Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order / YMMV

Character Rerailment: This game fixes the Winter Solder's character after his appearance in the original Ultimate Alliance. There, he had recovered all his memories but was working with the villains anyway. Here, he's an ally to the heroes like in the source material. To be fair to the first game though, it was made shortly after Bucky had been reintroduced in the comics and was still a more morally ambiguous character, so Raven Software likely didn't have too much to base off his character for it. It's mentioned that he was working undercover with AIM.
Complete Monster: Dormammu is the supreme ruler of the Dark Dimension and Arch-Enemy of Doctor Strange. When the heroes flee to the Dimension to escape the titular Black Order, they progress through and eventually find Dormammu has brainwashed Strange, using him to open a portal through which he can travel through directly and merge the Dark Dimension with the "main" universe, planning to use the Reality Stone to accomplish this to corrupt and torture all of reality. Once he becomes aware of the party, he turns Strange against them and takes great amusement at their efforts not to kill the Sorcerer despite being in mortal peril at his hand. When Strange attempts to break free, Dormammu possesses him directly and vows that for the "crime" of trespassing, they shall pay with their lives. Angered when the Reality Stone causes an anomaly that allows his temporary defeat and the heroes steal the stone back, Dormammu drops all pretense of courtesy and respect and attempts to kill the party one final time as they flee to the moon. Despite his superficial politeness, and being the villain for only one chapter, Dormammu's ultimate goal of absorbing, corrupting and torturing the universe, combined with his godlike powers and sadism, make him even viler than main villain Thanos.
Demonic Spiders: Virtually all of the AIM Elite Mooks in Wakanda. The flamethrower soldiers can knock off half a lifebar or more and have a knack for catching you off-guard by hiding in groups, the poison gas soldiers can render large areas unusable and stun you if you walk into the gas, and the snipers do absolutely ridiculous amounts of damage (close to a One-Hit Kill unless you're massively overleveled, and even then, they can still knock off half a lifebar in one shot) and hide in difficult-to-reach places, forcing you to run through large crowds of enemies to get to them.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Psylocke got a lot of people hyped for the game, mainly because many weren't expecting her and they stuck with her iconic look as a British-Japanese ninja ^note, with the famous "ninja bathing suit" maintained in full. The fact that she's portrayed with an actual British accent rather than the usual unexplained American one definitely helps.
- Elsa Bloodstone is a character that very few players had ever heard of, but her reveal was met with lots of excitement for her cool design and neat-looking fighting style, as well as happiness that the developers are including more obscure characters and not exclusively MCU A-listers. And for people who do know her it helps that during gameplay she makes a Continuity Nod to the beloved Nextwave!
- Of the Marvel Knights, the one that's making the most rounds is Moon Knight. He's always been popular with fans, despite his relative obscurity with general audiences. They're also looking forward to how he'll play in the game, as he's the closest thing to having Batman as a playable character.
Evil Is Cool: It's Thanos! What did you expect?
- Doctor Doom returns in the Shadow of Doom DLC, and he remains as egotistical and awesome as ever.
Fandom Rivalry: A rather unexpected one formed between this game and Eidos and Square Enix's 2020 Avengers game around the time of 2019, largely owed to general disappointment in the latter's first full trailer. The fact that Square's Avengers took too much of an influence from the MCU to its detriment as opposed to Ultimate Alliance 3 owing its direction more towards the comics has only fueled this.
Fridge Brilliance: It might be kind of strange to see HYDRA in Asgard, but given the use of Norse symbolism by many Nazi groups, it's fairly fitting.
Game-Breaker:
- The Infinity Trials. These side missions often feature ways to grind out experience and ISO-8 fragments in spades, and the game even encourages players to visit them if their characters aren't strong enough. However, what puts this in game-breaking territory is using them to overlevel one's party way beyond the level cap seen for that act of the game, allowing them to curbstomp literally everyone in their path. The most broken of these Trials are the Rush levels, where a party is given 3 minutes to defeat as many enemies as possible - the added twist is that the damage dealt by both allies and enemies alike is boosted with every passing minute, which easily allows the player to rip through anything (to a point bosses can even get one-shot in the final minute) provided they themselves don't get hit.^note
- Ms. Marvel's Giant Spinny Foot Thingy does obscene amounts of damage in a large radius around her and rips through stagger bars like a blowtorch through butter for as long as you have the EP to sustain it, and does so even at the lowest rank. When upgraded, it absolutely destroys mobs and can wreck most bosses as well, and can allow Ms. Marvel to handle herself just fine in levels and Infinity Trials meant for characters at far higher levels.
