UPDATE: I am changing this review for positive only because from my world perspective a person can't leave negative review on a game one spent 43 hours in and keeps playing it. But everything bellow is still valid with one exception - core gameplay is developing greatly through the game progress and i enjoyed it a lot. That's the reason for 43 hours.
When I heard "marvel game from XCOM team" I was sold immediately, but the truth is, it is extremely questionable.
It tries to be so much and fails miserably at everything so in the end we get a mixed-genre abomination with mechanics from everything that just doesn't work.
It feels like a game planned to be a F2P Mobile Card Gacha, that for some reason switched into a PC singleplayer. The game introduces tons of meta-mechanics like relations, training, resource-gathering, base decorations etc, etc, etc. But all of that is to compensate for the lack of deep core gameplay.
Core gameplay design is... acceptable. I was honestly expecting something xcom-like, but I guess the idea to make Marvel game less tactical and more puzzlish works towards more broad audience (not like XCOM has a small audience, but super-hero theme can certainly attract lots of kids and casual players), I can't really comment much on it as it feels like I have lots more to try with it.
What I really want to comment on is EVERYTHING ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ELSE! The pacing of the game is terrible. They tried to go hard CRPG with HOURS of dialogues and killed any motivation on exploring those dialogues. So we have casual gameplay with BG3 dialogues and a relationship system. You think it's weird enough? Wait, there's more. How about lootboxes? And MORE LOOTBOXES? [b]AND EVEN MORE LOOTBOXES[/b]? There are at least 3 types of those. And you can't just get the rewards after a mission. The gameplay loop forces you to WALK between different locations to do everything. Imagine if the base at XCOM was a 1:1 replica where you have to walk on foot to do everything you usually just clicked. Sounds terrible? Not to MMS designers apparently.
The game doesn't appreciate your time at all.
You want to speed up animation? No. You want to skip the lootbox opening animation you saw 50 times already? No. You want to read dialogues and not wait for them to be voiced to you? Well. Not always. 50% of dialogues are cutscenes where you can either skip it whole or watch it at a 1x pace.
As a Summary:
Is it an overall bad game? - No. It can be fun and the core gameplay feels fresh, even though it doesn't play like XCOM at all.
Can I recommend it? - Honestly, no. Playing it feels like being forced to eat 7 appetisers that were made by a motel cafe cook to have a lick of a main course cooked by a master-chef. Not worth it.
