Gameplay wise, slowing the combat down and zooming the camera in does not work for me. It plays similar to the first launch/"open beta" in the overall mechanics but so many of the details changed for the worse. Jason feels better than other characters since it seems like he was designed with this new gameplay in mind. But a lot of the old characters don't feel right. Speed down, combos even wonkier or even just gone, movement feels worse. You can't train with characters you don't own anymore. A ton of stats-based and training features are just gone too. Thirty whole frames of input buffer that you cannot change, presumably. No fully offline plan at all in a fighting game. It is a pure downgrade from what this game was in terms of gamefeel and functionality. That version was retroactively deemed the open beta, and this is meant to be the 1.0 base version. If that were the only real issue, I'd check out and see if the game got back up to par.

More importantly this is horrendous monetization even at a glance. I unlocked some fighters during the first launch and it's still overwhelming how much money and disproportionate time they want you to drop everywhere. Some of it is just unbelievable like the Smith "Seasonal" pass. Agent Smith in the launch trailer is not actually available to play at launch, but don't worry! There's a way to get him for free and a few weeks early! You will have to beat at least 20 different Rift (Event Mode) routes. Right now it looks like 4 difficulty levels across 5 Rifts, 3 of which are not available until later or MUCH later. Each Rift has also given be a fairly hard Gem XP wall after two runs and it looks like you have to settle in for a major grind of some kind. It seems borderline impossible to get the Gems XP you need for "free" without Joker (pay up with money, or enough Fighter currency for TWO other characters because HE costs double) or co-op (still not good for a mode that is 90% solo) to fill out that last bonus box that I assume will help you get to Gem Level 4™? And paying for Joker directly seems encouraged because after all the welcome quests and other sources, I have a solid 4k out of 6k FC necessary to get him for free. Hell yeah. But hey, each individual type of gems has two tiers of real-money XP packs in the store, just putting it out there. This all came up on the FIRST, smaller level gate for the very first Rift! Maybe daily bonuses “fix” this. Then the Rift grind and the videogame is simply part-time labor, woo yeah.

Even if you do pay for Joker or play Co-Op to potentially get the Gem XP quickly without paying directly for it, you still have to go through at LEAST 20 runs of the CPU filler Rifts for one character. Which I'm sure will reach input-reading levels of unfun difficulty on later stages. And the highest difficulty level (level 4 is "unavailable" completely right now as an option for some reason, so Level 5 seems mandatory at the moment) will have limited lives per day but "(You can purchase more)." Top to bottom hyper-repetitive, grindy, nothingburger content for what looks to be weeks. With the carrot on a stick being a character you may not enjoy playing in the end. The Rifts are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ they're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ don't look in the Rifts the Rifts will stare back into you. Event Mode and how it's hooked into the cycle is terrible and it's the only new big feature after all that waiting. They blew it on what could have been a casual grind to do once a week for most players and then they get a free character and stay engaged with the game because of the occasional big freebie. Then they might drop the real money on skins besides the freebies. The grind and setup as is makes NO sense, they are bad at being evil. And the minigames are pretty bad too so far! At best the developers wanted this to be an actual free event but someone above insisted on all the pain points to make you want to pay for your free character in SOME way. At least Jason simply asked "did you play the old version?" If yes, have Jason. Jason’s good.

The direct in-store monetization is also jokes, just like the old version. A singular ringout animation for $12, but actually $15-20 minimum due to how the funbucks work. Joker, a whole new character, is $12.50 OR 6000 FC on his own. $20 if you get the bog standard bundle. But don't worry you can get that animation in a Shaggy-themed bundle for $24.44, where the main attraction is a $20 skin at basically no discount. No F2P option I could find for a simple ringout animation. A LeBron James taunt for 332 funbucks ($3.32) where the sound only plays in ONE ear, and you will NEVER be able to spend that exact 18 you "saved" on the discount. Want Superman to be the announcer? 5 stray Gleamium basically forever. You need to buy $10 of funbucks for a basic cel-shaded filter on the BASE model, but you can afford two! 100,000 "Prestige" currency for the Batman Who Laughs skin for whoever actually wants to grind that long for that. The monetization was fairly terrible the first time but this is maddening taken as a whole. The whole store is JUST swindling you for any penny or second it can get you to agree to part with. Usually there's at least a bit more than that.

