Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 Review: 7 Ups & 6 Downs
DOWNS...
6. Upgrades Are Tedious
Though Ultimate Alliance 3 is a good game, it doesn't do too much to innovate or push the boundaries of the formula established by the first two releases. This is most evident in the upgrade and levelling up systems, which offer some of the most boring skill trees of the entire generation so far.
Handled through a bunch of different screens, you can directly upgrade the abilities of your heroes by gaining experience points, though there isn't much variety here. Each character gets four special abilities with four tiers of upgrade each, all of which simply add more damage or reduce the energy cost to use them. There are ISO-8 crystals that can be plugged into characters as well, which offer basic buffs like +8% light attack damage.
This extends to the Lab as well, where you can spend points to upgrade the stats of all unlocked heroes. These webs of upgrades number in the hundreds, but none of them are particularly interesting. The vast majority offer the same old buffs - more health, better defence, stronger attacks - rather than anything that substantially changes the gameplay.
It all feels like time wasting, and just looking at the Lab screen is enough to give you a headache.