Let me get this out of the way right away: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the best comic book/superhero games ever made, full stop. I played this game originally on the Xbox Series X, where it was celebrated and award-winning, but largely ignored by gamers, and that’s a shame. Square Enix has given us a second chance to appreciate Eidos-Montreal’s masterwork, and you should not ignore it. My knowledge of the Guardians of the Galaxy is informed entirely by the MCU movies, but of course there is a bookshelf of comic material to comb through. What I’m trying to say is that I have no idea how comic-accurate these versions of Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Groot, and Drax the Destroyer are, but I know I prefer them over the MCU versions.

Here, the Guardians are monster hunters out for bounties, and have tracked a giant space-fish to a Quarantine Zone, essentially a storage facility overseen by the Nova Corps. As you might expect, things don’t go exactly as planned, and before you know it, they’re dealing with a variety of colorful villains like the Universal Church of Truth, the Blood Brothers, and a Godzilla-sized monster that made me stand up and cheer. It also features the first video game appearance of Lady Hellbender, the Monster Queen of Seknorf Nine, a character I absolutely adore.

As you might expect, you take control of Peter, aka Star-Lord, the leader of the group transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop and the game’s controls and systems emphasize this role. You’ll be doing two things, primarily, while exploring a wealth of strange planets and ecosystems: talking to your fellow Guardians and engaging in combat.

The first task is the most interesting: your teammates will be chatting with each other most of the time while exploring any given map, and they will often ask for Peter’s opinion. You are given a choice between two answers or remaining silent. There are no “wrong” answers, but it really emphasizes the fact that the Guardians of the Galaxy are a team made up of unique individuals with unique personalities, and Peter Quill is a member of that team. This is my favorite part of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: wandering around a weird planet with geometric plants, looking for zenni or character skins and listening to these characters talk to each other. No other game has made me feel so connected to another group of characters. You really start to care about them, and that drives a lot of the emotional impact of the stories.

In addition to talking to your teammates on the open road, you’ll also be talking to a number of NPCs (including Lady Hellbender!) which DO tend to affect how the story progresses (though not to the overarching narrative).

During combat, the team aspect comes through in two flavors: calling on your teammates to perform special attacks and giving motivational talks. Peter is handy with his energy guns, of course, and he’ll learn alternate elemental attacks as the game progresses, but Rocket, Gamora, Groot, and Drax can all use skill points (earned after combat encounters) to learn new special attacks. By holding down the L button, you can select a character (even Peter), and then press one of the corresponding face buttons to attack whatever Peter is locked onto.

For example, you can have Rocket throw a gravity bomb that drags a group of enemies into one spot. You can then have Groot cover the ground with thorns, doing damage to all of them, and then Drax can charge whoever is still alive with a bodyslam. It’s a great system that encourages you to think strategically, and your options increase as the game goes on. Meanwhile, Peter receives new elemental shots over the course of the story, which also factor into enemy shields and individual weaknesses. You can also call a team huddle during lengthy combat encounters, in which the Guardians get together and Peter can give them a pep talk–success (you can fail) means that everyone gets a nice buff and their attack timers shorten up for a little while.

While exploring, the group will face the occasional environmental puzzle, like how do I get up to that ledge? Each Guardian has a different skill that can help: Groot can create bridges, Rocket can get into small spaces, Gamora can throw Peter to higher areas, and Drax can move heavy objects. The puzzles are rarely difficult but further cement the team dynamic. Peter also has a Metroid Prime-like scan visor which will give some hints and give some superfluous but fun information on various objects. You can also eventually scan enemies for their weaknesses.

I found the story to be fantastic. Every Guardian gets a satisfying emotional arc, as well as the team as a whole coming together in the end. Characters who have appeared in the MCU films also appear here, including Cosmo the Spacedog, Mantis, and Adam Warlock, but all of them have completely different portrayals. Cosmo is actually Russian and speaks in somewhat broken English. Mantis never knows what “version” of a person she’s speaking to, and Adam Warlock speaks in hilariously eloquent language. The writing, in particular, is exceptional in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you to give this game a shot, but you may be wondering about the technical performance of a game that originally came out on Xbox One/Series X and Playstation 4/5. The Switch 2 has already proven itself with some miraculous ports, so I was interested in this question myself. Overall, I find it’s essentially identical to at least the Xbox version (which I’ve previously played) while Docked. As you might expect, it takes some hits in Handheld, but not in a way that affects gameplay. It’s things like framerate during cinematics, hair rendering, and lighting–especially as it affects characters’ faces.

That said, this game is drop-dead gorgeous. The environments, both interior and exterior, are incredibly imaginative and unique. Some of the monsters have a Wayne Douglas Barlowe quality about them (which is a huge compliment) and for the most part, I appreciate the new character designs and skins for familiar characters like Groot, Mantis, and Gamora. I think Rocket looks and sounds a little too much like his MCU counterpart, but I suppose you can only do so much with a bipedal raccoon.

The Switch 2 “Encore” version adds new features, none of which are particularly compelling: gyro aiming, which I found superfluous; mouse control for looking/aiming, which might be nice for PC gamers; and a set of exclusive character skins which make everybody look like an 80’s rock star. I just don’t think they’re very good costumes, easily outmatched by most of the alternate skins you can collect during the game (by finding them on planets).

I did, however, encounter an infrequent issue: sometimes, when switching skins for a character (which you can do at any time from the pause menu), the game will “encounter a problem” and kick you back out to the Switch menu. The game auto-saves frequently, so that was never an issue, but I tended to experiment with skin switching only during between-mission downtimes.

But that’s not a dealbreaker by any means! Just an annoyance.

I think Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is absolutely worth playing, but the Switch 2-exclusive features are not compelling enough to recommend over existing next-gen versions. That’s not to say you shouldn’t buy it on Switch 2; if that’s your jam, go nuts, but don’t expect anything absolutely game-changing. Now, for me, the fact that I can play this game on an airplane or in bed is a priceless feature. You don’t have to give me new skins–the fact that it works in Handheld mode alone is worth the price of admission. That said, you should play this game however you can, whether on Switch 2 or something else.