Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is only about a month away from release and the roster of playable fighters seems to be growing every day.
Currently, the game is set to have 34 unique characters playable at launch. The roster already features many of the classic superheroes one would expect to see in an Ultimate Alliance game, including Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. There are even a few surprising new additions, with the most recent trailer showing off Elsa Bloodstone, a rather obscure character first introduced in 2001.
If you’ve played the series before, however, you’ll notice a number of characters from the original games are missing from the current roster. Thankfully, the development team is already working on a number of fighter packs, each of which focuses on a major Marvel superhero team: Marvel Knights, X-Men, and Fantastic Four.
While specific characters have not yet been revealed, there are a few good guesses as to who will be included. While the Fantastic Four pack is pretty self-explanatory, the X-Men and Marvel Knights packs will most-likely include characters such as Moon Knight, Cyclops, and Gambit, all of which were present in the first two games in some capacity.
The Ultimate Alliance series has always about huge team-ups and fast-paced, beat’em up action, and the upcoming third entry looks to be the biggest yet. Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order has players facing off against an assortment of classic Marvel villains, all while trying to stop Thanos and his Black Order from collecting the Infinity Stones.
The Developers at Team Ninja are working on taking the series’ classic formula to the next level, offering more strategy in combat and a wealth of customization options to suit different play styles.
This includes a major change to team bonuses. In the Ultimate Alliance series, playing with a group made from an actual Marvel team–for example, using four members of the X-Men, or using a group comprised entirely of Avengers–provides stat bonuses and other perks to increase combat efficiency.
In Ultimate Alliance 3, the requirements for team bonuses are less strict, offering partial bonuses if you only have two or three members of a team in your group. This opens up new strategies, as certain characters can count toward multiple teams while in your line-up. There are also some bonuses for creating certain themed teams, such as “Women of Marvel” and “Wisecracking Warriors.”
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is set for release on July 19, 2019, exclusively for Nintendo Switch. The DLC packs will begin releasing this fall.
