YMMV / Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: While the Official Couple in the MCU films, in the game Peter and Gamora are teammates and only starting to become friends. However whenever the subjects of Peter's romantic history comes up Gamora shows slightly more annoyance than the other Guardians, who mostly mock him for his relationship with Ko-Rel who Gamora also knew. So either Gamora is more honest about how she finds it annoying when Peter is distracted by women in the game or his exes cause problems for the team, or her annoyance is a sign of jealousy. On Peter's end there are a few moments which also suggest he has some romantic interest in Gamora, though again he remains pretty professional and mainly treats her the same as the others. Additionally, Drax (though admittedly during the time he distrusted Gamora) comments that he believed the two were having sex, as that was the only reason he could think of for Peter letting her in the Guardians. Neither Peter nor Gamora express disgust or discomfort at the idea (and as a matter of fact neither confirm nor deny their relationship was sexual at some point), but nothing is ever explicitly shown or discussed one way or another.
• Ass Pull: Most of the Guardians unlock their Ultimate Abilities by overcoming some trauma in their past, implicitly allowing them to focus on the mission. Groot's Gift of the Flora, however, just sort of appears out of the blue for plot reasons, allowing him to resurrect Fin Fang Foom and Peter.
• Broken Aesop: A central theme of the narrative is dealing with grief and loss and having to let go of loved ones who have died. The galaxy is almost destroyed because a twelve-year-old girl couldn't cope with the loss of her mother. This theme is somewhat diluted by the fact that Groot is able to revive people, namely Fin Fang Foom and our protagonist Peter Quill, with little to no issues. However, it's implied that Groot's power only works on the very recently deceased.
• Complete Monster: Magus, the personification of Adam Warlock's dark thoughts, is the true leader of the Universal Church of Truth. Sealed away in the Soul Stone, Magus manipulates the Church's Grand Unifier Raker into brainwashing people into following the Church. Feeding on the souls of his followers, with not even children being safe, Magus, upon his accidental release from the Stone, acquires Nikki Gold to serve as the Church's Matriarch, killing her adopted mother Ko-Rel for protecting her. Using his powers, Magus entraps his followers in a state of despair known as "The Promise", making them believe their deceased loved ones are alive as he devours their souls. With plans to use his ever-growing power to consume the entire galaxy, Magus has his followers' planets wiped clean for their souls, and with Raker perishing by the Guardians' hands, takes over Warlock's body to destroy the galaxy.
• Disappointing Last Level: The climactic showdown with Raker to save Nikki is suitably climactic and grand. But as the credits begin to roll, Magus takes over Adam Warlock and a new final battle begins. However, it's rather awkwardly paced as a large part of it is just the Guardians standing around and mocking Magus, and the actual "fight" is just battling waves of very weak minions that can do little but run up and hit you and get cut down like tissue paper. And if you pick the wrong dialogue option at any point, you die after about half a minute of listening to Magus ramble and have to reload from the last choice.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The story, characters and world-building of Guardians of the Galaxy have been highlighted as the game's strongest assets. By comparison, the combat and level design were noted to be fairly standard and serviceable at best, enjoyable enough on their own but almost entirely carried by the narrative.
• Fandom Rivalry: Fans of the Deus Ex franchise are furious over this game, as Square Enix cancelled the 3rd game in the reboot prequels in order for Eidos to develop this one instead. A common refrain is "they cancelled Deus Ex for this?"
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: As with Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series and Guardians of the Galaxy (2015), the game has been criticized from the get-go of trying to emulate the Marvel Cinematic Universe instead of being its own thing. It didn't help first impressions that the game has the exact same lineup as the first Guardians movie. However, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the classic comic costumes will be unlockable, and given to the players from the start as a preorder bonus. And that the characters themselves retain certain elements from the comics in addition to the MCU.
• Goddamned Bats: Nova or Church snipers are a significant pain to deal with until Peter learns the wind element ability that allows you to suck them in. They typically sit in places you cannot reach, forcing you to either cherry-tap them with Peter's blasters (weak at range) or use a hero ability. Similarly, they prioritize aiming at Peter over your teammates.
