YMMV / LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2

• Adorkable: Ms. Marvel, due to her bubbly personality and over excitement in situations.
• Demonic Spiders: The Ninja mooks, like any enemy in the game with a healthbar they are damage sponges, however they also dodge any projectile attacks and have a backflip attack that goes for way too long, makes them inmune to any damage and can turn invisible, certainly not helped by the stiff combat controls.
• Franchise Original Sin: One of the sticking points for critics of the game is the game not using Fantastic Four or X-Men characters due to the infamous embargo on the characters in favor of focusing on characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first game already heavily leaned on the MCU, with numerous references to the films within the game, and the LEGO Marvel's Avengers game was based specifically on the films, but the former integrated the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the main plot which slightly offset the MCU focus, while the latter was based off of the MCU specifically, which meant the game was far less controversial due to the understandable legal issues. Fans were far less forgiving to 2, however, due to it being a direct continuation of the first game (due to Galactus being indirectly mentioned in Kang's introduction by Nick Fury), which made the absence of the cast members of those franchises incredibly glaring.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In no other LEGO game has Regenerating Health best allowed the cheesing of boss fights, since the damage sponge nature of the majority means health is the biggest concern, and outside the rare One-Hit Kill attack, using a character with a Healing Factor is near-mandatory to get through them quickly due to not needing to worry about dodging. It especially helps that almost every story team has at least one character with the ability.
  • Thanos is an especially egregious case when it comes to bonus characters. His Power Stone ray is a valid answer to most environment puzzles, he doesn't even need to attack to do damage and has wide melee range when he does due to being a bigfig, he can fly using his hover chair, he has a dodge move with the Space stone, and he gains health on kill with the Soul stone. The only weakness he really has is that he can't interact with sonic attack puzzles, and he's too large to flip switches or enter smaller spaces.
• Goddamned Bats: Dealing with symbiote-infected mooks is a major annoyance, as not only do you need to make sure you're fast enough to attack the detached symbiote before it infects one of your NPC allies, but you need to perform a several-seconds-long stomping attack three times before it finally dies, and if you weren't attentive about moving your allies away it'll infect them regardless, adding several seconds of infection, punching off, and reforming before you can try hitting it again. The one saving grace is that they're limited to one mission and a single related sidequest.
• Good Bad Bugs: Some of the vehicle races require a super-slow van to test, but a coding oversight classifies the decently fast "Captain America's 4x4" as a "van", meaning using that can allow to much more easily deal with those races than intended.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • After having been more than a little skeptical of the heroes for most of the story, by the penultimate level, J. Jonah Jameson is in full support of them when they're ready to save the day.
    "...I can't believe I'm saying this, after all the mistakes they've made but...good luck heroes! Yeah, even Spider-Man.
  • Spider-Man taking a moment to notice how his Noir counterpart has 'lightened up'.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The game came out around the time characters whose film rights were owned by 20th Century Fox, primarily the X-Men and Fantastic Four, were Out of Focus in most media adaptations, and thus were no-shows in this one (a fact that the game quietly references a few times). About a month after this games release, Disney, who owns Marvel, announced a deal to buy out Fox's entertainment assets, including the film rights of the X-Men and Fantastic Four. The deal was eventually finalized on March 20, 2019, which will likely make use of characters related to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four possible in future Lego Marvel games.
  • While visiting Manhattan, Hemidall mentions wanting to see “the cats that sing.” Two years after this game’s release, Idris Elba, who plays Hemidall in the MCU, would play Macavity in Cats’ infamous movie adaptation.
  • One of the big surprises of the game was that Kang the Conqueror is the Big Bad, in due to the fact that he hadn't appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which many Marvel-related products including this one drew major inspiration from at the time of its release. And then he appeared in Loki's season finale, setting him up as a potential new Big Bad for the MCU. Even better, he's set up as the main villain of the Multiverse Saga. Now what's the premise of this game again?
  • With this game reintroducing the Guardians of the Galaxy as Ascended Extras based on their MCU versions, it also introduced another Guardian from the comics in Cosmo the Space Dog, who has prominent relevance to the plot. Then it turned out the next direct filmology for the Guardians in the MCU (The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) would introduce and give prominent roles to the MCU's own version of Cosmo.
• Narm Charm: The voice actors brought in to substitute the previous ones create a perfect blend between corniness and fun to match the premise of the game.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Kang's treatment of Ravonna is disturbingly reminiscent of genuine emotional abuse.
  • It's much more toned down compared to last game, mostly because their scenarios happen in fully lit locations this time, but the Nueva York level involving Symbiotes is still rather disturbing, especially the horrific, blatantly unwilling Fusion Dance between Venom and Carnage to make Carnom. There is one new aspect that makes this section slightly creepier than last game, though, and it's the fact that enemies possessed by Symbiotes have them split off once the host dies, and if you aren't fast enough at killing the Symbiotes, which on their own are surprisingly horrifying-looking when slithering on the ground, they'll possess one of the playable characters, forcing you to Beat the Curse Out of Him.