- Block canceling. Holding the block button after a normal attack cancels the end lag, allowing the character to transition into either normal movement or resetting their combo again. While canceling light attacks is universally considered viable among the entire cast — it's excellent for quickly returning to a block when heavier enemies start retaliating, doing it with heavy attacks is best applied on characters who possess quick melee strikes like Black Widow, Iron Fist and Ms. Marvel; attacks that have a lot of recovery like projectiles (Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Venom) and aerial-based moves (Spider-Man, Captain Marvel) benefit less from this.
- The first DLC added the S.H.I.E.L.D. Depot which allows you to exchange S.H.I.E.L.D. Tokens you can gain from completing the added Gauntlet mode and defeating certain enemies in Nightmare. One item that cost only gold and has an infinite supply is the XP Cube which can help you level up heroes quickly since collecting gold is really easy to do in the game.
- Phoenix is an absolute must-have for your team. She has an ability that can restore EP to the party and her Extreme attack can revive party members without using a Revive Point. After using her EX, she'll also revive herself upon her HP being reduced to zero. Tied with Thanos for having the highest Mastery level in the game and having a great move set, she'll also massacre mobs and can quickly stagger bosses.
- After completing the Shadow of Doom DLC, you get the ultimate reward of Thanos (Infinite). With the Infinity Stones equipped, Thanos (Infinite) easily becomes the most powerful character in the game. It helps that when you unlock him, his level is at a whopping level of 240! The only big drawback is that he has no synergy attacks. However, he more than makes up for it with his extremely powerful and effective abilities. One of them even allows him to quickly stun bosses and powerful enemies. And his extreme attack deals a staggering amount of damage and even stuns Bosses that have their stagger meter completely full. Thanos (Infinite) is truly the ultimate reward of the game.
Good Bad Bugs:
- A glitch was quickly discovered that allowed a party to have multiples of the same character, provided that they have a corresponding Infinity Trial which restricts the player to a single character. While it's hilarious to see four Peter Parkers or Wolverines, what's even better is that they share the same EXP pool meaning that it essentially serves as a multiplier, allowing for rapid leveling up.
- The game for some reason allows you to purchase billions of Ultimate XP cubes instead of the intended 10 after the DLC 2 update, giving you an easy access for level grinding. However, this was eventually patched.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Ultimate Alliance series is considered a Spiritual Successor of sorts to the earlier X-Men Legends games, which makes it all the more fitting that the X-Men made their grand return in video games via the third Ultimate Alliance game.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Link and Samus almost appeared as playable characters in the first game. However, the developers showed their idea to Nintendo by using the PlayStation 2 version, enraging the Big N to see their characters in a version made for one of their competitors and they refused to let this idea happen. Fast forward to over a decade later, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is announced as an exclusive game for the Nintendo Switch, with Nintendo themselves serving as the publisher.
- When Square Enix announced their Avengers game project, outlets theorized it was going to be a new Ultimate Alliance game, with a rumor stating it was going to be a reboot centering on the Avengers. Instead, it turned out Marvel went to Nintendo and Team Ninja with the game not only being a numbered entry, but featuring characters beyond the Avengers like the long-absent X-Men.
- Morbius’s status as an Unexpected Character has become this thanks to the release of Morbius (2022) and the many memes the film spawned.
Just Here for Godzilla: Some people are interested in getting the game because it's the first time that the X-Men have been playable in a while. The Avengers teaming up with them and the Fantastic Four joining via DLC made fans even more anticipated for it.
Low-Tier Letdown:
- Scarlet Witch has gotten some flak due to one critical flaw in her character design: her lack of synergy with other characters. Most characters have at least one or two synergy attacks with every other character (usually totaling around to more than 100 overall), but Scarlet Witch is notable for having no synergy attacks whatsoever with two thirds of the cast,^note only having 11 synergy attacks (by comparison, Thanos - the character with the second least amount of synergies - at least has 94 of them, nearly 9 times greater than Wanda) and being the only character to have no synergy attacks with herself. As the game's meta is heavily built around synergy attacks, Scarlet Witch is considered one of the worst characters in the cast almost exclusively because of this.
- Doctor Strange is also often regarded as one of the worst characters in the game. He's got generally poor stats, but what really holds him back is a poor move set where his abilities are weak (his Flames of the Faltine has great hitting power, but it forces him to stand still for a long period of time) and have a poor start-up time.
Memetic Loser: Crystal has a bit of this. Videos highlighting the cast tend to pause in a bit of bafflement at her inclusion. Not only is she a rather curveball pick, but she represents the Inhumans (themselves the Memetic Losers of Marvel among some fans due to how Marvel was pushing them to replace the X-Men until Disney bought 20th Century Studios), and is the only full-fledged Inhuman representative to be playable, with the other Inhuman, Ms. Marvel, being only tangentially related to them (not unlike counting Scarlet Witch as X-Men representation). Not helping is that Kamala is generally more associated with the Avengers or Champions, on top of being a Breakout Character far above Crystal, who was more popular in the 80s through her association with the Fantastic Four, and as an Avenger in the early 90s.
