About as good as any modern Marvel movie.
So, LMSH2 isn't based off of any particular story or movie, instead featuring Kang the Conqueror, as he meshes various places and eras together, thus, Wakanda is sitting only a few blocks away from Hala, which in turn is a few blocks away from Noir New York. That said, the Lego figures take after their MCU counterparts for the most part, which isn't something I'm particularly fond of. The story was alright, I guess, but I found it uninteresting and the humor fell flat on its face most of the time. Look, I hate the MCU's dumb humor, and tries to be as funny as, say, Dr. Strange, yet is just as unfunny.
The game is... well, it's pretty much like any other Lego game you've ever played. You take control as any character from a massive who's who roster, and are joined by CPU applies, although another player can join you. Then you proceed to engage in brain-dead combat while solving very basic puzzles, or breaking down stuff so that you can hold down a button to build stuff and progress. It's honestly like any other game in the series, and I'm almost shocked at how little these games have evolved, considering they weren't ever much fun to begin with.
What is sorta new, at least as far as the games I played, is that the game takes place in an Open World, and flying around it was really fun. Taking off as Star-Lord or Iron-Man and going from place to place felt really good... even if the camera gets bonked. I mean, the right analog stick turns into a secondary set of flying controls, so you lose control over the camera which was uncomfortable to say the least. Took a while for my muscle memory to remember that I lost control over the camera whenever I started flying. It's dumb, but you can get used to it, and, once again, flying around feels pretty darn nice.
Both the open world and the missions have a lot of stuff you can break down, which feels really nice too, as there's a lot of destructibility for you play around with. The sound that plays when you collect studs is super satisfying as well. The game has a TON of stuff to do, from secrets to missions, so if you enjoy the game, there's a lot of game to get lost in, but...
... a lot of it is super repetitive. There's a bunch of racing missions, but I gave up on them as the physics got in the way all the time. Didn't manage to avoid a pedestrian? Too bad, crashing onto the kills your speed and will cost you the mission. Restarting the races was sometimes a pain in the rear too, since allied Lego would sometimes appear in front of you, once again, butchering your start. It was so annoying. And character missions, the ones that unlock playable characters, were the worst, you'd either have to find and speak with five NPCs, fly all over the world using a barely helpful radar collecting items, or follow the character and fight three waves of enemies, these latter missions are very tedious and boring. Easy, but they take forever.
There are also bugs and glitches, lots of them, One of the first missions you can try on the overworld is about helping a guy with his play. But his son, the main actor, never spawns, so you don't ever get the reward for finishing the mission. You can soft-lock some missions too. Oh! And when I first attempted platform-circuits with Ms. Marvel I kept falling off of it, so I thought it was so buggy that the 2-D planes weren't too 2-D.... turns out, only that circuit was bugged, as it never happened again. OH! And this might be an issue only on the Switch, but it may take a few seconds for NPCs or mission-givers to spawn once you reach them.
Puzzles are not the only thing you'll be doing in the game, there's also combat, and it was incredibly annoying. It's a Lego game, so stakes are very low and there's no penalty to death. And yet, enemies have incredibly lengthy periods of invincibility in which the only thing you can do is wait. Enemies carrying weapons are the worst, because their invincible attacks take forever, and you have to wait and wait for their invincibility periods to end so that you can sneak in some attacks before they start their animation again. These extends to bosses as well, but it's even worse because their attack animations are even lengthier and their life bars are even longer. Mordo was the worst of the bunch, that fight took forever. It wasn't even hard, just incredibly boring.
And that's not even getting into specialty enemies. Some enemies have gold armor, so you need a character with heat beams, such as Ms. Marvel or Iron-Man to destroy their armors before anyone can hurt them. Then there are the ones with Diamond armors, in which case you need a character such as Iron-Man(Just make sure to have Iron-Man in your party) or Rocket-Raccoon to use an explosive on them before anyone else can hurt them. It's so annoying, it's perfectly possible to come around these enemies and not have any character that can break their armors, in which case you have to hold down the X button to swap in another character. Why? And the worst part is, your OWN team-mates may stand in the way of your explosives or beams, making it even harder to attack these bastards. And EVEN worse, the friendly AI is completely useless and will mostly stand around, doing nothing or getting in the way of your attacks, so you can't even trust them to use Iron-man and break down the armors of the armored enemies. And melee attacks? The auto-targeting system will just aim your attacks towards your allies if they are closer than an enemy. I remember this being a thing in previous games, why they never changed it is beyond me.
The Electro 2099 fiht was something else. It makes you fight him THREE times, and every fight is identical to the last, you have to wait for him to expose himself THREE times so that you can hit him ONCE. And this identical fight is repeated THRICE. THRICE!!! This game is such a chore, I swear to god. But the worst levels are the ones that have endless enemy waves, so you are trying to do stuff while enemies constantly come out to annoy you.
And the character roster is kinda lame too. No X-Men or Fantastic Four, instead we get Marvel versions of... King Arthur and Merlin? An undead Pharaon? Horus? Or oldschool characters nobody remembers such as Captain Corbet or Rawhide Kid. In the game's defense, there's, what, over 200 characters? Maybe more? But there are so many characters nobody cares about.
Another thing I wasn't really fond of is the fact that you can't 100% percent any stage on your first attempt, for you see, the first time you play a stage you are forced to use a very specific team that won't be able to solve anything. You could see this as replay value, I see it as forcing you to play the ENTIRE game again just because. Once again, there's no penalty for dying, so there's no good reason you shouldn't be able to swap between your available characters on your first run through a stage.
One thing I did think was brilliant was the character creator. There's so much fun stuff you can do with a customizable character, and so many different powers and abilities, and you can even customize those, such as changing how a projectile looks and where it comes out from. I had a blast creating my very own original character that could pretty much solve any puzzle, and fly, and shoot, and carry two swords... It was the best part of the game.
But since I didn't like this game, I'd rather end on a sour note. The controls are sticky. Maybe it's the frame-rate on the Switch, but if the character you are playing as has hold-button abilities... when you mash to attack or perform a double jump, the game might read your input as a charge, thereby cancelling your attacks or jump, which was incredibly annoying. After I realized that I toggled off charge attacks for my Original Character and had the most fun I could with the game.
I don't get it. I don't understand how this series of games have had so many entries while changing so little, considering the games have a very mediocre formula. The puzzles? Simple, repetitive. The combat? Cumbersome at best, a trainwreck at worst. The story? Unenjoyable. Honestly, I can't say I liked this game, and I officially give up on the Lego series. They are most definitely not for me. I won't deny I had fun at times, but the parts I didn't enjoy far outweigh the ones I did.
3.5
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