I've notice the Lego Marvel games are sort of spiritual successors to the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series.
This game gives you around 300 characters to play as, and while I've always found this to be a weaker spot in other Lego games; sure we can play as 100 Star Wars characters, but at least 20 of them are different versions of clone troopers. This is where the 50+ years of Marvel history to pull from helps. While characters may share some of the same power sets, they're all visually different & have some slight variations, like the Rawhide Kid playing a banjo. And I applaud Lego/TT Games bringing attention back to the Marvel Western heroes. I'm definitely House Marvel, but I always felt DC treated their Western heroes better, Jonah Hex is one of my favorite comic series.

The story is up to par with all the other Lego games. The X-Men didn't make it into this game for some reason. You could say because they're owned by 20th Century Fox, but they were in the 1st game & Fox owned them then. Their omission may've been a benefit though as it gave room to have more obscure villains, like the Presence or Capt. Corbett. And as the big bad, Kang is a good fit. The humor in Lego game stories as always been more miss than hit, but that's because it's a kids game, so the jokes are purposefully mild, but I admit this one had a few moments that made me chuckle.

I learned after the fact that this game suffered from a voice actors strike, so it was odd having returning characters recasted like Iron Man & Cap, but most of these new actors actually do half decent jobs. Rocket sounds like Rocket, Ms. Marvel is expectedly giddy. The only acting that didn't really sell me was Captain America. His delivery was a bit flat.

The open world for this game is awesome, but I'm partial to time travel. With little chunks of the Old West & Feudal England & pulling from the comic universe, places from 2099 & Marvel Noir. All with great and fitting soundtracks. The level set in the Marvel Noir universe had my favorite music. The one downside of this open world is the traversal. If you fly around you're fine, but the roads aren't laid out the best for roads. The cars handle a little too touchy, with Ghost Rider's motorcycle being the worst offender. His bike was so good, & cool looking, in the first game too. If you just touch the stick the car barely moves, hold it and it veers off sideways. And some of the roads aren't best laid out for driving, especially around Asgard. This makes some of the races nerve-testing.

I did encounter a few bugs throughout my playtime. The game froze twice, there were a few times when buttons didn't work properly, and I think there were points where the open world music broke. As you pick a team to play as it plays a dramatic theme, then once you get back into the open world it keeps playing that theme ad nauseam, instead of playing the various world themes.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game & plan to try for 100% completion, it's an easier goal to reach in Lego games.