The opposite of Nick All Star Brawl in every way possible

In any case it is a unique approach to make a team focused game. Love characteres having abilities that not just focus on damage but also directly helping a teammate, like pulling them out of a sticky situation. However the floaty combat combined with Nick's dash-to-cancel-all-knockback-momentum makes the game feel really slow. The presentation is on-point even if the music is a little generic. I really appreciate the F2P nature of the game but also find the monetization with no way of obtaining the premium currency (at a slower rate of course) during play to be lame, especially with how comically expensive cosmetics can get.

Hoping it gets better as it goes on but it'll do better than Nick if it just sped itself up a bit. Or maybe the speed is fine and I'm used to faster games, idk.

This game is surprisingly well-done! I see myself returning as new characters come out.

Pros:
-Thoughtful use of all the licenses in the stage design, menus, music, and more.
-Voice acting is great, and characters interact in fun ways
-Gameplay is similar enough to Smash without being Smash.
-Characters are incredibly diverse in movesets.
-Online is very stable and smooth with rollback netcode. Only a handful of laggy matches.

Cons:
-Can be a little too hectic at times. A lot happens on the screen.
-The monetization is going to be heinous. Paid battle pass, skins cost $5-$20, and character unlocks are likely to take a very long time.

Austin Powers deserves to have a spot in this game's roster.

He would play similarly to Phoenix Wright in UMvC3 with a Mojo Meter being the center of his character. regular attacks and special attacks would fill it up slightly but the big way to fill it would be through taunting.

He would have the longest taunts in the game (obviously based on classic scenes from the trilogy, Austin on the bed, Austin as a photographer, etc) that leave him wide open to attacks but as a reward they massively boost the Mojo Meter.

in Mojo Mode, his attacks increase in damage, extending in range with fancy 60s era effects, while Soul Bossa Nova plays. Male characters also do .75 damage to Austin and Female characters do .50 percent damage to Austin when he is in Mojo Mode.

His alternate costumes would be easy, just give him recolours based on his suits like Snake in Brawl.

This is not a bit. I would main Austin Powers.

I played this game for eight hours straight on my first day. It's the best Smash-inspired brawler out there, the property diversity is already great, and I can't wait to see what else gets added over the next few years.

Team-based mechanics add a whole new life to this. Knowing that my abilities exist to not only kick ass, but occassionally service the teammate I've been playing with is a great feeling. The sense of comradery between you and your friend is a sensation that I never realized Smash was missing, and it's been lovely seeing how different characters synergize in these chaotic beat downs.

I do have issues with the game, but what has me worried are the microtransactions. Every character is unlockable through free-to-play, but after playing for eight hours straight, I only managed to unlock a single brawler from straight gold-earning (I'm not going to count the abundance of gold the starting quests give you, because those will probably never come back again). The unfortunate truth is that without level-up bonuses, you're looking at 5-10 gold for winning a match. Characters cost anywhere between 2,000-3,000, so you can already imagine how much of grind it'll be to unlock everyone.

What's most frustrating is that you receive 0 gold for playing custom games with friends. You have to matchmake. While this may seem "normal," it takes a huge chunk of the fun out of it for me. I certainly enjoy matchmaking, but playing against friends is what I most love. But doing so means I can't unlock new characters, so if I don't jump into matchmaking every once in a while, I'll be stuck with only like... five playable characters. Being pushed away from the way I want to play this game is a sucky feeling.

Speaking of custom games, the options in MultiVersus are rather limited. You can't do a free for all with only 3 players, there isn't a classic "stocks" system, and knockout counters only go up to 4. This needs a lot more diversity.

Also, battle passes are garbage. Purchasing one is an obnoxious commitment. If I'm going to spend money, I should receive what I'm paying for. Basing it off of progression and forcing me to engage with the game even more just to get my moneys worth is awful, awful design. No way in hell am I spending money on something that doesn't exist until I unlock it, and if I don't unlock it in the time frame, the thing I bought disappears. It's absurd.

Last year, we got the undercooked but decently fun Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl; a Smash clone with a bunch of iconic Nickelodeon characters. This year, we have Multiversus, another Smash clone, but this time having a bunch of Warner Brothers property characters. After playing for around 5 hours, I can confidently say that Multiversus is a much better package than Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, with a more diverse roster and more polished gameplay. However, corporate greed could end up being this game's undoing in the future.

While Smash Bros. is the gold standard of platform fighters, Multiversus has a solid foundation in its own right. Where NASB was very combo heavy and all the characters essentially played the same, Multiversus feels as though it has many different styles of gameplay. There are combo heavy characters like Finn and Harley Quinn, zoners such as Reindog, bruisers like Iron Giant and Superman, and gimmick characters like Tom & Jerry. Every style feels effective and viable in some way. Sure, combo heavy characters are sure to be the meta as the game moves forward, but for more casual players or online warriors, there is some great character variety.