Narm: Unlike the first two Ultimate Alliance games, talking to an NPC with a specific character doesn't yield unique dialogue, so it remains the same regardless of whoever the player is using at the time. Even worse is that this can make dialogue about certain characters pretty redundant; for example, talking to Venom right after recruiting him in the Raft has him directly mention how much he wants to kill Spider-Man... while Spidey himself can literally be the one who initiates the conversation. Or Rocket talking about looting the Wakanda Necropolis behind Black Panther's back... Even if you're talking to him as Black Panther.
Nightmare Fuel: After defeating the Green Goblin, he loses control of the Time Stone and we get to see a glimpse of the future. Our beloved heroes all slaughtered by the Mad Titan and his Black Order. Thanos himself says “This is how it all ends. I shall be waiting here for you.” How terrifying is it? Enough to send Green Goblin into a mental breakdown.
No Problem with Licensed Games: The Black Order is widely seen as a worthy successor to the Ultimate Alliance games that preceded it and a fun — though not groundbreaking — Marvel game in its own right.
That One Attack: On Ultimate Difficulty, Dr. Doom will, in both of his fights, use an attack that requires a synergy to break through. This is difficult because your allies might not be able to get to his force field as he launches attacks at them.
That One Boss:
- If your characters are underleveled, then the Kingpin will decimate them. He has powerful attacks both from up close and from his beams and his charge attack is really fast. But once he moves onto the next phase of the fight he will summon more Hand ninjas for assistance and will start swinging and throwing giant pillars.
- Doctor Strange, when he is possessed by Dormammu, is an unexpectedly difficult boss to battle, and shows players that they are in the midgame. The fight is hard enough with his attacks covering a lot of range and plenty of damage, but then it goes into a second phase. Not only does Strange fight with even stronger variants of his attacks but now there are orbs that will cause area damage of Fire, Ice, and Lightning that will constantly activate if you don't take those out first. These two variables cause the battle to be much more difficult than it has to be.
- M.O.D.O.K.'s boss fight is quite difficult. His first phase isn't anything too bad but once the cutscene for the second phase starts, that is where it becomes a challenge. Not only does he hit hard, not only does he bring in his A.I.M. soldiers that have to be taken out before they rack up damage to your team, but he can also take away their health with the Soul Stone and heal himself back to normal, undoing any damage M.O.D.O.K. may have taken.
That One Level:
- Wakanda. It has some of the nastiest enemies in the game (especially the snipers), some major pain-in-the-ass objectives (particularly the infamous bridge segment, which is one of the most complained-about objectives in the game), large batteries of enemies with few checkpoints in between in the later parts of the level, and two very irritating That One Boss candidates (Klaw and M.O.D.O.K.).
- Latveria in the Epilogue is also very irritating. It has more checkpoints, but it also has not one, not two, but three bridge segments like Wakanda's, and each one is harder than the last.
That One Sidequest:
- The August 30 update brought a new Infinity Rift, with its final challenge being "Ultimate Alliance of Evil". You have to face a gauntlet of bosses (in order: Ronan, Maximus, Mysterio, Ultron, Kingpin, Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive, Supergiant, Thanos, and Thane), all of whose attacks can take out half your health. To make matters worse, you'll have to sometimes face two bosses at once, making things harder, even for Level 100 characters.
- Also included in the update is the trial "Revenge Of The Titan". This trial has you fighting Thane again. However, two factors increase the difficulty of this trial significantly- one, you’re limited to just using Thanos, and Thane is a grueling fight with no less than seven phases and cheap attacks.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Much like Spider-Man (PS4) being a PlayStation 4 exclusive, this game is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, which naturally upset those who were looking forward to a third Ultimate Alliance game but expected it to be a multi-platform release like the previous two games. The cartoony graphics, completely linear storyline, lack of multiple endings, and lackluster alternate costumes at launch compared to the first two entries also disappointed many fans. That said, Ultimate Alliance 3 managed to become one of the best-selling Switch exclusives in recent memory within the first few days of its release, so it seems like Nintendo and Marvel's call paid off here.
Unexpected Character:
- Wolverine, to the delight of fans. After having been blacklisted alongside the other X-Men due to Fox holding the film rights until Disney acquired them, seeing him fight alongside the others was welcomed.
