This game is very broken. I encountered at least one bug every 30 minutes while playing, most of them minor, others not so much. The perks system uses crafting mechanics that "feeling tacked on" doesn't even begin to describe, being done with them before even halfway through the game. The combat makes a lower percentage of the game than it's usually the case with this "style", and sometimes fights can be over in seconds.
So why is this my Goty and one of my new favorites?
Plainly put, the narrative is the most fun I've had following a game's "traditional" story in years. These are my favorite versions of these characters hands down, and all of them get their time to shine and develop. There's literally uncountable dialogues and banter to have between the members, and for once I never wanted to miss it. It's so much that sometimes you have to stop walking just so you don't cut a conversation before it's over, they make it feel natural and enjoyable, whether you get a prompt to participate and a dialogue choice or not.
And the narrative, in a move that feels completely alien to AAA games, specially with Square Enix as the publisher, actually affects the gameplay. Characters being angry with you might mean having to ask favors of them a couple times, with context relevant commentary from the group for those situations, or a choice you make might mean one of the guardians leaves the group for a noticeable amount of time. Situations that lack any level of "action" are played through with you at the controller, like trying to get through to a collapse Nova Corps phone number, with your companions shouting suggestions and even trying to sneak a hand in the menu to press options themselves (if you are not fast enough to swat them away)
Small moments like this that play with your expectations of this kind of title, and more conventional combat-less narrative sections were extremely effective with me, and as someone who was getting a bit tired with "prestige games" style gameplay... it was a surprise.
All of this is not to say that the combat is bad, or that I wish there was less of it, not at all! Combat is not very balanced or challenging (in the normal difficulty setting) but what it is is FUN. Setting up the different guardian's special abilities to make victories look cool, rather than just getting through them, became something I was actually invested in. There is a mechanic called Huddle, where you call for your teammates to huddle around you and hear them tell you how they're doing. Maybe they are scared, maybe they are having a blast... Whatever the case, you get 2 options to choose from to rally them up with a speech. It works like Monkey Island insult swordfighting did, one option is the correct one, and the other is the answer to a different situation just like this one. So over time you start to pick up which options fit to which mental states of your crew (I just wish there was more variety here) and then... Licensed music comes in.
This will change person to person, but the classic rock from the real world soundtrack that star-lord carries around made every situation where they used it 10x better for me. After you perform a Huddle, he will play his music from that moment until the fight ends, so you might get back to blasting enemies, full ability cooldowns refreshed for everyone, and "We built this city" blasting on... And I loved it every time. I even loved it when the song that played was "Wake me up before you go-go" by Wham, and I genuinely laughed out loud while I wished for the fight to go long so the song could play fully.
All in all, I'm in quite a dark place at the moment in my life, and maybe on a different time I wouldn't overlook the many flaws of this game like I do now. But I think it's easy to identify how most of those flaws are a product of the awful publisher the game has in Square Enix. Crunch, tacked on crafting, not enough QA... The fact that this AAA licensed game based on a comic made famous by the Marvel movies managed to focus on what's important and deliver an interesting game with great writing and a style to call its own... It's nothing short of a miracle.
And I didn't even mention how much comic weirdness they were able to adapt in a satisfying way! I really wish it wasn't Square Enix publishing this, but I feel like I have to be grateful it doesn't have microtransactions, multiplayer, NFTs... or whatever the fuck.
