Marvel Rivals broke onto the gaming scene as somewhat of a surprise. Nobody knew what NetEase was planning when we had the announcement of an upcoming Marvel shooter game, or how big it would become. Funnily enough though, when the game did get closer to release it didn’t just trend by itself – it would always be found in the same conversations as Overwatch 2.
As similar games in similar genres, Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2 have been facing comparisons since the moment we saw Marvel Rivals gameplay, and how its hero shooter mechanics do make it play similarly to Blizzard’s own hero shooter. It’s not entirely a surprise; they are very similar in a lot of ways and the influence is mutual. Yes, Overwatch popularized the ‘hero’ shooter which inspired Marvel Rivals – inversely, the concept of heroes is one that Marvel is largely responsible for in our modern popular culture.
Both games have a lot in common, and are both impacted by the other’s impact in popular culture. Sometimes it feels like fans can lose sight of that, as the conversation becomes a war of popularity, legacy or just blind fandom. Now that the dust has settled after Marvel Rival’s explosive launch, we want to clear it up and help you decide once and for all – which is better right now, Marvel Rivals or Overwatch 2?
We’re going to break down what makes them different, what makes them similar, and who does what best in each category. Remember, both of these titles have had impact on the industry and both have development teams worthy of respect; this will purely be a subjective analysis of what makes both games stand out and where they fall short. We’d love to hear your own opinions too!
With great style comes great responsibility
Let’s start with the presentation of each game. Both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2 have their own unique visual styles. They aren’t all that different, with both being colorful and cartoonish, but Marvel Rivals leans harder into the comic aesthetic whilst Overwatch 2 is more three-dimensional and almost Pixar-like. You can see this even in the character designs, as Marvel Rivals favors the more exaggerated proportions of comic history, whilst Overwatch 2 leans into slightly more realistic bodies whilst giving each character a strikingly unique silhouette.
This is perhaps the hardest category to determine which is better due to exactly how subjective it is. Overwatch 2 is quite clean and almost minimalistic at points with its presentation, whilst Marvel Rivals embraces the chaos – a theme that will run through this comparison. You can see this in everything from the particle effects of attacks all the way through to the tiniest details of the UI. When your ultimate is charged in Overwatch 2 a sci-fi style button faintly flickers as if to show your contained fully charged power; Marvel Rivals however has a violent comic-book style yellow lightning, demanding your attention and representing the incoming chaos of the ability you’re set to use.
Even the voices within Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals share this theme throughout them. Overwatch is known for its characters iconic voices, with accents represented from so many parts of the world. Marvel Rivals feels it has less variety in that department, but it’s more dynamic in the stylistic choices made. For the most part, Overwatch 2 characters all sound like regular people (or hamsters or robots!) from different nations – Marvel Rivals characters sound like they’re from different mediums in different times. Spider-Man is voiced the same as his sleek PS4 and PS5 titles with a modern speaking tone, whilst Moon Knight delivers an intense grit that sounds like it’s fresh out of a moody 90s cartoon. Overwatch 2 is refined and polished whilst Marvel Rivals is chaotic, both to their benefit and sometimes to their detriment.
In this one category it’s hard to make an overall decision, but I’d probably have to give it to Marvel Rivals. Whilst both look great, Marvel Rivals makes more use of its presentation by adding extra flair. Store items have long showcase animations before giving you the character model, maps loading in and games ending come with 2D comic-style animations, and the legacy of Marvel characters is respected through many returning voice actors. Both are great, but Marvel Rival’s chaos, flair and history gives it the edge.
Pure chaos and order in gameplay
The part that’s probably the most important – how the games actually play. This is the section with both the most similarities and also the biggest differences, so let’s dive in. Both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2 play as hero shooters, where characters choose a hero with a bunch of unique powers that they want to play as, and can customize them with cosmetics to express themselves through skins, emotes, and more. The biggest difference comes in how players get to choose their characters, as Marvel Rivals seems to be inspired by what Overwatch once was but no longer is.
Battles are 6v6 in Marvel Rivals, one extra player per team than Overwatch 2, and players are not limited to playing a set role. You can be anyone you want at any time, as long as nobody else chose that character. This structure plays into the theme I discussed earlier of chaos. Marvel Rivals is all about complete player choice and embracing the mess that comes with it. Overwatch 2 opts for a more controlled experience, with one fewer players per team, and the default quick play and competitive settings assigning a certain type of role onto the player. It still offers an open queue experience too, along with a variety of arcade modes, but that in itself is much more divided and controlled compared to Marvel Rival’s one method of play and occasional event/arcade modes.
