YMMV / Marvel Strike Force

• Funny Moments:
  • Much of the ISO-8 campaign is basically Scientist Supreme (presumably Monica Rappacini in this incarnation) going on a loopy power trip upon discovering what the ISO-8 upgrade can do - and when an alternate Scientist Supreme goes up against her it becomes straight up Ham-to-Ham Combat.
  • The Multiple Man campaign reveals that the duplicates of Multiple Man can be sent deep undercover for a very long time - with the drawback that their behavior starts shifting further and further from normal. One ends up sounding like he's out of film noir, while the one assigned to the snowy mountains starts acting like James Bond (and the women on your team prefer him over the original!)
  • The Nexus campaign is headed by Dr. Strange and Iron Man. How well can they stand each other? This well.
    Dr. Strange: Be careful. Mordo's power rivals my own.
    Iron Man: Baron definitely outranks Doctor.
    Dr. Strange: Be careful, Stark. Don't make me turn you back into a rat and erase your memory again.
    Iron Man: ...wait, what?
• Game-Breaker: Various characters and teams have been this at different points in the game, being nigh-guaranteed to win a match against anyone else besides each other. Notable past examples include Ultron, Phoenix, and the Black Order team. Usually newly released characters and teams will oust these powerhouses from their position on top, sometimes being released with abilities or mechanics specifically designed to counter them (Black Bolt being designed to defeat Ultron, Ebony Maw to defeat Phoenix, etc.). Current examples include:
  • Kestrel. Due to her speed (generally allowing her to act first), her Passive Ability preventing summons (e.g. stopping the likes of Nick Fury, Doctor Octopus or Red Skull from summoning allies) while also attacking the enemy with the lowest health after any ally attacks an enemy with the Defense Down debuff, as well as her access to one of her strongest attacks right out the gate (meaning there's a good chance she'll completely K.O. an enemy character with one blow), the PVP Real Time Arena is infested with her. Even most teams that have powerful synergy passives (e.g. the Asgardians, the Avengers, the Brotherhood, the X-Men) will be hard-pressed to match any mixed bag of characters with Kestrel on it. This is especially true if the other characters on the Kestrel team can inflict the Defense Down buff, which basically results in Kestrel massacring the opposing team.
  • Gamora after the Infinity Watch update. She gains an 'Awakened' state (similar to the difference between regular Thanos and Infinity Gauntlet-armed Thanos) which grants her a slew of powerful new moves and passives. If she's accompanied by the rest of the Infinity Watch (i.e. Nebula, Phylla-Vell, Moondragon and Adam Warlock), she can easily overpower an Infinity Gauntlet-equipped Thanos.
  • In addition to Gamora herself, the Infinity Watch team that she stars in is practically guaranteed to defeat any other evenly powered team. They're just about the only team that is guaranteed to be able to kill the Heroes of Hire team in Alliance War if they're at similar levels. Once Adam Warlock is added to the team, they're all but unbeatable.
  • While already powerful when using his other abilities, Doctor Doom's ultimate ability "Time Platform" rises to this level. It grants three consecutive turns to both Doom himself and his hardest-hitting ally, which is usually enough to obliterate the enemy team. Battles between two teams that both feature Dr. Doom will typically be decided by which side's Doom is able to use this ability first.
  • The Heroes For Hire team may be considered as this in the Alliance War mode specifically, where they star as a ridiculously powerful defensive team. The only team that can consistently take them down in one attack, assuming relatively even power levels, are the almighty Infinity Watch or a full Weapon X; any other approach will probably require you to sacrifice multiple teams to get through them if you're lucky (if not, your teams will be slaughtered before so much as taking down even one member). It wasn't unusual for an entire alliance's worth of players to futilely expend their best teams against an opposing alliance's Heroes For Hire team, leading to a lot of frustration all around.
  • Dormammu is the reward character for completing the fifth iteration of the game's Dark Dimension mode. While it would take a good deal of space to describe all of his powers, his signature ability is reviving every other character on his team once per match when they die. The first inclination would be to counter this by simply killing Dormammu himself first, but upon dropping to low health he'll go into un-removable stealth for two turns, forcing you to target his teammates. This is likely why he ended up with the "Support" combat role, despite his onslaught of powers easily qualifying him for any of the roles. It would probably be more accurate to say that he can function as all of them at once.
    • Notably, Dormammu appears designed to single-handedly counter the almost unbeatable Infinity Watch team.
  • The Eternals Sersi and Ikaris are stupidly overpowered, especially when fighting alongside each other. Among other things, nearly all their moves gain bonuses if the other is present, such as Ikaris' Eternal Assault reducing the speed bar of all enemies by 25% and flipping all positive effects into negative ones when Sersi is in his party, or Sersi's basic attack gaining the ability to flip up to 2 random positive effects into negative ones if Ikaris is present... and in Arena this instead allows her to copy all positive effects from the primary target before flipping them all into negative ones. This means that there's almost no reason not to use the Eternals in Arena, since they're able to easily smash all but the most powerful of teams with only a comparatively small investment (as an example, the Black Order aren't complete without Ebony Maw, a Legendary character, meaning a player hoping to play with an Infinity Gauntlet-equipped Thanos has a long slog ahead of them).
