After a yearlong absence, Warner Bros. and Player First's Smash Bros.-style fighting game, MultiVersus, has returned. The game's full launch today follows an open beta period in 2022-2023 and a period of not being available. Now that it's back, MultiVersus has new characters (Joker, Jason Vorhees, and Banana Guard), new environments, and the exciting new cooperative Rifts mode. MultiVersus is free to play, so now is a great time to try it out.
Upon launching the game, players must agree to the updated ToS and link to/create Warner Bros. accounts if they haven't already done so. Next comes the tutorial. It must be played before you can access anything else, even if you played the open beta before. It's slightly janky and incomplete for a tutorial, but it only consists of two matches, so it goes by quickly. Then it's fun time!
Back in the open beta period, MultiVersus was criticized for not giving players enough to do. That is now partially solved by Rifts mode, an all-new campaign that is broken up into chapters. There are currently two playable chapters (plus the tutorial chapter), but more will unlock over time. Rifts supports five difficulty levels with varying rewards. Within a chapter, players will engage in lots of unique matches against AI enemies, the fights often beginning with text-based dialog.
Rifts supports 2-player online co-op, which is great. To play with a partner, the second player must join from within Rifts mode, even if they were already in the host player's lobby on the main menu. That wonkiness aside, the matches we played were quite enjoyable. It looks like a promising mode that will keep players busy, especially in combination with the many daily objectives, battle pass objectives, and other objectives that you'll encounter throughout the game.
All those objectives are common in free to play titles like MultiVersus. There are now two types of currency: Fighter for buying fighters and Gleemium for buying bundles and other items from the in-game store. Said store is filled with all kinds of bundles that contain characters, skins, and more. Buying a character by itself with the general Gleemium currency would cost $20, but it remains to be seen how expensive or time consuming it will be to unlock characters through other means.
MultiVersus is now available on Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, and Epic. It's free to play, so give it a try.