There's no safer statement out there than "Marvel vs Capcom Infinite was a disappointment" but for me at least it's not for the same reason you may come to expect.
The PR nightmares attached to the game leads to people pointing out the more obvious flaws of it. Never mind that the game is clearly a rush-job by Capcom and looks ugly as sin with character models clearly ripped from UMVC3 without the care put into the lighting/shading to mask any of the shortcomings those models got away with. Never mind that licensing shenanigans caused the game to miss characters from the X-Men or Fantastic4 franchise such as Wolverine, Dr.Doom, Magneto, Storm, or Sentinel, characters that were in the series since its inception. Never mind that the game's bizarre and nonsensical story mode was the most focused thing on its marketing which is a very strange thing to advertise such a mediocre mode. Never mind that Dragon Ball FighterZ came out just a few months after this game causing the game's player base to hemorrhage as fighting game players migrated to a seemingly more quality product. Never mind the fact that the DLC characters were obviously finished already and featured in the story mode but were locked behind a paywall so Capcom can milk out as much money as they can without developing many assets to create new fighters from the ground up. All of these are bad enough, but my main issue with the game stems from a design choice that was intentional from the start:
Why remove a 3rd teammate and assists?
The whole spirit of Marvel vs Capcom not only asked the player to learn a set of characters but put those characters together to create a coherent strategy. Take for example Phoenix from Marvel 3, she was an incredibly weak character with the lowest health in the game. But if the player were to die with 5 bars of super meter she would turn into Dark Phoenix, the strongest character in the whole roster. Combined with X-Factor, that game's comeback mechanic, she could wipe out entire teams. Teams that utilized Phoenix would create team compositions that required building 5 bars of super meter for Phoenix, creating teams that were defensive and conservative in spending super meter. Meanwhile, the opponent would try to either wipe out the team as fast as they could or snap-in Phoenix to kill her early, effectively decimating the win condition. It created matches that were tense and fast-paced, to both watch and play with or against.
This idea of strategy was hammered home with assists, the mechanic where you can call out a teammate to do a specific move. These assists can determine what kind of strategy the player can create which opened the door to a lot of decision-making. Take for example Captain Commando from Marvel 2. He by himself was an incredibly mediocre character that struggled to fend off the strongest characters in that game, but people used him because he had arguably the strongest assist in the game, this giant invincible shockwave that dealt a lot of damage and pops opponents in the air, leading to air combos. It was tantalizing to use, but then you'd be stuck using a character that was considered bad when your other two died, leading to a choice of choosing a bad character with a powerful assist, or a stronger character with a similar but weaker assist compared to Captain Commandos. This idea even shows up in Marvel 3 with Dante, who is a stronger character compared to Marvel 2 Captain Commando but is considered one of if not the hardest character to learn in the game due to his lengthy combo game and tight execution. However, Dante had Jam Session, an assist that creates an enormous wall that can stuff approaches and lead to combos if successfully landed. It's one of the best assists in the game, but if you want it without having a useless teammate, you had to put in the work to learn Dante and form a team around him. This is what defines Marvel vs Capcom for me, a fighting game that's not just about execution, but strategy and decision-making, and it's what made me fall in love with the series and invest a stupid amount of time in it.
The problem with MvC:I is that it decides to have a 2-man team set up right from the get-go. This feels heavily restrictive compared to the three-man team set-up of the older games since you can't exactly form something dramatically coherent with just two characters. What was supposed to replace the 3rd teammate is the infinity stone system, where you can choose one infinity stone to give your teammate a move or a timed super ability, but this isn't really choosing a strategy to commit to but more so choosing a power-up and therefore feels less engaging as a result. It's no longer about creating a team with a playstyle to commit to, but choosing the two characters you like to play as with the skill that looks the more useful.
To compensate for this two-team setup, the game gives the characters more moves to use and longer health bars as a result, with a pretty flexible combo system, as well as the ability to tag in a teammate mid-combo, which is what replaces assists, devolving the game into landing extremely long combos while doing pitiful damage. I get it, landing big flashy combos are awesome, but combos aren't just what makes Marvel vs Capcom the game it is. When you make every character into combo-heavy beat sticks, you are left with a roster that feels homogenized than the highly distinct roster of Marvel 2 and 3. You are left with matches that not only go on for long but look the same even if there are different characters on the screen, which I feel is a big step-down from how Marvel 2 and 3 handled things.
The issue with fighting games that remove options to cater to a different audience is that you are going to alienate a large portion of the audience that has stuck playing the game you've created for years. If you remove mechanics people loved and made your game distinct without adding something new that feels like a net positive, people are not going to migrate to your next entry. It's why we see the Smash Melee community still strong as it is because the other entries nearly don't have the same depth as that game does. It's why we see Marvel 3 players return to that game in the form of Parsec tournaments because they see that game as superior, and what made that game superior to this one is that it actually feels like a Marvel vs Capcom game.
For as many problems I have with Dragon Ball FIghterZ, I can at least acknowledge why so many Marvel players gravitated towards that game, not just because of the Dragon Ball license, but it's actually a team game. There are distinct characters with different team layouts and assists and you get to build whatever you want. While I think that game too can have a same feeling playing roster, I can at least say it's more engaging to play than a game afraid of its identity.
I don't have a lot of respect for Marvel vs Capcom Infinite because it represents the very worst kind of Capcom fighting game. A poor rush job game that failed to iterate on past entries and opts into doing something new that ends up making the game less interesting as a result. Unfortunately for Capcom, people are tired of fighting games that aren't fun to play, and it's why people have turned to a developer like ArcSys for their fighting game fix. Before Capcom could have gotten away with this since they were the king of the fighting game genre, but more effort needs to be put in place if they wish to compete with their newfound competition.