Speaking of variety, the characters in this roster are already great. We have characters from DC, Cartoon Network, WB films, and even an original character in Reindog. With more great characters on the way (Rick & Morty and LeBron James (????)), this roster is sure to be stacked. While this game will never have the same amount of character hype as Smash, it feels as though you'll never truly know what character will be coming next.

Stages are pretty neat, though they are limited at this time. I expect that more and more will be added with time, but theres a good variety visually and for competitive play. There are stage hazards, but they can easily be turned off both online and offline. It makes for a great customizable experience.

In terms of game modes, the game has a lot going for it. There's already dedicated 1v1, 2v2, Vs Bots, and Free-For-All modes all operating online, and the game is only in Beta. I have had no issues whatsoever connecting to others online. I've had no issues with lag and haven't noticed much, if not any difference in how the game plays online or offline. It's incredible how well the game is operating at such at just in its beta.

But now we come to the biggest reason why Multiversus will not get any more praise from me: the monetization. I bought the $40 version of the game so I could get the character unlocks from the get-go. Sure, gold is relatively easy to get to unlock characters by simply playing the game online. However, there are two forms of currency that go into everything: unlocking characters, profile icons, costumes, aesthetics, and more. And on top of that, theres a Battle Pass, both free and premium. I wouldn't have such an issue with this per-say, but I hate that it prevents people from experiencing everything the game has to offer. This is because of how many characters are locked. The game is a little less greedy than others, with around 4-5 characters being unlocked from the get-go. But with how much great variety there are in movesets and play-styles, it really limits what a player who can only play the free version of the game. As the game gains more characters and receives more and more updates, the corporate greed could end up being this game's ultimate downfall.

I'd honestly say that this is one of, if not my favorite Smash clone that I've ever played. It's extremely fun, which is the most important thing in a game like this. The roster is already incredible and will only get better and more crazy over time. The monetization is an issue, and honestly prevents me from giving this game an 8 instead of a 7. I def recommend this game to fans of these properties and/or Smash fans. You may wanna wait until it leaves beta, but honestly, it's a good enough game to warrant picking up now. My girlfriend and I have been loving playing this and experiencing all of the hijinks and pleasure of seeing all these crazy characters beat each other up.

Surprisingly more fun than Smash, in my eyes. The physics feel a bit off, though, and I'm not that big of a fan of the perk system.

The biggest crime this game commits is being an always-online fighting game.

UPDATE (Feb. 25, 2023): What happened?

After being skeptical on the game when they showed footage of it, I generally came around to enjoying the game when I gave it more hours but I still have some gripes with it. Time for BULLET POINT THOUGHTS

- Characters are designed well and generally interesting. Lots of weird properties and status ailment shit as well as team exclusive shit because ultimately the game is a 2v2 game
- The game visually is... ok? It has a better budget than other games of its ilk but honestly presentation wise it's rather bland. Even the soundtrack shares the problems newer Mortal Konbats have with their soundtracks where they fail to stand out in gameplay at all and you can barely tell that the game has an ost at all.
- A big contributor to the game's blandness is its stages, these things feel the most incomplete due to how little they have going on, and the fact that multiple stages have multiple layout variants to test out for potential competitive play means they get boring to look at real quick. The most complete stages are the most gimmicky ones and they're mostly fine but annoying. Also, having death pitfalls in the middle of the stage sucks and is dumb and please do not continue doing it ty.
- Gameplay itself at the level you'll get from a beta that's a week old for some is largely a giant chaotic mess in 2v2. If you're a normal human being shitting down to do some dumb button mashing you'll have a grand ol' time but if you want to really dig deep into the co-op mechanics and shit you will need a friend because hooray we put a solo queue experience into a fucking fighting game how novel
- Perks are a neat system that's bad in practice because it's in a F2P game and we HAVE to tie it to some dumb grind leveling system. You wanna play a new character? Accept the fact that it'll take some 20 odd matches until you get at a sufficient level to unlock the perks that actually make the character complete. At the very least when you queue into a match you can use perks that your teammate unlocked and you can stack them for marginal bonuses which is nice
- Coins, the game's main currency, should only be used to unlock characters. The amount of coins you get from matches is paltry and the surplus of coins you'll get early on is tied to leveling your profile or your characters profile or your battle pass and that's shit that can dry out quick. Using coins for unlocking perks for characters and additional rerolls when a battle pass quest tells you to play a certain character you haven't unlocked yet is shit.

So yeah that's the dumb bullet point rant. I'll probably continue to play it because my broken brain runs on doing daily quest shit (and hey you can do battle pass bullshit against bots) and Pickle Rick is gonna be in the game in a few weeks time. Hooray.

P.S. They ruined the one fun thing Iron Giant could do which was using an uppercut to juggle people because you could rise in the air with fuel. It wasn't even broken because you could DI and dodge out of it at normal percents. Please fix thx