A Review of Marvel VS Capcom 3 — The Fighting System
We have been waiting for Marvel VS Capcom 3 for ten years guys. Ten years. This game has received so much hype, reviewers have begun analyzing it far deeper than any other recent fighting game release. Some people are singing its praises, while others are highlighting its flaws, but both only tell a portion of the story. Marvel VS Capcom 3 has so many things to review, from the fighting system, to the overall presentation, to the collector’s edition bundle and we are going to tackle each one individually. First up, the core of the fighting game experience: The Fighting System.
Marvel VS Capcom 3 is a very interesting game to play. It’s kind of like if you combined Marvel VS Capcom 2, Tatsunoko VS Capcom, and Blazblue and then made it do crystal meth.
The core formula is still reminiscent of Marvel 2. Three characters, one five stock super bar, go! Just as before you can tag characters in an out to let them rest and recover a portion of the damage they have taken. Most of the base mechanics of Marvel 2 are still in the game as well. You can call in each of your characters for an assist, snap back characters you don’t want on the field, switch characters in the middle of a hyper combo, and call in every character to do a hyper combo at once. Even wave dashing, a mechanic I really hoped they would take out is still in the game. What’s wrong with just giving characters a run?
That being said, the game has inherited quite a bit from Tatsunoko VS Capcom as well. The button scheme, for one, is almost exactly TVC‘s. The buttons are labeled light, medium, heavy, special, partner 1 and partner 2. Light, medium, and heavy are basic attacks that generally chain together in a sequence, and special is a dedicated launcher button (as well as doing some other cool stuff). Tap a partner button to call an assist, and hold it to tag in. (Protip: this means that an assist is actually triggered when you let go of the assist button, so keep this in mind. This also means you can tap an assist and attack button at the same time and the assist will always come out a split second after the attack. This is awesome for combos.)
Other mechanics from TVC have been imported as well. For example, the ability to crossover counter in order to tag while blocking has been carried over, as well as the ability to push block by tapping all three attack buttons. There is also a version of TVC‘d baroque cancel present called X-Factor. X-Factor immediately cancels you out of whatever attack you were doing and returns you to a neutral state (although it can cancel block stun as well which is something that baroque canceling couldn’t do). X-Factor also gives you a boost to strength and speed, eliminates chip damage, and heals your red life over time and it gets better and lasts longer depending on how many teammates have died. Long story short, it’s outstandingly powerful.
The ability to tag in the middle of an air combo has also been imported, but while it cost you meter in TVC, it gains you meter in MVC3. Simply press a direction and the special button in the air to swap out with your next character and continue the combo. The only downside to this is that your opponent can break your combo by guessing the direction you are holding and matching the input, though in practice you can just spin the stick and mash the special button and have about a 50% chance of success. Actually, there is a psychological component to that as well. If you start spinning the stick and mashing the special button, you generally scare your opponent and he never goes for an air tag in the first place.
On the surface MVC3’s combo system is like TVC’s with a simple procession of light to medium to heavy being your basic method of attack. In practice, it’s much more like Blazblue’s combo system, where you find interesting ways to circumvent this procession in order to extend your combos and do more damage. For example, Zero’s forward and heavy can be linked into his standing light attack for a combo loop. Dante can end his air combos prematurely to score a ground bounce and a relaunch. Starting any air combo with light is a sure way to whiff the rest of it, and a bizarre amount of combos start with medium, or even a jumping special attack. In fact, the system is so reminiscent of Blazblue, that some players online have already begun renaming the game’s L, M, H, and S buttons into a Blazblue-esque A, B, C, E.
Like in Blazblue, subsequent hits in a combo reduce both damage and hit-stun, so there are no infinite combos in the game. However, unlike Blazblue, the combo system in Marvel 3 is very flexible and just about any combination of normals or specials will hit if you have the right timing. That being said, the timing is needlessly strict for some combos and the buffer for move inputs seems kind of random depending on what move you did previously. Though, the combos are much easier than Blazblue’s (I only scored 100% on one character’s combo mission in Blazblue but I’m already well through 100% of every character in MVC3) they are also more frustrating, which is a weird combination to say the least.
Of course, infinites aren’t really a problem because characters deal a lot of damage in this game, and by a lot I mean far too much. I am not very good at this game, but even I can combo my opponent from 0 to death on a pretty regular basis. In fact, every character in the game has a 0 to death combo if you use the right combination of hypers and X-Factor. Heck, some characters like Sentinel can go 0 to death with nothing more than one hyper and Phoenix, while she easily dies in an X-Factor combo with nothing more than normal hits, can also kill in an X-Factor combo with nothing more than normal hits. The Mega Crash mechanic from TVC is absent in this game, and other than the hit-stun decay, there really isn’t anything that allows you to break an opponent’s combo, so many times a match does come down to “who got the first hit-confirm” or perhaps in this case “who got the first three hit-confirms.”
The result of mashing all this together is a game that is really peculiarly balanced. Since everyone is overpowered, no one feels broken. This makes the game extremely aggressive, and the very fact that the game is damn fast does not help. You have to be on point all the time or you’ll find yourself losing characters left and right. Heck, assist characters take even more damage than normal characters, and normal characters can be comboed from 0 to death! If you are even a little sloppy you will find yourself quickly losing, which is unfortunate considering how unsafe most of the actions in this game are!
But that’s just the nature of the VS series really. No matter how hard Capcom tried to make this one accessible to the newbies, it’s really just as punishing as ever. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just how the game is. When you reach a competent or pro level, you’ll find a ton of depth in this game. Even though one good combo generally means character death, characters have so many options to get that combo including flight, teleporting, assist crossups, and more!
Then of course there is team selection which generally seems to boil down to figuring out which characters will build meter and which ones will use it. There are characters who are far better when assisting than when on point and vice versa, and some characters that have assists that don’t even attack. One of Morrigan’s, for example, just builds meter.
Lastly, the most refreshing thing about this game is that no team seems too invalid. Some teams have to work a little harder, but I’ve seen totally random combinations win online and off. Who would have thought that Haggar, Felicia, and Spencer would make a good team? This may be just because the game is new, but it really looks like Capcom did a great job balancing the roster this time around. Sure, it may be balanced because everyone is a damage powerhouse, but it’s balanced nonetheless.
If I were to review Marvel VS Capcom 3 on its fighting system alone, I’d easily give it a 9.8 out of 10. I’d take off a fraction of a point because of how infuriating it is to step in as a newbie and get air comboed to death out of nowhere. Then I’d take off another, because honestly, I would like to see the damage reduced a little, if only to make matches a little less swingy. Aside from that, this game is just fun. As much as I have qualms with it, it’s addicting as hell! No matter how frustrated I get, I keep pushing further and further, and as such, I keep getting better and better. Even if I am outmatched, there are instances where my opponent drops his pants and I manage to hit him with an X-Factor Sentinel Force and squeeze out a win. You’ll suck when you start this game. Hands down. You’ll want to give the game up because of how ludicrously powerful your opponent is. But, if you stick with it, you’ll find things just click after a few hours of play, and soon you’ll be air-comboing with the rest of em, marveling at your own 100% damage combos.
In short, you have to try to hate this game. It’s just so much fun, even at low levels of play. Even if you get your ass beat, just watching your opponent do these crazy combos that you didn’t even know were possible is fun. With a game this high powered, it will take a while before we really delve into how deeply the game is balanced, but until then, just enjoy the ride. The ride that Marvel VS Capcom 3 takes you for …
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I’m gonna take you for a ride!
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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