"What about the free Gleamium" not high enough quantity, obviously. They aren't actually giving it away. Just enough in logins or alternate passes/tracks to get you a little something every 6 weeks maybe. That's how that system works.

"What about the battlepass Gleamium" they would be over the moon if you spent that stuff anywhere except on the next battlepass.

They quadrupled the types of currency and seem to have made everything worse besides maybe perks. However, the battlepass rewards are generally an improvement. But of course, playing the game on its own does not give progress to those better rewards anymore. Only with daily/weekly challenges do you get XP and thus only certain amounts of progress on a more planned schedule. It's always something.

I'm sure this is all normal or above-standard to some players younger to me. To be emphatically clear, this is a horrible skinner box of a system and even if it has strong IP you should want better than this for a game you play with friends. You cannot game it in your favor, even if they improve it a little by letting games give you BP XP again. It is designed to give you the least possible for the most time and money they believe can be extracted from you. And then the servers may just get shutdown within a decade and you lose it all, no matter how loyal a customer you were or how much you or the developers loved the game. That year long gap will be the rest of your life. They did not even release 1.0 with the ability to play any of it offline.

When the free welcome back period is up this will be a miserable vortex no matter how much the devs may have wanted to just make a fun, interesting platform fighter. If the roster was fully free and they only scraped for money with the overpriced cosmetics and Rift gimmicks, maybe it could be tolerated.

I don’t think Multiversus will be worth it if this is the state it launched in after returning to development for a year. Not worth it in terms of money or time. Both of those are valuable and will be better spent elsewhere, even if it's just other games that aren't this thin and stingy. I liked Multiversus well-enough in the old version and wanted to see the modern launch be good despite misgivings. This game will probably not make a No Man's Sky-esque revival if it flops here. This launch is meant to be that, really, this is the big revival. Either the game will not change in the places that matter and make money anyway, or interest will wane and die due to flawed mechanics and bad monetization just like the first launch. Whatever the artists and designers could do to more fundamentally fix and improve this game and its business model, they almost certainly aren't allowed to do because of words from the executives on high.