- Crystal is a rather left-field pick, and had she not been revealed the moment the game was announced, it's highly unlikely anyone would've really speculated her inclusion. She represents The Inhumans, a species that never quite broke out (that's not getting into the maligned TV series) and remains second-fiddle to the mutants and X-Men despite Marvel's previous attempt to replace them. She's also the only representative of the Royal Family, of which she's not even the best known (she's distinctly behind Black Bolt, Medusa, and Karnak in terms of recognition). Those who do know her are more likely to associate her with either her Interspecies Romance with Quicksilver (which, in this game, gets a one-off mention from Gamora in Crystal's profile and nothing more) or her stints with the Fantastic Four (who are not in the base game) in 1969 and The Avengers in the '90s (which isn't played up here, although she does get the Avengers team boost and the Avenger bomber jacket from the '90s as her alternate outfit). Overall, she's a surprise inclusion compared to others.
- To a lesser degree, there's the presence of The Defenders characters like Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Elektra, who are all popular but not part of the movies that inspire the game. This is mainly because characters from the Netflix shows, whle technically part of the MCU, were prevented from appearing in the movies proper to the point where they only connected to the movies in brand name and nothing else, and that was before Disney canned the entire Netflix universe following their acquisition of 20th Century Fox^note. The fact that past games, such as Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, also ignored them, lends to the surprise.
- Ultimo is a villain largely used only as an Iron Man character, making his appearance as an antagonist here surprising (he was a sub-boss in the first MUA, though).
- The Wasp is a founding Avenger, but has been largely ignored in recent years^note. It was thought that, had she been included, the Wasp would at best be an Assist Character for Ant-Man. Not only is she her own character, but she's the only playable Sizeshifter of the game, Ant-Man being an NPC^note. Also, this version of the Wasp is Janet, not Hope or Nadia, another detail that was well-received.
- Psylocke was also a surprise for many as while she's popular — part of it likely due to her presence in the early Marvel vs. Capcom games, and another part being a Ms. Fanservice — she's not as frequent in rosters as opposed to other X-Men members.
- Almost nobody saw Elsa Bloodstone coming. She's only ever been in mobile games (not even the LEGO Adaptation Games had her, despite their reputation for having nearly everyone) and at most, some fans would just know her from Nextwave or the short lived Monsters Unleashed series as Kid Kajiu's bodyguard. A lot of people watching her reveal during E3 2019 had no idea who she was, but her presence amongst other A- and B-list characters really got people excited at the prospect of other more obscure characters.
- Try unexpected DLC pack. Few were seriously expecting an expansion based on the Marvel Knights imprint, which was a more mature line created in 1998 that recruited indie writers to create new stories in an attempt to get them out of financial trouble. It especially stands out against obvious choices like X-Men and Fantastic Four.
  - Almost getting into meta-level, the DLC itself has an unexpected character! While Blade, Moon Knight, and the Punisher were all pretty obvious choices for the team, Morbius was definitely not.
- Though not playable, Nova is featured. Making it even more surprising is that it's the fan-favorite original, Richard Rider, and not his legacy counterpart Sam Alexander. Sam has a much higher tendency to appear than Richard.
- Who's the Final Boss of the game? It's not Thanos! After Thanos spends most of the game as the Big Bad, the True Final Boss becomes his son Thane. This is surprising for a number of reasons. One, Thane is very recent (debuting in 2013, with Infinity being his main debut and Marvel: Avengers Alliance acting as a teaser beforehand) and relatively obscure due to him not being used in other media, making it sound unlikely he would have any role much less be the final boss. Two, Thanos was presented as the clear-cut Big Bad for most of the story, and one would naturally assume it's him especially considering how ubiquitous he's become. Three, Thanos himself ends up being playable as he calls for an Enemy Mine with the heroes, which few truly predicted.
- Annihilus was a nice surprise for many as few people thought that the Shadow of Doom DLC would feature a villain besides Dr. Doom.
Win Back the Crowd:
- The reveal of Wolverine, Storm, and Nightcrawler as three of the playable heroes, with the implication that the X-Men would be making their big return in a Marvel video game (complete with the X-Mansion as a playable level), did a lot to win over those who were upset about the team constantly being left out of licensed Marvel adaptations over 20th Century Fox owning their movie rights prior to Disney's acquisition of Fox. This got better with the release of the X-Men trailer, which featured Psylocke (who is particularly popular for obvious reasons), Magneto and Beast, and gave small hints towards Colossus and Cyclops (although Beast is just an NPC, as were Cyclops and Colossus before being promoted via DLC). As for the Fantastic Four, it was revealed at E3 that they will also be returning, as DLC with their own unique storyline.
- The fact that it maintains the T-rating from previous games for violence, blood and suggestive themes helps to disprove the idea that this game would be Lighter and Softer because it's produced by Nintendo, despite having a brighter color palette.
- Generally speaking, this has been considered a return to form for large-scale gaming crossovers for Marvel. While there exist some minor issues, fans and critics alike have praised Ultimate Alliance 3 for being a celebration of the universe's greatest hits.

YMMV / Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

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