Marvel Rivals

My friends and I really did not expect Marvel Rivals to become our game. None of us were big hero-shooter people. Overwatch never grabbed us enough to build our nights around it, and the whole idea of memorizing team compositions, counters and support roles was not exactly what we were looking for. Marvel Rivals had two things working in its favor when it launched: it was free and we are massive Marvel addicts. There was basically no reason not to download it and mess around for a night. That night turned into almost every night. I have probably had more fun with Marvel Rivals than any game I have played in the last five years, maybe longer. A huge part of that comes from how quickly the characters stop feeling like different skins attached to the same shooter. Spider-Man moves like Spider-Man. Doctor Strange can turn a fight into complete nonsense with portals. Magneto feels heavy and powerful. Jeff the Land Shark somehow belongs in the same match as Thor and The Punisher without the whole thing collapsing under its own stupidity. Having every hero available for free is one of the smartest things NetEase has done. Season 0 launched with 33 characters and never put the actual gameplay roster behind a paywall. For a group like ours, that meant everybody could experiment until they found a few heroes that clicked instead of deciding whether a character was worth buying before even trying them. The seasons are where Marvel Rivals became both better and much more complicated. Season 1 brought in the Fantastic Four and immediately showed how aggressive NetEase planned to be with new characters. Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman arrived first before The Thing and Human Torch completed the family. Season 2 shifted toward the Hellfire Gala with Emma Frost and later Ultron. Phoenix and Blade followed during Season 3. Season 4 added Angela and Daredevil. Gambit and Rogue came through Season 5. Later seasons continued throwing major names into the roster including characters like Deadpool, Elsa Bloodstone, White Fox, Black Cat and Devil Dinosaur. For a Marvel fan, that pace is awesome. You are constantly waiting to see who they dig out next. For the actual game, it can be exhausting. One new hero or one major balance patch can completely change what works. A character you have been comfortable playing for weeks can suddenly struggle against a new matchup. Team-Up abilities get adjusted. Tanks become harder or easier to kill. Strategists move up and down in importance. Ranked compositions change because somebody discovered a combination that half the player base immediately copies. There were one or two seasons where I simply stopped caring as much. The incoming characters were not people I was excited about and I had reached what felt like an unbreakable wall in ranked. At that point logging on started feeling like repeating the same frustrating matches instead of having fun with my friends. That is the dangerous side of Marvel Rivals. When the season works for you, it is incredibly hard to put down. When the balance or hero lineup does not, the game can suddenly feel very different despite technically being the same shooter. Season 9 has pulled our group right back in. Jubilee was a much more interesting addition for us and Season 9.5 followed with The Hood. More importantly, the current game has enough heroes now that everyone in our group can rotate around depending on what kind of match we are having instead of forcing the same few picks every night. The unconfirmed rumors we have been seeing about what could be coming next have us interested again too, although with Marvel Rivals leaks I am not believing anything completely until NetEase puts a trailer in front of me. Competitive play is still the part I have the hardest relationship with. Ranked can produce some incredible matches when both teams know what they are doing. It can also make you question why you bothered queuing when matchmaking puts together something that feels decided before the first objective. The community has been increasingly vocal about matchmaking, balance swings and performance issues, and I understand where a lot of that frustration comes from. It just has not outweighed how much fun I have actually had. That distinction matters for this review. Looking strictly at recent public sentiment would give Marvel Rivals a lower score. Looking at my own experience would probably push it even higher than 9.2. The score lands between those because both things can be true: NetEase has made plenty of decisions worth criticizing while also creating the multiplayer game my friends and I keep choosing over everything else. The free-to-play model makes recommending it extremely easy. You do not need to wonder whether it is worth $70. Download it. Grab a few friends. Find a character you already love from Marvel and give the game an evening. That is all we planned on doing. We are still here.