• Replacement Scrappy: Not everyone accepted the more popular Fourth-Wall Observer getting replaced by Gwenpool, with many finding her completely unfunny compared to her predecessor.
• Retroactive Recognition: As Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate brought Skye Bennett to fame, her role as Wasp in this game (predating her Star-Making Role by about a month) is frequently brought up by her streaming community as an in-joke. The same goes for other XC2 voice actors with roles in the game, such as John Schwab.
• Tainted by the Preview: The lack of any X-Men or Fantastic Four elements (aside from Kang the Conqueror, although he's been transplanted to the Avengers since the late 1960s) advertised before release made a few people reluctant to buy the game, due to how frustrated they are with the casts of said franchises being gradually phased out of adaptations in The New '10s.
• That One Boss: The penultimate boss fight against Korvac can be pretty annoying to go through on the first run, with multiple factors owing to it. One of the main issues is that Korvac can only really be hurt by Iron Man's laser attack, which is difficult to aim properly due to the multiple mooks trying to attack, including some with durable armor. In addition, holograms of Kang will come into the fight between phases to cause anyone caught in them to float, even Korvac himself. The gravity of the fall doesn't help things either, especially since Iron Man and Star-Lord's flying abilities are cancelled out. To make matters worse, want to get True Believer status or get any studs in the aftermath? Good luck with trying to keep any without unlocking some Pink Brick cheats.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The final minikit when fighting Maximus the Mad is only available during the portion of the fight where there is no gravity. The controls to maneuver towards it are tricky, the camera angle makes it difficult to approach it correctly, and missing it requires starting the entire level over again (a problem not seen since the original LEGO Batman).
  • Likewise, one of the minikits in the "Hydra Hijinks" level involves you flying a plane through stud circles to reach it. The good news? You don’t have to start the level from scratch if you miss it. The bad news? It’s in an easily missed part of the level, the camera rotates all over the place, and perhaps the most damning of all: it’s an autoscroller. This means that you can’t fly the plane freely, and you can only move left and right, which means if you miss the minikit, you have to wait nearly 5 minutes to get a chance to reach it again. People have spent hours trying to get this one minikit, and it’s considered one of the hardest minikits to get in the entire game.
  • Many of the Chronopolis Challenges to unlock the game's vehicles aren't too bad as the objectives provide audio cues when you're close or are easy to spot from far away. The primary exceptions are the ones for hitting all of the vehicle stunt ramps, flying through 10 rings of birds, swimming through 10 rings of fish, and killing 10 of the spores in Sakaar as there are no clues other than visual, the draw distance on them is short, and Chronopolis is a big place.
  • The boss battle against Korvac is already a case of That One Boss, but trying to get the collectibles and rescue Stan in Free Play is the real pain to deal with in that arena, because the wonky gravity that occasionally launches you in the air and the knockback-inducing lasers from Korvac make it ridiculously difficult to both reach and use any of the implements without dying normally, stun-locking with an invincible character, and being knocked down from the upper level.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Iron Man's 2016 armor is liked by the fans of the game, and him reverting back to the Mark 47 armor due to the former being broken disappointed some players.
• Unexpected Character
  • Due to the fact many Marvel products are tied to the MCU, including the first LEGO Marvel game, the presence of Kang the Conqueror as the primary antagonist is rather surprising.
  • The first boss of the game? None other then ESON THE SEARCHER, AKA A CELESTIAL! The only major appearance he's had outside of the comics up until this point is a brief cameo in the first Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) movie.
  • Howard the Duck is in the game, though that's not surprising. What is surprising is that he can use his Iron Duck Suit in this game, and the only time he actually used that suit was in the battle against Doctor Bong in Howard the Duck #30.
  • A symbiote fusion is in the game. Before you ask, no, it's not the previously established Hybrid. It's a completely new fusion name "Carnom", who's a fusion between Carnage and Venom. While they're both highly popular symbiote characters, they both have disdain for each other, so them combining is the last thing anyone would expect.
  • This game features a lot of Spider-Man's villains, such as Electro, Doctor Octopus, the Lizard, Mysterio, and etc. It also however features Hammerhead and the Tinkerer who, while well known, are nowhere near as popular as other members of Spidey's Rogues Gallery.
  • And Red Wolf, and Hit-Monkey, and Forbush Man, and Stingray, and M.O.D.A.M., and the Presence, and Throg, and Sentry-459, and Arácnido Jr., and Darkstar, and Chipmunk Hunk & Koi Boi, and Darkhawk, and Kid Colt, and Captain Corbett, and the Living Totem, and Vormund, and Greenskyn Smashtroll, and Torg the Abominable Snow-King, and Hellcow, and Cap-Wolf... really, the list goes on and on.