Sunday, September 15, 2019

The Marvelous Duo Returns - Ultimate Alliance 3 - Part 3

It's another Marvelous recording session, as the Alliance grows stronger and stronger to stand against the impending threat of Thanos and his Black Order.

With Acharky by my side, there's nothing the two of us can't beat... as much as the game wants to beat us down.




One thing that I can't help but notice with Ultimate Alliance 3 is that is does a terrible job at tutorializing itself. There are several mechanics that the game never makes mention of, but are vitally important to mastering the system in performing well in the tougher fights of the game, like the ones we faced in this episode.

Up until Acharky started exploring the menus in between recording sessions, neither one of us new about the web of upgrades in the Lab menu. In the previous recording, we both vocally wondered what we were supposed to spend all of that currency we had built up over the course of our run. As it turns out, that current is spent in that menu to permanently upgrade the whole team globally. Without those stat boosts, we likely would have had a significantly tougher time against Doctor Strange and Dormammu, and we barely survived those fights.

Additionally, I didn't learn about how to perform those super moves, which grow stronger when activated in sync, until watching fellow streamers go through the game on a lark. It wasn't until the spoke about the "supers being ready" and seeing them activate that I put it all together.

And when the difficulty spike in the Dark Dimension is factored in, I feel like this lack of information is important to bring up. If Acharky and I can miss elements like this, than less experienced players might also suffer the same.

The most common complaint with the game is how long it takes to defeat enemies, and I wonder how many people suffer that fate not knowing that they can use these upgrades and super moves to make their lives easier.

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