Recent reviews by DanGR

If thou art content to endure the standard gacha mechanisms and their workings, thou shalt find joy in tactics gameplay most reminiscent of days of yore

After just 1.2 hours played, it feels like a major step down from Warframe in terms of enemy variety, ability uniqueness, mobility, environment, and story. Already bored.

At a surface-level, MultiVersus combines Super Smash Bros. mechanics with a more hack-and-slash style of combat. Casual players and thrill-seekers are sure to welcome the fast-paced action with open arms - if that's you, this is your game! However, more methodical, hardcore players are likely to become frustrated by the low cooldown and start-up frames of most attacks, the unclear hitbox sizes, and the lack of hitstun, leading to a watered-down strategical gameplay experience.

- Polished visuals
- Polished sound design
- Fun character gameplay designs - goofy moments galore
- Character balanced, while still flawed in many ways, is overall very decent for a newly released fighter.
- With the ability to customize your character taunts, out-of-bounds (death) animations, and loading screen flairs (think token system in LoL) via your account/character progress, you'll eventually have a wealth of customization options to choose from.
- Continuing from the above point, the payment model is clearly more cosmetics-focused, which I categorize as a good thing.

- For the time being, the time it takes to grind up gold to buy characters seems bit too slow, even for a free-to-play game. Gold-gain is much better paced toward buying perks.
- Attack animations do not currently cleanly match their hitboxes. This makes for some very confusing character attack interactions.
- The attack descriptions in the game, while good to have, do not provide enough information for more hardcore players to derive much meaningful info from them. (attack startup frames/cooldowns, hitboxes, hitbox frames, etc.)
- See the section at the bottom of this review for thoughts from a long-time SSB competitor regarding strategy.

- The "cave of life" in the Scooby's Haunted Mansion stage can lead to frustrating or funny moments, depending on your disposition toward stage hazards.
- Currently there is no ranked mode, though there are matchmaking-rating leaderboards for the casual gameplay 1v1 and 2v2 modes. As indicated in the menu options, the devs clearly plan to launch a ranked mode at some point.
- The perks system, while interesting in terms of the customization options available to augment any given strategy, adds a bit of a pay-to-win element to the game. Reason is - the perks cost gold to train, which is the same currency used to buy characters. If your goal is strictly to win, you need to have a variety of perks to match any given team, opponent, or stage set-up. However, if you want quicker access to characters to learn their ins and outs in PvP, you will be at a stat (perks) deficit compared to your opponents - Think runes in the early days of LoL.

It's worth noting that the characters in the game cost different amounts of gold. If you buy the character tokens/collector's pack with real money, I highly recommend not using them on the cheaper characters. Instead, to be more efficient with your time/money, dedicate your gold toward the more expensive characters.

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I compiled a list of cons that affect me specifically from a strategical point of view, as a former SSB professional/semi-pro. Please note that the game is still in Beta and it's very possible that some or all of these will eventually be addressed by the game team. These are just my opinions.

Slow pace of neutral
Neutral = game state in which no characters have been hit, and none are off-stage

Button mashing, while still bad play from a strategical standpoint, unfortunately cannot be punished on reaction quite as frequently as one would expect. Aerials, airdodging, grounded attacks - The animations are so quick from start to end, that players are encouraged to use attacks even with the understanding that their attacks are likely to miss.

This has the potential to dramatically slow down the pace of neutral if you plan on playing in a calm, collected, methodical manner - think SSBB Mr. Game & Watch upsmash and SSBB Metaknight forward-smash levels of cooldown frames on many, many attacks, both grounded and aerial.

While character movement speed is indeed very fast, the pace of combat, before landing hits, can be quite tedious and slow as a result of the above. This leads to a very boring neutral unless you play mages (projectile users in MultiVersus).

Avoidance
The character movement speed, while overall fast, fluid, and fun in its own right - when combined with the amount of movement, dodging, and directional airdodging options available - makes for a frustrating time chasing down opponents that choose not to interact. This makes it feel like being above an opponent or offstage is not as much of a disadvantage as it maybe should be.

Low combo potential
The movement options in the game are quick, but hitstun is very, very low and dodging options are plentiful (think Super Smash Bros Brawl levels of hitstun and dodging options, but on steroids). This shifts your focus while in advantaged states (after hitting someone) away from comboing as the advantaged player, and interacting as the disadvantaged player via knockback influence, more toward a rock-paper-scissors-style of guessing game about which option your opponent is going to choose to get out of what could be a nice, short combo.

Elsword's leveling system is a blast. The combos. The skill. The mastery. It's all there.

If you're into fast paced fighting games and want some casual character progression along with it, this game fits the bill.

However PvP, the primary game mode for more competitive individuals, is plagued by lag. PvP runs via peer-to-peer connections, so if your opponent has a terrible connection, you're in for a bad time. Your competitive experience will be inconsistent, and you'll lose many matches along the way to the top due to internet connection exploits and general peer-to-peer nonsense.

Casual PvE: A+
Competitive PvP: C-