As for me, I'll sit back and play more Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Capcom should go back and play it too.
The PR nightmares attached to the game leads to people pointing out the more obvious flaws of it. Never mind that the game is clearly a rush-job by Capcom and looks ugly as sin with character models clearly ripped from UMVC3 without the care put into the lighting/shading to mask any of the shortcomings those models got away with. Never mind that licensing shenanigans caused the game to miss characters from the X-Men or Fantastic4 franchise such as Wolverine, Dr.Doom, Magneto, Storm, or Sentinel, characters that were in the series since its inception. Never mind that the game's bizarre and nonsensical story mode was the most focused thing on its marketing which is a very strange thing to advertise such a mediocre mode. Never mind that Dragon Ball FighterZ came out just a few months after this game causing the game's player base to hemorrhage as fighting game players migrated to a seemingly more quality product. Never mind the fact that the DLC characters were obviously finished already and featured in the story mode but were locked behind a paywall so Capcom can milk out as much money as they can without developing many assets to create new fighters from the ground up. All of these are bad enough, but my main issue with the game stems from a design choice that was intentional from the start:
Why remove a 3rd teammate and assists?
The whole spirit of Marvel vs Capcom not only asked the player to learn a set of characters but put those characters together to create a coherent strategy. Take for example Phoenix from Marvel 3, she was an incredibly weak character with the lowest health in the game. But if the player were to die with 5 bars of super meter she would turn into Dark Phoenix, the strongest character in the whole roster. Combined with X-Factor, that game's comeback mechanic, she could wipe out entire teams. Teams that utilized Phoenix would create team compositions that required building 5 bars of super meter for Phoenix, creating teams that were defensive and conservative in spending super meter. Meanwhile, the opponent would try to either wipe out the team as fast as they could or snap-in Phoenix to kill her early, effectively decimating the win condition. It created matches that were tense and fast-paced, to both watch and play with or against.
This idea of strategy was hammered home with assists, the mechanic where you can call out a teammate to do a specific move. These assists can determine what kind of strategy the player can create which opened the door to a lot of decision-making. Take for example Captain Commando from Marvel 2. He by himself was an incredibly mediocre character that struggled to fend off the strongest characters in that game, but people used him because he had arguably the strongest assist in the game, this giant invincible shockwave that dealt a lot of damage and pops opponents in the air, leading to air combos. It was tantalizing to use, but then you'd be stuck using a character that was considered bad when your other two died, leading to a choice of choosing a bad character with a powerful assist, or a stronger character with a similar but weaker assist compared to Captain Commandos. This idea even shows up in Marvel 3 with Dante, who is a stronger character compared to Marvel 2 Captain Commando but is considered one of if not the hardest character to learn in the game due to his lengthy combo game and tight execution. However, Dante had Jam Session, an assist that creates an enormous wall that can stuff approaches and lead to combos if successfully landed. It's one of the best assists in the game, but if you want it without having a useless teammate, you had to put in the work to learn Dante and form a team around him. This is what defines Marvel vs Capcom for me, a fighting game that's not just about execution, but strategy and decision-making, and it's what made me fall in love with the series and invest a stupid amount of time in it.
The problem with MvC:I is that it decides to have a 2-man team set up right from the get-go. This feels heavily restrictive compared to the three-man team set-up of the older games since you can't exactly form something dramatically coherent with just two characters. What was supposed to replace the 3rd teammate is the infinity stone system, where you can choose one infinity stone to give your teammate a move or a timed super ability, but this isn't really choosing a strategy to commit to but more so choosing a power-up and therefore feels less engaging as a result. It's no longer about creating a team with a playstyle to commit to, but choosing the two characters you like to play as with the skill that looks the more useful.
To compensate for this two-team setup, the game gives the characters more moves to use and longer health bars as a result, with a pretty flexible combo system, as well as the ability to tag in a teammate mid-combo, which is what replaces assists, devolving the game into landing extremely long combos while doing pitiful damage. I get it, landing big flashy combos are awesome, but combos aren't just what makes Marvel vs Capcom the game it is. When you make every character into combo-heavy beat sticks, you are left with a roster that feels homogenized than the highly distinct roster of Marvel 2 and 3. You are left with matches that not only go on for long but look the same even if there are different characters on the screen, which I feel is a big step-down from how Marvel 2 and 3 handled things.
The issue with fighting games that remove options to cater to a different audience is that you are going to alienate a large portion of the audience that has stuck playing the game you've created for years. If you remove mechanics people loved and made your game distinct without adding something new that feels like a net positive, people are not going to migrate to your next entry. It's why we see the Smash Melee community still strong as it is because the other entries nearly don't have the same depth as that game does. It's why we see Marvel 3 players return to that game in the form of Parsec tournaments because they see that game as superior, and what made that game superior to this one is that it actually feels like a Marvel vs Capcom game.
For as many problems I have with Dragon Ball FIghterZ, I can at least acknowledge why so many Marvel players gravitated towards that game, not just because of the Dragon Ball license, but it's actually a team game. There are distinct characters with different team layouts and assists and you get to build whatever you want. While I think that game too can have a same feeling playing roster, I can at least say it's more engaging to play than a game afraid of its identity.
I don't have a lot of respect for Marvel vs Capcom Infinite because it represents the very worst kind of Capcom fighting game. A poor rush job game that failed to iterate on past entries and opts into doing something new that ends up making the game less interesting as a result. Unfortunately for Capcom, people are tired of fighting games that aren't fun to play, and it's why people have turned to a developer like ArcSys for their fighting game fix. Before Capcom could have gotten away with this since they were the king of the fighting game genre, but more effort needs to be put in place if they wish to compete with their newfound competition.
As for me, I'll sit back and play more Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Capcom should go back and play it too.