After a year of rumors Multiversus has been confirmed and released. Featuring a rather surprising cast of characters from Warner Bros. Discovery’s vast animated and live-action roster including DC, Hanna-Barbara, HBO, and several others. Content will be expanded and released over time including season one which includes Black Adam, Gremlins, and Rick & Morty.

Multiversus is a 2022 fighting game, it is developed by Player First Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is available on PC, Playstation, and Xbox currently for free to all players.

Editor’s Note: This review for Multiversus is based upon the final weeks of the closed beta, first weeks of open beta, as well as the start of season one’s release. Gameplay may very well have changed prior to the final version of this review being posted so please consider that upon reading.

Bugs can now face Finn in Multiversus

Prior to it’s initial release Multiversus was heavily rumored and later leaked. Following great critical reception the full game was released on August 15, 2022. With plans to incorporate nearly every IP currently within Warner Bros. Discovery’s library Multiversus is looking to become perhaps the most ambitious crossover fighter ever. While it’s still early to say for certain Multiversus is well on it’s way to being a proper successor to Super Smash Bros.

The Multiversus launch roster.

THE GOOD: Since the unexpected, but also very expected end of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster updates crossover fighters have been clawing at the chance to be the next big thing. We’ve had a few solid entries like Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl but games like it were hindered by admittedly odd launch choices like a lack of voice acting. Multiversus has taken some lessons learned from both former titles and it’s a pretty excellently packaged product out of box. Multiversus launched with a rather healthy roster of 16 characters at the beta’s release giving players plenty of different and similar play styles to toy around with before they found the character they were most comfortable with. I personally found Harley Quinn to be rather approachable for beginners due to her having good attack power combined with long ranged attacks and some decent speed. Of course some players also did some fun trolling with over-powered as hell characters such as Taz & The Iron Giant (the former has since been debuffed).

There’s three main gameplay modes: 1 vs 1, tag team, and four way free for all. The goal is to get the opponent’s health percentage as high as possible to make knockouts as easy as possible. There’s perks certain characters have such as stronger defense and higher jumps that are unlocked through level progress that’s earned as you play. In addition to pointe you also gain coins for every win or loss which can be used to unlock characters. A battle pass is present which unlocks some unique content such as special knockouts and taunts. You can also use premium currency known as gleamium which unlocks legacy character designs such as Batman: TAS Batman & Batman: TAS Harley Quinn.

Supporting you team mate is just as important as a powerful attack in Multiversus.

Something a tad unique to Multiversus’ style of play is the importance of support. Each character has some form of support technique meant to aide a partner in tag teams which is kind of rare for fighting games. These range from Batman saving a partner from dying with the batclaw to Steven Universe protecting them from damage with his bubble shield. Another thing unique and pretty awesome about Multiversus is that WBIE have given the devs creative leeway to embrace fandom and meme culture which may arguably be Multiversus’ most powerful weapon in drawing players in. For most fighters based on IP especially it’s usually a pretty straight forward one to one adaption. Multiversus however seemingly wants to go beyond mere imitation of “IP meets fighting game” and this much became clear when the debut trailer featured Shaggy Rogers’ Ultra Instinct meme which of course is a rib from the transformation from Dragon Ball.

One has to wonder if WB is open enough into including it’s much more mature IP as well as memes into the game what could that mean for the possibility of guest characters? It’s one of the things that made Smash famous, but WB is at liberty to being vastly more creative compared to Sakurai who purposely limited the Smash roster to video game only characters. If they really want to get crazy WB could open the flood gates for non-WB characters to enter the game giving it that much more replay value. Lebron James’ incarnation from Space Jam: A New Legacy was recently added to the game so the sky’s the limit currently.

Multiversus’ large character roster wants to fit any and all play styles.

THE BAD: Multiversus currently has no story campaign, at least not for the beta. And it remains to be seen if that will change upon full release. The monetization of the game is easily the worst part. While a good bit of it is fair, there’s no reason why legacy or “epic” character designs from a franchise’s past incarnation should cost upwards of $20USD. And from what I’ve gathered there’s currently no in-game free to play method to earn Gleamium currently which is the premium currency for characters and legacy skins. I’d also want to point out how easy it is to get KO’d or KO someone else. In Smash if you’re good enough you can get your health percentage up to 300%+ and keep going. However, in Multiversus you’ll be lucky to survive upwards of 150% and it feels strange. I understand that this game is aimed more to casuals and kids (sans a few questionable roster choices in that regard) but even kids love a good challenge. Arenas are also a tad bit limited currently but those have been confirmed to be added over time.

Multiversus features a solid battle pass? but it’s monetization can be a bit egregious.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Multiversus may very well be on it’s way to be the first true rival to Smash since it’s release in 1999. With an already solid launch roster and even more impressive leaked and confirmed roster the game already has a bit of an edge for hype compared to Smash roster reveals. Gameplay is a solid foundation but it definitely needs some tweaking like changing up how easy it is to get knocked out and vice versa. There’s also a bit of a monetization issue for premium content and lack of a campaign mode of some kind. Naturally, these issues can be fixed with content updates over time which is fine and to their credit First Player Games is already releasing some new content as season one roles out. Multiversus is an impressive outing from it’s beta and it’ll hopefully only get better from here.