Game Review: Multiversus

The Warner Brothers vault is filled to the brim with a plethora of licensed IP’s.  I never really considered just how many well-known properties this giant company were the rightful owners of until I watched the rather average Space Jam sequel with Lebron James.  That film didn’t just utilize the Looney Tunes license for its story but it felt like the first proper stride by Warner Brothers to show the general audience just how large their portfolio of worlds really was.  DC, Rick and Morty, Mad Max, Game of Thrones and The Matrix just to name a few large franchises were all utilized in some way throughout the course of that film.  I’m not sure if this film was the original inception point or whether Warner Brothers already had the idea to proceed with utilizing this massive collection of IP’s in a Smash Bro’s-inspired beat-em up video game, but the end result is the free-to-play title known as Multiversus.

Developed by newly founded development studio Player First Games, Multiversus is a free-to-play beat-em up title, playable across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Originally deployed as an early access title from 2022 to 2023, PFG and Warner Bros Game pulled the trigger and fully released the title at the tail end of May 2024.  There’s no core narrative component to this title as the game main gameplay takes centre stage by pitting a plethora of Warner Brothers licensed characters against one another in a host of PvE and PvP activities. Accompanying the main combat gameplay, there’s a large amount of customization options for each fighter to pick from, although largely tied behind a notably egregious wall of monetization.

The main gameplay of Multiversus takes place on a collection of stages set across the vast worlds of Warner Brothers IP’s. Depending on the game mode you pick, you will be placed in a 1v1 or 2v2 set up in which you must fight your opponent and cause enough damage so you may send them flying off the stage to cause a ring out.  If you’re reading that and thinking that sounds awfully similar to the main gameplay behind Super Smash Bros, you’d be very right in making that determination. It’s clear that the Smash Bros beat-em up format has become an entity unto its own, much like Dark Souls formed the Souls-like genre.  I’m not going to dismiss a developer for trying to utilize that award-winning formula, as long as they do enough to show it’s not a simple copy and paste.  

In Mutiversus’ case the gameplay is tight and responsive for the most part, every fighter in this game has an associated class system tied to their combat style; Assassin, Bruiser, Mage/Ranged, and Tank. The class often indicates their style of combat and helps gives each fighter a unique fighting style to inhabit. Tank’s often hit hard and soak up a fair bit of damage in response.  Bruisers are standard but can throw out a nice combo of heavy hits. Mage/Ranged fighters fight using projectiles and traps and are most deadly at a distance. Assassins are fast and deal a fair bit of damage through a combination of fast attacks and combos. Each of these fighting styles offers a nice format for players to inhabit and specialize in, and the resulting combat clashes make for a fun and ultimately challenging fighting experience.  What adds to these classes is the distinct function and design of the game’s fighters themselves. At this present moment, there are over 27 playable characters in this game, all with their own move sets that help make them distinct from one another.  This is where the games main selling point comes from.  I genuinely feel each of the 27 characters is given their own pros and cons to weigh on when it comes to picking a fighter to main and specialize in.  There’s a great opportunity for mastery here and that level of choice for players to express themselves through is duly appreciated. 

From a design perspective, Multiversus utilizes a cartoonish/cell shaded art style for the design of the world and characters.  It’s a style choice which benefits some characters more than others, it is a bit weird to see realistic human characters translated into the design of this world but you can still recognize them for the most part. The chosen design choice gives the game a core image to promote itself with and makes it recognizable in its own right. What’s also pretty cool is each world these characters are from is translated is some really authentic ways. The stages for example are authentic in imbuing the vibe and sounds of the respective show or movie they are brought from.  The Scooby Doo stage will have trademark monsters from the show running around in the background.  The Game of Thrones stage has moving platforms in a style reminiscent of the actual show’s intro and there’s a kickass remix of the main theme playing over the stage.  The characters themselves all sound and move like their respective counterparts and what helps is a lot of them are voiced by their original actors/actresses. There’s a clear devotion to bringing these characters and their respective worlds into the forefront of this game with a clear authenticity and I can never fault the game for that. 

Where all my good will for the game dissipates however is when it comes to its main features and customization. When you are not playing competitively, your main form of gameplay will be in the form of Rifts.  Rifts serve as a collection of fights you have to take on to progress through and reach the final fight at the end of the rift.  Each fight will have their own modifiers to make them different from your typical fights.  These modifiers can range from infinite jumps, infinite dodges to low resistance or starting a match with already accounted damage.  There’s a fair variety here, but the core function of these rifts becomes incredibly repetitive and you won’t have a chance of beating the harder difficulty runs without rift gems.  Rift gems are a modifier currency you can earn to help give you statistical buffs, but the way you earn them gradually is limited in a way that makes you want to buy stronger ones from the in-game store.  It’s a fundamentally boring mode which struggles to keep you engaged when it’s repetitive in nature and intrinsically designed in a way to encourage you to pay to win. 

The egregious monetization is even more noticeable in the customization side of the game.  There’s literally no way to customize your fighters in a gradual sense.  The currency you need to buy skins or profile icons is locked behind a premium pay wall.  There are minor ways to earn this currency through daily/weekly challenges or rifts, but they are so minimum that you’d need to be playing the game for months just to earn up enough to buy one character skin.  It’s a free-to-play game and I get it needs to monetize a good portion of itself to be able to justify the free to play aspect, but I don’t believe a lot of people will be able to justify the time this game requires from you to earn half of its general currency if you don’t have the money to put down on it.  It’s all about balance and sadly Multiversus is weighed so heavily towards the monetization that you can’t even navigate the menus without being bombarded by the vomit of packages and sales promotions from the in-game store, all encouraging you to pay real money to get minor cosmetics. 

Multiversus is good technical combat experience but a very poor free-to-play one.  Its main gameplay is hampered down by a lack of compelling activities besides competitive play. While it’s fighters and visual style work well in emulating the best of the worlds they are from, it’s hard to appreciate all the positives when the negatives behind this game stick their ugly head out nearly all the time. Multiversus has all the right aspirations but all the wrong implementations and that for me is why I can’t in good conscience recommend this to anyone at the present moment.  Go play Super Smash Bros. at least there you will get a fully defined experience without being gouged for any extra money in the process