9.00 USD.  Besides those two, every other character is farmable in one way or another.  Now some are more farmable then others and it will take time.

To level your character up, you need to increase their stars.  To get a star up, it takes double the amount of bios as the star before.  That means that while it takes ten Bios to go from one star to two stars it take 320 to go from five stars to six. When you can only farm ten to fifteen Bios for a character per day you begin to see the grind.

screenshot_2016-11-09-22-22-57If you are willing to spend a lot of money you can instantly take a character from one star to six stars, level 60, and even add their Tier 2 (think of it as Super Saiyan).  By a lot of money, I mean $70.00 USD.  Or you can be like me and slowly grind out that character for a month or so to achieve the same results.  There are many instances of players who are F2P that have maxed out pretty much everything and can fight toe to toe with the whales.  However, you give up in time what they pay for.

If you’re looking for a great RPG that can keep you playing with variety and content then look no further than Future Fight. This game is a lot of fun and has you using heroes and villains from across the Marvel Universe.  Getting to play and see these characters that you have known and love fighting in beautiful detail is fantastic.  It brings me back to the Marvel Alliance games of my youth.  The fact that Netmarble is still coming out with quality updates and quality changes a few years into the game is great.  Now is the best time to start because you can get Dr. Strange for free and he is awesome.  If you play and need a powerful friend to help you along the way, leave your in-game name in the comments. I would be more than willing to help!

Download Link: Marvel Future Fight