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • During the Captain America (WW2) event, The Winter Soldier pulls the "new" Captain America to the side to talk. During which, Cap reveals that when he was sucked into the Nexus timeline, he was with Orson Randall, the Iron Fist of WW2, Union Jack, and his "best friend Bucky Barnes". After the level's combat ends, the following dialogue is exchanged:
  Winter Soldier: New Steve, you should probably know...
  Captain America (WWII): You're this universe's version of Bucky, aren't you?
  Winter Soldier: How'd you know?
  Captain America (WWII): What kind of a best friend would I be if I didn't?
  Captain America: Told ya, Buck. That'll be $5.
• High-Tier Scrappy: The introduction of Sersi and Ikaris was disastrous for Real Time Arena because they were so ridiculously overpowered (even if one is at a dramatically higher level than the other) that there was almost no point trying to have a team that didn't include them. Things became so bad that Scopely was forced to announce that at least one of the Eternals would always be on the list of unusable characters for each season, hoping to encourage more experimentation with teams. Thus far, this has failed to occur, since a team made up of Cloak and Dagger, Deathpool, either of the Eternals and just about anyone else is almost guaranteed to beat a similarly leveled team. Similarly, Arena is dominated by teams with Sersei and Ikaris (often alongside Cloak and Dagger as well as Deathpool).
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Vahl is an Asgardian Sole Survivor from an alternate universe, with an arm made with Destroyer tech to show how bad things are over there. Fast forward to the release of Thor: Love and Thunder, and we learn that Lady Sif is now missing an arm on the same side.
• Low-Tier Letdown: War Defense teams (e.g. The Asgardians, the Marauders, the Fantastic Four with She-Hulk, Red Skull's Hydra) tend to be disliked for two reasons. One; they require you to put them in a game mode where you don't have any control over them, and therefore cannot see or play them when they are at their best. Two; they are often quickly countered by a new team that is designed to render them virtually powerless with no feasible way to fight back. Unless the team or certain members are necessary for something else, this leads to players deeming War Defense teams as a low-priority investment at best and outright worthless at worst.
• Misaimed Marketing: Sersi and Ikaris were introduced by the time Eternals hit theaters, and were clearly based on the film version of the characters rather than the comic book ones. However, Marvel is noted for keeping the secrets of their film plots under lock and key, even to people working for them (as those making this videogame). This led to an odd detail: in the game Ikaris has reduced strength when forced by mind control or similar to attack fellow Eternals. In the film, however, Ikaris betrays his teammates, and even tries to kill them all (with nobody controlling him) in the climax.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Generally, none of Scopely's attempts at introducing PVP elements has gone well.
  • Arena, where players battle against each other's assigned Arena Defense Teams. It's not uncommon for players (especially those who aren't willing to fork out money) to plateau at certain levels and be completely unable to advance due to just not having the firepower to overcome other teams. As an example, by the time players reach the 250 rank, it isn't uncommon to run into opposing team with a total power level of 1 000 000 and stocked with game-breakers like Doctor Doom, Dormammu and Apocalypse. This generally leads to frustration due to the blatant Pay To Win mechanic (as the fastest way to catch up is to fork over money for materials and characters).
  • Real Time Arena. Despite Scopely's repeated attempts to try to encourage experimentation and engagement, most players simply fight thrice (in order to complete the daily quest) and then proceed to ignore it. Newer players don't play because they'll get destroyed by the much more powerful veterans using Legendary characters like Ultron or overpowered synergy characters like the Eternals or Cloak and Dagger, while veteran players don't bother because they know that if you aren't using a particular set of characters there's not much chance of winning.
    • It doesn't help that many players are aware that the match-making algorithm only looks at the total power of a team, meaning some players include one high level character and four level 1s. A player fielding, say, an X-Men team made up of five evenly leveled characters will almost assuredly get thrashed by the high level one.
  • Crucible. If a matchup is particularly bad, a player may be faced with teams they have no chance of winning, causing them to just give up. In addition, when first introduced the Crucible mode allowed players to see how many points both they and their opponent had, and this likewise resulted in players simply giving up because there was no way to catch up. Scopely tried to cover this up by hiding the opponent's points following an update.
    • Another bone of contention is the Crucible Bonus system, where certain teams receive bonuses or penalties. As of June 2023, for example, the Wakandan team will, on each turn, remove negative status effects from themselves, remove Deathproof from an enemy, heal, and receive bonuses to their health, speed and attack. Unless a player has a particular team designed to counter them, they're pretty much sunk.

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