Once you’re in a game, Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals both work best when playing as a team, but Marvel Rivals incentivises this in ways Overwatch does not. In Marvel Rivals, the team-up mechanic allows some combinations of two or more players to get bonus abilities based on their character choices. These are often lore-focused and serve to both make characters feel more interactive with each other, and allow players to synergise even if they’re complete strangers.
For example, if two players opt to play as Jeff the Land Shark and Luna Snow, both healers, they’ll be rewarded for that smart team-up with a bonus ability. This ability allows Jeff the Land Shark’s standard missile-based attack to become a ball of ice, frozen by Luna Snow’s power, which then slows down enemies within an area after firing it. Luna Snow also gets rewarded with a 15% healing boost. These two players may have never interacted before, it may even be their first game ever, but Marvel Rivals give them gameplay incentives to choose these two characters, as they synergize well together. It will be good for the team to have two support heroes with good healing output, so NetEase built the game around nudging players into a good composition without forcing it upon them.
This is different from Overwatch 2’s approach, where instead of built-in synergy between characters, each one is balanced to work in any composition. ‘Metas’ shift in competitive play around which characters are slightly stronger or weaker each season, and Blizzard offers a never-ending flow of buffs or nerfs to characters to make the game dynamic in the long-term, but not offering any real incentive for team-playing skills to the casual player.
To put it bluntly, I find Overwatch 2’s approach to gameplay and heroes a bit more boring. Some Marvel Rivals characters feel completely broken in how powerful they can be, but NetEase’s design philosophy doesn’t focus on pushing them down to lift others up and artificially change the meta like Blizzard does. NetEase instead opts to make every character incredibly capable and borderline broken in their own right in skilled hands, and then adds on these seasonal team-up mechanics to gently suggest good combos but ultimately just allow players to cause havoc with their own characters.
I’ve revisited Overwatch 2 after Marvel Rivals launch, and I sadly found that the gameplay feels much less exciting than Marvel Rivals because of this desire to patch every character into not having too much ability to sway entire games, rather than just allowing the chaos of overpowering everyone. I like that if I’m a good Iron Man player I can completely dominate a game from the skies, and I like that if I’m playing against a good Hawkeye player then my days are numbered. Overwatch 2 doesn’t feel like that anymore, with all characters feeling almost too perfectly crafted to be just good enough. Pharah can’t stay flying in the air the entire game because that would make a good player too powerful, so she needs to come back down sometimes. Marvel Rivals doesn’t clip characters’ wings, and it makes them feel more like what they are – heroic!
Even the maps of Overwatch 2 embody this idea of restriction and control. The maps are mostly lane-focused in their design, with players being funnelled through one or two main routes to encourage choke points of conflict. Marvel Rivals maps are more open scale and allow for different things to happen, including stealth gameplay through underused parts of the map, all-out brawls between teams in the most random places, and giving players a spot to catch their breath when they’re low on health. Sure, I may have more moments in Marvel Rivals where I’m not doing anything than Overwatch 2, but the majority of time in which I am doing stuff feels all the more dramatic and rewarding because I chose to do it, I played my way and navigated the map the way I wanted to. I chose when I wanted downtime to heal, the path I wanted to creep up behind the enemy lines, and when I wanted to throw myself in the way of a fight. Overwatch 2 feels like it chooses for you.
In sum, Marvel Rivals offers a better moment-to-moment gameplay experience compared to Overwatch 2 because of the player freedom it offers, and the chaos it embraces. Overwatch 2 feels carefully crafted for players to fight in certain ways, and with nobody being able to cause too much devastation or it’d feel unfair. Marvel Rivals lets you feel like the hero you’re playing as, always able to turn the tide of battle, always in control, and embracing the great power along with its great responsibility. For me, I prefer how Marvel Rivals does it.
The world could always use more cosmetics
The games don’t end when the match is over though, I think it’s also worth taking a look at progression in Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2. Both games let the player choose whichever character they’d like to play as from the start – although this is a change for Overwatch as it used to require character unlocks, including through monetization. Both titles also use a battle pass as their primary form of progression, and again I find Marvel Rivals to be a lot more appealing. It’s not just because once purchased they can be returned to and worked through more, unlike Overwatch 2’s limited approach, but let’s discuss it deeper.
