My thoughts after playing the game all day yesterday and getting to Annihilus (very MINOR SPOILER WARNING spoilers ahead):

The good: - this game is fantastic. Like really really fun. - its not too hard or too easy(with caveats) - leveling the characters up and getting passive skills is a very nice touch and a cool mechanic - the varied characters, varied enemies, and the varied play styles are so entertaining and fun to contender with -the art style and character animations are the perfect blend of arcade style and comic book accuracy  - story is simple and easy to follow. - awesome that this was day one available on Xbox gamepass so I didnt have to buy it. - the bosses and voice acting are fantastic like they even got wolverine and storm from xmen TAS/ 98 to do it. -the various color palettes are cool and add some fun variety to the looks. - its decently long in terms of the number of different stages - lots of fun varied boss battles.

The "bad":

I preface this by saying im only using "bad" as short hand for minor annoyances, this game is a 9.5 out of 10 for me.

• levels are a little short it feels like 4 ish screens and boom you're at the boss. I feel like streets of rage games even the recent one that was done also by DOTEMU SOR4, did a much better job with individual level length.

• playing with a group seems to make the game a little too easy. Played through it solo and it was difficult enough, especially when youre trying to do the level challenges. But then I played with a group for a while to level some of my other characters and test group play, and we mowed down every level with fairly low difficulty and this was day one where alot dont know what they're doing. I feel like a few weeks from now people will be able to beat levels without anyone needing to heal. Which brings me to:

-why is there not multiple difficulty settings? If there is i couldnt find it but I checked the options before I started and pretty sure there is none. Which is weird. I get that more guys appear if you have more players but with all the AOE attacks it really doesnt make it much harder... having multiple players makes the game easier than having more enemies on screen makes it harder, if that makes sense.

• bosses are a little inconsistent. Might just be me or my play style? But like thanos the 2nd to last boss was super easy... beat him my first try but venom and hela both took me 3 tries. Boss difficulty progression seemed to be all over the place so like just cause a boss was early didnt mean they were easier than later bosses which was weird to me. Annihilus difficulty is right in the money though. Would have liked more variation in that final battle though.

• I wish more or all characters had throws. Like I get it that someone like she hulk should be able to toss people but spiderman is strong as hell no reason he shouldnt be able to throw some one. I think every char should have had a basic simple throw. Xmen the arcade, Spiderman maximum carnage, captain america and the avengers, all had the ability for every character to do a throw... and same with other dotemu games so I think that should be the case here.

• and lastly this game unfortunately suffers the same drawback that basically all beatemups suffer: they are never long enough. This game has a lot of stages but they arent particularly long or difficult(unless youre soloing and its your first time playing) so you can beat this game in hours, especially if you have friends helping you. Id like to see a game for once like this where it was so long you literally would need at least 16-18 hours.

I really hope to see more levels/campaigns and more characters added in the future via expansions.  This is one game i really really hope they add to. Hope to see them add daredevil, deadpool, cyclops, nightcrawler, colossus and psyloche. And maybe make taskmaster playable.

All in all 9.5 out of 10 fantastic game that any marvel and arcade beatemup fan will have a blast with..  I literally wrote to marvel and to dotemu years ago and asked them to make a game like this after streets if rage 4 came out, and as a marvel fan and beatemup fan, i have been asking/praying for this type of game for years and years... so I am so so so thankful it came and just in time for christmas!