Marvel's Midnight Suns (2022)

I feel so torn about this game. I just beat it after 90 hours, and I'm questioning whether or not it was worth it. The game is fundamentally split into two parts - combat and The Abbey.

Combat is an absolute blast. I'm a big Firaxis fan and I thought this was going to be XCOM with Marvel characters. It's actually drastically different from XCOM. It's still turn based combat but it incorporates a card deck system, think XCOM meets Slay the Spire. I quickly fell in love with it and never got tired of it.

The Abbey on the other hand is an absolute slog. This is where the story and world building takes place and it is SLOW af. It's basically a friendship simulator where you have to go through endless hours of dialog with various Marvel characters in what are essentially "hangout" seshes. This would all be well and good with me as an extra but it's pretty important for improving your hero card builds. And my main gripe with it is that most of the conversations are just dull and flat. I was so bored for most of this part of the game. Maybe games like Disco Elysium, Mass Effect and Divinity have ruined dialog writing for me by setting the bar too high. Some of the convos and characters are fun but others are insufferable and had me skipping everything. And even the skipping takes a while because there is a LOT of dialog, I'm talking 65,000 recorded lines. I wish they had recorded less and given the convos more substance. There is also busywork to be done around the Abbey grounds. This stuff is fine, a decent time waster about as mind numbing as the checklist shit you see in Ubisoft games. Thankfully most of it is largely optional.

All in all the game has a very slow start but once you get the combat it can become addictive. But if RPG friendship simulators are not your thing I cannot recommend this game. I'm a fan of Marvel comics myself, but not huge on the Dr. Strange/Scarlet Witch stuff which is the core of the story. For instance the main antagonists are Lilith and Chton, cosmic demonic entities. I'm more of an X-Men, Spider-Man and Daredevil enjoyer personally. This is definitely targeted towards the more hardcore comics fans. So this is not for everybody, but if all of the above sounds appealing to you then you will absolutely love this game.

TACTICAL DECKBUILDER - Assemble a group of heroes to stop the return of an ancient evil, Chthon.

PROS:

++ Tactical gameplay. The main draw of the game (the tactical card combat) is phenomenal. At first, I was unfairly comparing this game to XCOM, but once I started treating this game as its own IP, I started to fall in love with the combat. Learning how to position your heroes, learning how to use the environment, learning synergies and good team compositions, learning which enemies to prioritize, along with having to adapt your tactics based on which cards you pulled resulted in truly addicting tactical gameplay. The combat system is incredibly refined, engaging, and totally addicting.

++ Selection of heroes. Some heroes took me a while to warm up to, specifically the ones I wasn't familiar with (Nico, Magik, Scarlet Witch, Robbie) but over time, I grew to love the entire roster of playable characters. There's solid character development among the roster, voice performances were quite great, and the team shared an interesting family dynamic. But the most impressive part is how different each hero plays on the field. Every hero feels distinct (though some do share similar traits) and are all fun to use.

++ Addicting progression. Opening new packs (Gamma coils) and unlocking new cards to refine a hero's deck was really addicting. I felt a sense of satisfaction with each new ability gained, or when upgrading current abilities. By the end of my playthrough, each of my characters felt much stronger and I can imagine them getting even stronger once I put some more time in.

++ Balance of gameplay. The game is split into three phases: Daytime (socializing, upgrading and unlocking abilities, assigning hero ops), Combat Mission (the tactical gameplay), Nighttime (hangouts, club meetings, exploring the Abbey). I quite liked the balance and it prevented any one aspect of the game from feeling monotonous. Exploring the Abbey and socializing served as a good mental break from the (often) demanding tactical combat.

++ Social aspects. This is probably the most divisive point. Some hate this, many bear it, and few seem to like it. I quite enjoyed it, especially because I loved learning more about each hero. And you can tell that the developers loved the source material based on how much lore they put into the game through all the conversations you can engage in.

++ Replayability. Like XCOM, this game is infinitely replayable. Upon completion, you unlock NG+, but you can continue playing on the same save file and continue to progress and improve the decks of your heroes. There are also 6 difficulties above normal that you can change to if the game starts to get easy or your heroes become too OP for normal difficulty.

CONS:

-- Narrative. I loved the interactions between the heroes, but I didn't care much for the overall narrative. The Caretaker, Agatha, Lilith, Chthon, and especially the Hunter were all characters I didn't care too much about. I felt no sense of urgency throughout the campaign.

-- Lack of stakes. One thing I love about XCOM is how one bad mission can truly derail your entire campaign. This makes every single one of your moves (on and off the field) meaningful. But in Midnight Suns, there are no stakes. If you fail a mission, you are forced to reload and retry. And the things you build in the Abbey won't necessarily make or break your game. But I recognize that this is an unfair criticism since this isn't XCOM, but still.

-- Subpar visuals. Some characters models look incredibly dated, such as Tony Stark. Some characters look like they came straight from the PS3 generation. Facial animation is quite stiff too. However, the one praise I'll give is the animation of moves and powers in combat.

-- Technical performance. Occasional drops in FPS while in the Abbey. Characters' faces being blurry during a conversation. Decently long load times. Cards not disappearing after being used. Bad performance during final mission. And other miscellaneous visual/performance issues.

-- Slow start. The first 5 hours were incredibly slow. Lots of talking and exposition, and very little combat. I could see many people dropping this game because of its slow start.

-- Limited enemy variety. This is a minor issue, but this game could have used more enemy types. Many enemy types are shared between the Hydra and Lilin forces. The different villains were quite good though! I really liked fighting Crossbones, Venom, Sabretooth, and fallen Scarlet Witch and Hulk.

