As a fan of the Super Smash Bros. series I was excited to see Player First Games’ new take on a platform fighter that puts emphasis on 2v2 combat, compared to the standard 1v1, and thus allows you to play out your fantasies of fighting it out between Batman and Superman against Shaggy and Velma from Scooby-Doo, or any other fan favorite characters from the Warner Bros. ensemble of characters and properties. The game is currently on its second season, which is introducing Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice into the game, and it has implemented several improvements such as adding ranked modes and improved how progression works in rifts, which is the games single player mode, but are these improvements enough to keep the player base happy, or should the game have had more time to polish? Well I’m here to tell you that it does feel like it was released too early, but Player First Games is putting in the care and effort to make sure MultiVersus is here to stay.
There were a few changes from beta to full release that have angered the fanbase and one of their biggest issues was that the game speed was reduced, and this was partially because they changed engine so the game would have rollback netcode instead of a delayed based netcode, which is famously not great for fighting games. Rollback netcode brings a level of smoothness to the matches that feels even with long distance opponents, and even when you can feel that the connection is not great (which is rare) it still feels more responsive than most fighting games that utilize delayed based netcode. But sadly the inclusion of rollback did affect the speed of the game, which honestly took me a while to get used to. During the MultiVersus beta I felt that matches were really fast paced and thus would force me to do really risky reads on my opponents, but now that the game is slower reads are less crucial to beating your opponent and a more footsie/neutral approach is needed to defeat your foes and this seems to be healthier for the player base because it deemphasizes fast reaction times and makes the game feel more accessible for new players who just want to fight as their favorite characters. One element that I do enjoy about the slowdown is that during 2v2 matches the game could get too chaotic with too many things going on at the same time, and now while still chaotic it feels more manageable and easier to follow.
A new game mode that was implemented for a more casual audience is the games single player mode: Rifts. In rifts the player goes through a grid map that will have different fights with modifiers such as infinite jumps or freeze touch, and on your way you can also encounter some silly mini-games such as break the target or skip rope which are cute diversions from non-stop fighting, and once you reach the end of the rift you gotta defeat a boss, which can range from a giant shark Reindog to a fight where you gotta shoot down the joker from a hot air balloon. I enjoyed my time playing through rifts, but during season 1 it felt like I was only doing them to kill time and that there was no real incentive to keep replaying them, and thankfully that has been addressed in season 2 where there are events that involve completing more objectives during the seasonal rift that are actually helpful for those who want to complete their battle pass.
Ok now onto the actual combat…. I like it, sadly not in the way the devs want me to. As I stated earlier MultiVersus is intended to be played in 2v2, but sadly I just don’t enjoy the game as much in this mode. I find it frustrating to matchmake with a friend, and while it is fun to combo from one player to another it doesn’t feel as satisfying to hit those combos due to the games floatiness, or most of the times it feel like one player has to do most of the work while the other one is either distracting the other player or swoops in to clean up the kill, and this becomes more stressful when there are several items flying across the screen and you get hit without even knowing what hit you. I feel like these frustrations are lessened in 1v1, where the combat feels less random and the combat is more focused. As frustrating as some of these aspects are, it still doesn’t detract much from the game being fun. Comboing in this game still feels really satisfying, and for example getting a KO with someone like Jason who is a big tank with slow, but strong hitting moves feel great to hit. Talking about moves though some are just way over tuned or feel like an immediate checkmate, an example of this is Tazs’ up special which technically isn’t that great of a move and has a lot of cooldown, but in several scenarios you cant really contest it, or worse it feels like if you can’t run away from it you’re just dead. Thankfully it feels like Player First Games are keeping up with the community and listening to feedback to adjust these issues, and a key example of this is the multiple times that the Iron Giant has gotten removed so that they can remove multiple touch of death combos and infinites.
As a huge fighting game fan I am excited to see Player First Games passion and excitement for the platform fighter genre, and MultiVersus is a step in the right direction for modernizing the genre with the implementation of aspects like a battle pass, seasonal updates and ranked modes. That being said, it also comes with microtransactions which honestly aren’t egregious, since most characters rotate weekly and most things, except some cosmetics, are unlockable with enough time played which is to be expected from a free to play game. At the end of the day MultiVersus has great potential and I believe that if they keep listening to their audience they will be able to keep the community engaged and ensure the game has a long life in the eyes of the consumers.
The Gaming Diary 