I’ve been playing Marvel Heroes since release, and I’m having an absolute blast so far. Action RPG, loot, and the Marvel universe pulled me in from the very start (and don’t forget about that awesome opening cinematic). After a little more than a week spent running around doing what heroes do, I decided to put together a quick list of things you might want to know before putting on those tights. Here are six things (in no particular order) that I think everyone should know before playing Marvel Heroes.
1. Your Starting 5
Since Gazillion Entertainment designed Marvel Heroes to be a free-to-play game, the choice of heroes is limited if you decide not to spend any money. Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Storm, The Thing, and Daredevil round out your starting five characters. Each hero fits into a certain class, for example, The Thing’s description ends up putting Ben Grimm into the ‘tank’ class. Soaking up damage, while at the same time dishing it out ends up being a no-brainer for The Thing. The easiest way I can help you decide which character to pick from the free five is like this: do you like ranged attacks, or being up close and personal? Once you figure that out, your choice should be made a little easier for you.
2. No ‘Try Before You Buy’
If you end up wanting to play as your favorite Marvel hero from the beginning, thus parting with up to $20 to do so, be warned. There is currently no way to play around with the characters that unlock with money to see if their play style is something you want to march through the full game with. Your best bet is to look up videos of the character you want to purchase to see if your favorite hero plays like anything you would enjoy using. Hopefully this changes sooner rather than later, as to me, it seems like a huge oversight.
3. Plain Jane
Part of the fun with games that have a loot system is having said loot change your character’s appearance. None of that will be found in Marvel Heroes. The case could be made that since Marvel Heroes is a free-to-play game, it’s only natural that the only way to change your appearance will be in the form of purchasing costumes with real money. This doesn’t make it any easier to swallow, especially since the costumes end up being insanely high priced for some of the more popular heroes (I’m looking at you, Iron Man).
4. Drop It Like It’s Hot
If you truly want to pay absolutely nothing for Marvel Heroes, but still want to get access to the paid content, you still have an option: grind. Although I don’t have all the info in front of me as of writing this, most of the characters and costumes in the store will drop randomly during one of your play sessions in Marvel Heroes. The percentage rate of how often this happens is still up in the air. As soon as you finish the prologue mission, you are given a random drop of one of the four other starting characters that you didn’t pick. In the many hours I have put into Marvel Heroes so far, I’ve yet to see any paid content drop since. Hopefully soon we’ll have more info from Gazillion Entertainment to clear up some very important questions in this matter.
5. Sharing Is Caring
Inventory and your storage bank in Marvel Heroes is shared for every character. This is probably the one thing you should spend money on if you love hoarding all the loot. You can hit the limit in your storage bank (48 items) pretty fast if you’re not too careful. The proposition, however, of parting with 550G ($5.50) for each extra page (up to 3 max) is a little more than most will be comfortable with.
6. What’s Mine, Is Mine
Switching between characters you’ve unlocked is pretty seamless in Marvel Heroes. Being able to instantly switch to someone like Daredevil when I get tired of shooting arrows with Hawkeye gives players variety when it suits them. Experience doesn’t carry over from character to character, so if you have a level 20 hero, switching to a level 1 hero you just unlocked late in the game will get you killed fast. You do have the ability to head back to previous areas and grind for experience on mobs, which you’re likely to need to do often. It’s probably wise to start your first play through of Marvel Heroes with one character, then replay chapters with the additional characters you either purchased or got from a drop.
Marvel Heroes is a lot of fun, and hopefully these tips prevent any disappointing surprises from taking away from your game experience. If you’re already playing the game, make sure to let us know what you think!