There have been a handful of studios that have attempted to put their own twist on the Smash Bros formula, but Multiversus is on track to be the most successful one yet. The colourful free-to-play platform fighting game has hit the ground running, with an excellent roster of characters from across myriad Warnor Bros IPs. While the massive amount of characters that can be pulled from the Time Warner vault rivals any prior Smash clone offering, is it enough to rival Smash Bros Ultimate? And how does Multiversus otherwise compare to Nintendo’s all-dominant Smash Bros series? Let’s find out.
Right away players can quickly see how much thought was put into the combat compared to other smash clones. The variety of basic and special moves offer plenty of ways to approach situations, as well as certain characters being built for certain situations. For example, Wonder Woman is a great raw damage output character, but she lacks the more diverse moveset to handle certain situations like aerial attacks as a result of that.
So far, the biggest distinguishing feature of MultiVersus has been its focus on 2v2 matchups. While Smash Bros. has always centered around its 1v1 battles, the ground-up focus on 2v2 distances MultiVersus from every other game in the genre.
Every fighter in Multiversus is listed under a subclass: Bruiser, Tank, Assassin and Mage. Bruisers are your more ground based combatants with some unique mechanics to help them counteract their lack of range. In this case, Batman has a number of gadgets, and Jake the Dog has long reaching attacks. Tanks like Wonder Woman are harder to ring out, and have moves centered around bracing for hits and controlling the field more easily than others. Assassins such as Harley Quinn are focused around raw damage output, which comes at the expense of taking more damage themselves. And lastly there is the much rarer (so far) mage build. This class relies on tools and area denial with characters like Bugs Bunny, who has become the definitive metagame favorite in the pre-launch period.
Then there’s the whole subclass of characters dedicated to support for this exact game type shows how serious WB Interactive is about it. While support characters like Velma are more built for 2v2 battles, they can also offer wildly different play styles in a 1v1 that many are not expecting. With Multiversus focus on 2v2 battles, character synergy and strategy is far more important than in Smash Bros. The amount of possible permutations that can be made with every character and their strengths and weaknesses should make for an interesting competitive scene, as well as a more chaotic and enjoyable casual experience as well.
Multiversus has a distinct lack of focus on combos too. The importance it places on dodging completely replaces the shield mechanic from Smash Bros. While Smash Bros allows you to slightly alter your position in a 1v1 by using the shield, MultiVersus encourages you to use the dodge button liberally and keep the action going. This lack of control in these situations does lead to some awkward encounters of players attempting to change their position, but it also establishes a fun, brisk pace.
Multiversus utilizes traditional fighting game systems like perks, which let players slightly alter how a character is played. If players are okay with a particular character’s weakness, they can continue to lose out on some of their stats in that regard to continue to bolster their strength. The same holds true on the other end, where perks can balance some of the weaknesses of a fighter if they are too glaring.
One of the more major mechanical changes in Multiversus to the Smash formula is the drastic decrease in grabs. While grabs are tied to a specific button in every Smash Bros game, they are only held by certain characters in MultiVersus. Having such a major gameplay feature locked to certain characters could drastically change gameplay, but the decision so far feels like a strong bonus for more thematically minded characters such as Superman.
Like in Smash Bros, a majority of the characters (with a few omissions such as The Iron Giant) are able to double jump. The ability to dodge twice in the also allows more freedom for air combat. These two movement mechanics also tie in with the game’s wall jump. By hugging a wall on the outside of the stage, players can reset their jump or dodge counter and make their way back into the stage. The ability to drop down faster by using the fast fall mechanic lets players hit the ground faster, which also encourages this style of play. Much of Smash Bros out-of-stage combat is played similarly, with players having to approach the edge in the most cautious way possible to avoid being hit again and losing a stock. MultiVersus’ focus on movement means that a majority of ring outs will be caused by big hits, and not the tedious edge game that titles like Smash Bros. Melee have become known for.
Nintendo’s far more strict policies on who can and cannot be in a Smash Bros game don’t hold true for Warner. While there may be certain characters that can not be included in Smash for either copyright or design reasons, or simply the decision to reduce a character to a Mii costume or assist trophy, this often lead to displeased fans. For better or worse, Warner will not have those same convictions when it comes to roster additions. The inclusion of somebody like Lebron James is a clear sign of their policy moving forward. At the same time, I could foresee a situation like with Fortnite, where other IP holders will be doing everything in their power to advertise their properties by including their own characters (part of the F2P way). In other words, expect plenty more Lebron-esque inclusions in Multiversus compared to Smash Bros.
The Free to Play model for the game is an interesting one. Certain things are optionally paid for with microtransactions, ranging from major things like entire characters, to optional skins and the like. Currently, every character in the game can be unlocked simply by playing over time. Time will tell whether this holds true going forward. It is worth pointing out that many fighting games, Smash included, will charge for additional characters made as DLC after release. Given this, it would not be the most ridiculous thing for WB Interactive to change this policy at a later date.
So far, the player numbers for Multiversus have been enormous, with WB Interactive touting over 5 million players downloading the game across all platforms. Nick All-Star Brawl saw strong numbers early on as well, before Steam player counts plummeted to the single digits in recent weeks. The F2P nature of Multiversus will ensure they never reach that point as a worst case scenario. I foresee the game not only being a fruitful venture long term, but it would not surprise me if Multiversus set the economic standard – F2P – for the genre going forward.