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a mix of Xcom game play, deck building, Mass effect social- moments/themes, and of course Marvel.

It's an odd mix, that mostly works well, but occasionally feels just a touch off.

The gameplay itself is interesting, with a lot of the strategy coming from both learning how to build effective teams from your very different heroes, building their ability decks, and then gaining upgraded cards after using them in missions.

I found I quickly gravitated towards 4-5 heroes, and got their decks pretty strong. However, the story makes you use most of the heroes are various points, which meant sometimes I had really weak decks or cards, because I hadn't really used that character much.

Overall, I liked the way combats happen, and the gameplay, but it took me sometime to get used to.

The story is solid, its a fun combination of traditional Marvel stuff, with supernatural goings on. It's nothing mindblowing, but much like Mass Effect, the moments I really loved are the hangouts and friendships that develop between the team in downtime after missions.

As you hangout more with the characters, chat and give them gifts, you gain friendship levels which gives perks during game playing including powerful combo attacks. This felt very Mass Effect with the ability to unlock new abilities for loyal party members.

I do think the game suffers some from pacing issues. The game forces you to do a random mission between each story mission, which is fine, since you will want better cards for your heroes. However, despite the world going through a literal apocalypse, these missions lack any pressure or stakes. Unlike Xcom, where you constantly are juggling which missions are most important right now, and often forced to make tough choices on missions to miss, there is no pressure here. In Midnight Suns the rewards for missions are always the same one of four rewards, and they don't really disappear with negative effects.

This means that the pacing is much more meandering. This might appeal to some players, but for me it meant that the events being described, and the actions being taken didn't quite match up.

The game also has a very odd leveling system. You level up, which gets you slightly more HP and slightly more damage; however, enemies autolevel with you...so leveling doesn't really do much beyond letting keep pace. The real thing that makes characters stronger is their decks and abilities, which is not tied to their experience or level.

I also wanted to note that I felt like the ending of the game sort of just happens. We have a ton of build up and stuff that goes on, including some last minute reveals, but then the game just sort of ends with three quick 15 second cut scenes for closer. I feel like it was more a stumble, then a triumphant finale.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Midnight Suns, but I don't think it will be for everyone. Its an odd combination of game styles and directions. However, if Mass Effect meets Xcom sounds appealing, and you don't mind some wonky progression mechanics, I think you should give it a try.

This game is pretty great. But there are a lot of issues with it.I really wish more thought was put into the game design.

Why do we have a cast of 12 hero's, in a game that makes you chose exactly 3 each mission? Why do I spend hours of my life optimizing a select few characters, to have zero choice about who goes on a mission? Why are all the characters dumped on you at once instead of being the objective of a specific mission? Why does each character have only 10 cards? Why does a game that provides no choice have a level system, that effectively makes certain characters extremely weak? Why do I need mods to get a reasonable amount of currency?

Why did it fail - diconnect between gameplay, characters and story?

1. The gameplay is fun, but completely unconnected to the story.

2. The base gameplay has zero narrative impact. People can be fighting in the main story and then have a social event with you as though nothing is happening.

3. The exploration aspect of this game is undercooked, and unneeded. Why did firaxis include an awful Single-A game in my strategy game.

Pros

• customizable decks.
• Fun and unique game system.
• great cast of characters to use.
• pretty active modding community (should be nice in a few years).
• innovative gameplay

Cons

• Paid skins in menu's.
• too many characters for a concise narrative.
• limited personalization.
• terrible camera while playing each mission
• lots of moon logic in narrative, gameplay and systems (the systems lack realism).
• Strange existence of exploration and social elements of the game.
• Strange mobile game systems with multiple currencies.

Major Con (4 stars otherwise)

• The final mission undermines the entire point of building your strong roster, careful deck construction and generally make it so that anyone not the hunter feels super bad to play.
• What is going on with this insane dialogue and plot, like, why is the entire story just constant one liners. Why does nothing make sense. Each marvel film has a few, the rest are plot. They got a little carried away here.

I really feel like this game wanted Divinity Original Sin's 2 gameplay and build customization. Overall, I feel like I'm playing a really fun mobile game, rather than the deep customizable RPG experience I'd have much preferred.

Easily my GOTY, this game is incredibly addicting - I literally couldn't put it down - it masters that 'one more day' cycle of rewards extremely well. Of course, the strategy gameplay itself was always going to be good thanks to Firaxis, but despite some mixed reception, I love the Abbey/ Social Sim portion of the game. Conversations are replete with comic references that fans will enjoy, and I'm never not gonna enjoy going to book club with the two Captains, Blade and freakin Wolverine. In particular, I thought Magik was handled really well here. Across the board, some of the writing and delivery is cheesy and can be cringe, but that's in line with everything Marvel puts out. The abbey exploration 'puzzles' were a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed reading all the collectible diaries about Caretaker/Lilith/Hunter and the Salem-era witch community.

My biggest issue is with the overarching narrative. The story feels aimless and stretched out in Act 1 then a little rushed and hectic in Act 2 and 3. I enjoy the dark magic side of Marvel a lot, so I was still interested in what was going on, but shit doesn't get REAL until Act 3 and there are only about five missions left at that point. I do wish they pulled a bit more from Marvel's line up of actually magical characters instead of doing 'corrupted' versions of better-known villains (similar complaint re: the playable characters) but I understand the reason for this re: sales/brand recognition etc.

On comic references, I loveeeee that Wanda's Legendary ability is called No More - and that she recreates the iconic scene from the comic when you play the card, ugh chef's kiss - I forgive the game for withholding her from us for 30+ hours and for her overall characterization being stuck in the mid-late 2000s.

Bring on the DLC characters, and hopefully, a full Doctor Doom focused expansion in the future.