Gameplay wise, slowing the combat down and zooming the camera in does not work for me. It plays similar to the first launch/"open beta" in the overall mechanics but so many of the details changed for the worse. Jason feels better than other characters since it seems like he was designed with this new gameplay in mind. But a lot of the old characters don't feel right. Speed down, combos even wonkier or even just gone, movement feels worse. You can't train with characters you don't own anymore. A ton of stats-based and training features are just gone too. Thirty whole frames of input buffer that you cannot change, presumably. No fully offline plan at all in a fighting game. It is a pure downgrade from what this game was in terms of gamefeel and functionality. That version was retroactively deemed the open beta, and this is meant to be the 1.0 base version. If that were the only real issue, I'd check out and see if the game got back up to par. More importantly this is horrendous monetization even at a glance. I unlocked some fighters during the first launch and it's still overwhelming how much money and disproportionate time they want you to drop everywhere. Some of it is just unbelievable like the Smith "Seasonal" pass. Agent Smith in the launch trailer is not actually available to play at launch, but don't worry! There's a way to get him for free and a few weeks early! You will have to beat at least 20 different Rift (Event Mode) routes. Right now it looks like 4 difficulty levels across 5 Rifts, 3 of which are not available until later or MUCH later. Each Rift has also given be a fairly hard Gem XP wall after two runs and it looks like you have to settle in for a major grind of some kind. It seems borderline impossible to get the Gems XP you need for "free" without Joker (pay up with money, or enough Fighter currency for TWO other characters because HE costs double) or co-op (still not good for a mode that is 90% solo) to fill out that last bonus box that I assume will help you get to Gem Level 4™? And paying for Joker directly seems encouraged because after all the welcome quests and other sources, I have a solid 4k out of 6k FC necessary to get him for free. Hell yeah. But hey, each individual type of gems has two tiers of real-money XP packs in the store, just putting it out there. This all came up on the FIRST, smaller level gate for the very first Rift! Maybe daily bonuses “fix” this. Then the Rift grind and the videogame is simply part-time labor, woo yeah. Even if you do pay for Joker or play Co-Op to potentially get the Gem XP quickly without paying directly for it, you still have to go through at LEAST 20 runs of the CPU filler Rifts for one character. Which I'm sure will reach input-reading levels of unfun difficulty on later stages. And the highest difficulty level (level 4 is "unavailable" completely right now as an option for some reason, so Level 5 seems mandatory at the moment) will have limited lives per day but "(You can purchase more)." Top to bottom hyper-repetitive, grindy, nothingburger content for what looks to be weeks. With the carrot on a stick being a character you may not enjoy playing in the end. The Rifts are fucked they're just fucked don't look in the Rifts the Rifts will stare back into you. Event Mode and how it's hooked into the cycle is terrible and it's the only new big feature after all that waiting. They blew it on what could have been a casual grind to do once a week for most players and then they get a free character and stay engaged with the game because of the occasional big freebie. Then they might drop the real money on skins besides the freebies. The grind and setup as is makes NO sense, they are bad at being evil. And the minigames are pretty bad too so far! At best the developers wanted this to be an actual free event but someone above insisted on all the pain points to make you want to pay for your free character in SOME way. At least Jason simply asked "did you play the old version?" If yes, have Jason. Jason’s good. The direct in-store monetization is also jokes, just like the old version. A singular ringout animation for $12, but actually $15-20 minimum due to how the funbucks work. Joker, a whole new character, is $12.50 OR 6000 FC on his own. $20 if you get the bog standard bundle. But don't worry you can get that animation in a Shaggy-themed bundle for $24.44, where the main attraction is a $20 skin at basically no discount. No F2P option I could find for a simple ringout animation. A LeBron James taunt for 332 funbucks ($3.32) where the sound only plays in ONE ear, and you will NEVER be able to spend that exact 18 you "saved" on the discount. Want Superman to be the announcer? 5 stray Gleamium basically forever. You need to buy $10 of funbucks for a basic cel-shaded filter on the BASE model, but you can afford two! 100,000 "Prestige" currency for the Batman Who Laughs skin for whoever actually wants to grind that long for that. The monetization was fairly terrible the first time but this is maddening taken as a whole. The whole store is JUST swindling you for any penny or second it can get you to agree to part with. Usually there's at least a bit more than that. "What about the free Gleamium" not high enough quantity, obviously. They aren't actually giving it away. Just enough in logins or alternate passes/tracks to get you a little something every 6 weeks maybe. That's how that system works. "What about the battlepass Gleamium" they would be over the moon if you spent that stuff anywhere except on the next battlepass. They quadrupled the types of currency and seem to have made everything worse besides maybe perks. However, the battlepass rewards are generally an improvement. But of course, playing the game on its own does not give progress to those better rewards anymore. Only with daily/weekly challenges do you get XP and thus only certain amounts of progress on a more planned schedule. It's always something. I'm sure this is all normal or above-standard to some players younger to me. To be emphatically clear, this is a horrible skinner box of a system and even if it has strong IP you should want better than this for a game you play with friends. You cannot game it in your favor, even if they improve it a little by letting games give you BP XP again. It is designed to give you the least possible for the most time and money they believe can be extracted from you. And then the servers may just get shutdown within a decade and you lose it all, no matter how loyal a customer you were or how much you or the developers loved the game. That year long gap will be the rest of your life. They did not even release 1.0 with the ability to play any of it offline. When the free welcome back period is up this will be a miserable vortex no matter how much the devs may have wanted to just make a fun, interesting platform fighter. If the roster was fully free and they only scraped for money with the overpriced cosmetics and Rift gimmicks, [i]maybe[/i] it could be tolerated. I don’t think Multiversus will be worth it if this is the state it launched in after returning to development for a year. Not worth it in terms of money or time. Both of those are valuable and will be better spent elsewhere, even if it's just other games that aren't this thin and stingy. I liked Multiversus well-enough in the old version and wanted to see the modern launch be good despite misgivings. This game will probably not make a No Man's Sky-esque revival if it flops here. This launch is meant to be that, really, this is the big revival. Either the game will not change in the places that matter and make money anyway, or interest will wane and die due to flawed mechanics and bad monetization just like the first launch. Whatever the artists and designers could do to more fundamentally fix and improve this game and its business model, they almost certainly aren't allowed to do because of words from the executives on high.