From the first season, Marvel Rivals provides playable currency in all their battle passes, along with extremely good cosmetics that could all have been sold individually, and a solid story theme behind it. I can tell you exactly what the current season of Marvel Rivals is about; it’s themed around Dracula’s takeover of New York and how the Fantastic Four and other heroes are fighting against it. The cosmetics all reflect that, the maps give you dialogue and intro/outro scenes for it, and the battle pass even comes with unlockable lore cards with comic book art and full text boxes rich in story.
Overwatch 2 battle passes can be extremely hit or miss, and in my opinion are very lazy and cynical. Firstly, there’s the extremely unwelcome addition of ‘souvenirs’, 3D models of trinkets that can be shown to other players in-game. This was never a good idea, and they feel made exclusively to pad out the battle pass and skimp on good cosmetics. These are truly the laziest cosmetics I’ve ever seen, to the point where I feel they deserved this entire paragraph. Marvel Rivals offers something similar with their ‘collectibles’, but these are handled far better and feel a lot more deserving of inclusion. Through the battle pass you will unlock a few artifact-style items that are just 3D models like Overwatch’s souvenirs, but they aren’t used in-game or touted as “cosmetics” because that would be ridiculous. Instead, they serve as lore tools, showcasing an item discussed in the lore with a small flavor text description, and tucked away in the player’s inventory found through a menu tab. They’re a cute little reminder of the past seasons you’ve played and the lore within them. That’s it.
Overwatch 2 is also lazy through its battle passes with the reuse of animations that are presented as new items. An animation from an emote can be taken from a character, frozen in place, and this will then be passed off as a ‘new’ victory pose. This can be seen in the latest season’s battle pass – the Lion Dance Highlight Intro for Mei is exactly the same as the one for Tracer that was released eight years ago, but they swapped the model inside. Hilariously, they go on to reuse the animation again for Lucio’s highlight intro later in the battle pass – giving them three highlight intros of the exact same thing, the original being eight years old and the two new ones being cynically thrown in and described as new cosmetics and charging players for the battle pass with recycled assets.
In terms of more upfront monetization, both Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals have in-game stores that charge a premium currency to purchase cosmetics. Both games have this currency earnable through the battle pass, though Marvel Rivals offers much more and Overwatch 2 took a while to implement this offering after launching without it. The offerings available are more diverse but fewer in number in Marvel Rivals (as it’s a new game), whilst Overwatch 2 offers more but also often charges premium prices for simple recolorings of old skins. Cosmetics are similarly priced across titles, but Marvel Rivals makes a flashier show of their standout cosmetics. As Marvel Rivals offers more earnable currency, it can make skins feel cheaper to buy as you may find yourself with leftover units to spend, whereas Overwatch 2 is a lot less willing to give players premium currency and thus often resulting in a higher required payment per cosmetic.
Overwatch 2 is gradually making some changes to try and make progression better, so I will give them credit for that. They’re re-intergating loot boxes as earnable rewards, this time they’re unavailable to buy for any currency, and that does add a bit of fun in potentially giving you a really exciting bonus reward that would usually have cost real money. The latest battle pass does also cut down on the number of useless souvenirs too, but still pads it out with fluff voice lines, reused highlight intros as discussed, and uninspired victory poses.
It may be no surprise, but I strongly think Marvel Rivals offers players a better progression system and more rewarding gameplay than Overwatch 2. It’s not just that Overwatch 2 doesn’t give players as much free stuff – it’s that what it asks them to pay for can be so lazy sometimes. It’s almost insulting to buy a battle pass and find that it’s full of recycled assets, reused animations and useless – to be honest – garbage. We’ve only experienced two seasons of Marvel Rivals, and they’re vastly better than anything Overwatch 2 has offered players in its three years on the market.
The verdict
So, in conclusion, which is better to play in 2025? I think Marvel Rivals. It offers more enjoyable moment-to-moment gameplay, has characters that already resonate with many people, and makes each match feel more worth it through rewarding progression systems and team-up mechanics. Overwatch pioneered the genre, and whilst I think Blizzard may be able to turn it around if they can put player experience above monetization and a stagnating competitive scene, for now it’s just no contest. I want Overwatch 2 to do better, but Marvel Rivals is the better game of the two.
Yet this is all just my opinion! What do you think of our comparisons between these two titans of gaming, and which do you think is better: Marvel Rivals or Overwatch 2? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more breaking news and gaming analysis just like this.