• Harsher in Hindsight: An optional conversation with Rocket has him pull a "Secretly Dying" prank on Quill. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Rocket is gravely injured by Adam Warlock and the story hinges on the Guardians rushing to save his life.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the game's licensed songs, "Since You've Been Gone", ended up being part of the soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
• Narm: The dialogue makes liberal use of Pardon My Klingon — like "flark" for "fuck" and "scut" for "shit" — in an attempt to show that the game's universe is an edgier one. However, the fact that nearly every line incorporates one of these made-up swears can make things sound awkward and childish. Doesn't help that "scut," at least how Rocket pronounces it, can be easily mistaken for the common name "Scott."
• Narm Charm: Peter's speeches during the huddles are extremely corny but rather than making you cringe it adds to the charm and makes them feel quintessentially Peter.
• Nightmare Fuel: The fact that Raker kidnapped Nikki and brainwashed her into becoming the Church's Matriarch is nothing short of chilling.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: This game is well-received for its story, world-building and gameplay. Many have praised the game for carving out its own unique identity instead of chasing after the live-service fads or copying the MCU look.
• Porting Disaster: The Nintendo Switch version of the game is a cloud game, not a native port. It's quite laggy and stutters a lot.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Whenever you perform a huddle mid-battle, just before re-entering the fray, Peter will play a random song on his tape deck. Unfortunately, it is actually random, and not every song they licensed particularly makes sense. So sometimes you'll get a kickass rock song that gets you pumped, while other times you'll get something more chill like "Don't Worry Be Happy," which clashes pretty poorly if you are in the middle of a heated battle. And sometimes the standard background music is cool enough that you'd rather just listen to it than a licensed song, pushing you to ignore the huddle mechanic and its bonuses altogether.
  • As has become largely standard for modern action games, there is no form of Mercy Invincibility whatsoever. For most players, this probably won't be that big of a deal, but it combines with an annoying quirk of the auto-save system that means that if you get killed during the middle of an intense battle, Star-Lord can end up re-spawning in the middle of a group of enemies — who will almost immediately Gang Up on the Human, stun-lock you, and potentially kill you again before you can do anything. Groot and Rocket Raccoon both start out with abilities that you can use to immobilize or kill the enemies, allowing you to escape, but the window to use them can be quite small, and even then, chances are you're going to lose some health.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Square Enix's first attempt at a superhero game, Marvel's Avengers, got blasted for turning out to be live-service game that lacked polish and any meaningful narrative. This game, by contrast, caught a lot of people off guard on release and ended up getting a lot of glowing reviews for not only fixing all of the issues that Avengers had, mainly eschewing the live-service elements in favor of being single-player but going up and beyond with its treatment of the source material and told an engaging, complex, story; to the point where it won Best Narrative at The Game Awards 2021.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The fact that Square Enix published this game turned off many people due to how mediocre Marvel's Avengers turned out. It didn't help that the game was marketed very aggressively during 2021 E3 and in a way that did not emphasize its strong points, which also soured a lot of people on the game and ended up reflecting badly on its sales.
  • More than a few people were disappointed that on a team consisting of such wacky characters like a talking tree, a gun-toting raccoon, a Green-Skinned Space Babe, and a space Barbarian Hero, you are seemingly only able to play as the White Male Lead.
• That One Attack: The blindness attack that Raker can use on you during the battle against him. Not only does it allow him to cheese the game's lack of Mercy Invincibility by letting him spam you with attacks that you'll have little hope of dodging in your visually-impaired state, but it also temporarily disables your team-mates' abilities, meaning that if you urgently need Groot's health restoration ability, you're out of luck.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Quite a few people have expressed disappointment that Nikki is not Peter's biological daughter, feeling that it would make both characters more interesting and help to differentiate Peter from his MCU counterpart.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Fans were pleasantly surprised when the game was shown to include Lady Hellbender, a fairly recent D-Lister who's more associated with Elsa Bloodstone and Amadeus Cho.
  • Quite a few of the bosses are characters not known for crossing paths with the Guardians, including Dweller in Darkness, Wendigo, and even Fin Fang Foom!
  • While they simply appear as cameos on a computer screen, it is still surprising to see Richard Rider, Darkhawk, Moondragon, Wraith and Quasar.
  • Jack Flag also makes an appearance where you can accidentally send him into space as does Ruby Thursday.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's low-key, but when characters are on the verge of tears, their eyes also redden.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Thanos's design has drawn many unfavorable comparisons to the theatrical version of Steppenwolf.

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