Marvel’s Midnight Suns is the ultimate crossover event combining the rich story, character relationships, customization and progression of an RPG with the tactical strategy and combat mechanics of a revolutionary new card-based tactics game. Set in the darker side of the Marvel Universe, you will forge unbreakable bonds with legendary Marvel Super Heroes and dangerous supernatural warriors in the fight against the world’s greatest threat yet…the demonic forces of Lilith and the elder god Chthon.
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This game should be the poster child of a game ‘getting in the way of itself’. What I mean by that is, the actual combat encounters and card based gameplay is top tier and genuinely so enjoyable. I loved setting up a round to just sweep through the enemies while constantly having my attacks refunded - so satisfying when it all just works.
The flipside on this is that between these great missions that have you doing a cary of objectives and countering many different enemy types, is a terrible cringe inducing Disney Channel Show for tweens.
It honestly felt like they couldn’t work out the demographic for this game, as part of it feels like aimed at older people who like slower strategy games, and the other part feels like it was made for kids who grew up on Iron Man firing off constant zingers for a couple movies in a row.
As I found out in my Need for Speed review, I really have less patience for this kind of dialogue and game setup than what I thought, and ultimately it marred my experience and interrupted the flow of the game enough to make me shelve it.
My advice, play this muted and go watch youtube while you spam through the dialogue between the excellent missions and gameplay.
The flipside on this is that between these great missions that have you doing a cary of objectives and countering many different enemy types, is a terrible cringe inducing Disney Channel Show for tweens.
It honestly felt like they couldn’t work out the demographic for this game, as part of it feels like aimed at older people who like slower strategy games, and the other part feels like it was made for kids who grew up on Iron Man firing off constant zingers for a couple movies in a row.
As I found out in my Need for Speed review, I really have less patience for this kind of dialogue and game setup than what I thought, and ultimately it marred my experience and interrupted the flow of the game enough to make me shelve it.
My advice, play this muted and go watch youtube while you spam through the dialogue between the excellent missions and gameplay.
Midnight Suns was a huge surprise for me! I loved the mix of XCOM-style combat with the relationship building and exploration of the Abbey. The characters from Marvel are awesome, the dialogue is often hilarious, and there's a surprising amount of depth here. It can get a bit repetitive over time, and sometimes the card system feels limiting... but if you like strategy games and superheroes, you'll probably dig this way more than you'd expect.
both the main story and the DLC questline end with cliffhangers teasing popular characters which is pretty funny now that we know we're never getting a midnight suns 2 because no one bought this game outside of a sale (including me). so lmao.
Midnight Suns is a pretty cool game with a unique and satisfying combat system that actually had a lot of layers in it. Most of the other stuff isn't that interesting.
It's a card based SRPG. It doesn't sound good on paper but it's from Friaxis (xcom devs) and while I dont think they have any card games under their belt they clearly knew what they were doing with the system. Despite the fact that on paper you can "only" play 3 cards a turn, good smart play of a combination of your cards/deckbuilding, map interactables and movement skills can lead to very explosive turns. While a quick fear of it being card based is that sometimes you get complete bricks of turns, I had very little turns over the course of my 60~ hour playthrough that felt like i just couldn't do shit. Recycle often can ungum up hands and if your hands are still getting gummed up while skill issue man put less heroics in your deck.
To go with the good core is both varied enemy list with each their own rules and missions with their own unique rules. The dogs all aggro on the same target, giving you pause to either try not to have 3 dogs hit your squishy hero, or abuse a hero with taunt/counter to force all of them to hit them with one taunt skill. The nest mother summons towers that you dont want to keep alive, but also damage her if you break them, and shes always protected by a guardian that makes you unable to target her. Do you prioritize killing her rocks and whittling her down, or do you have a line that lets you just sheer brute force it? These kind of decisions are often, and it's really just enjoyable even when you're grinding.
Your deck is made up of what heroes you bring to a mission, each hero comes with their own unique card pool and gimmicks. Deadpool gets a stacking buff based on how many people he kills and his cards improve in various ways basd on his stack. Most of Iron Man's cards dont get recycled when you discard them, but instead improve in various ways from either extra keywords or more damage. Ghost riders cards do great damage but all come with downsides like forcing you to discard or taking damage. I think the card pools per character are oddly small which is disappointing but the characters are varied enough that it doesn't get that repetitive, and also there's an endgame grind mechanic to let you roll for extra effects on cards for even more deckbuilding options
Outside of the combat is a combination of xcom base building and like hero social links. Interact with the heroes between missions to build relationships giving individual heroes boosts while getting permanent boosts by upgrading the abbey, or also exploring the abbey grounds for its own questline. Unfortunately, the not combat parts of this game are definitely its weakest part.
The main story is pretty sauceless. It's a very clean cut heroes fight corrupting evil elder god for the most part. It tries to mix it up with some hero drama between, particularly like between the original midnight suns getting frustrated with the avengers abruptly showing up taking command, but it's not good and feels like highschool soap drama. Most of the social links stuff is also pretty unmemorable opening up about their doubts and anxiety dumps or just talking about how cool the protag is. There's a couple fun little side things but it's played almost too straight most of the time for how weird the cast of characters are. And also when its trying to funny it's often not.
Most of the xcom building stuff doesnt have a lot of depth either. While the things they unlock are good and add layers to combat, there isn't much to them other than Do Unlocks Requirement (probably do X missions with Y hero or upgrade Z amount of skills with Y hero) > research it > unlock it next day, maybe gotta spend money to actually unlock it.
DLC is pretty good. If the game is on sale the complete edition is probably also on sale and I think the DLC is worth the on sale price upgrade. The season pass gets you 4 heroes and around 15~ missions and its own story line about killing vampires. The story still isn't good and the social links have the same issues but the missions are the equally high quality and amongst the hardest in the game, and also you can get Venom. Everyone loves Venom.
It's good. Playing it is fun and it's a unique and well designed combat system with good missions to back it up. But the story, writing, and in-between events are uninteresting and lets down what should be a fun setting of standoffish super heroes working together. I learned I like Magik a lot though, she's cool.
Midnight Suns is a pretty cool game with a unique and satisfying combat system that actually had a lot of layers in it. Most of the other stuff isn't that interesting.
It's a card based SRPG. It doesn't sound good on paper but it's from Friaxis (xcom devs) and while I dont think they have any card games under their belt they clearly knew what they were doing with the system. Despite the fact that on paper you can "only" play 3 cards a turn, good smart play of a combination of your cards/deckbuilding, map interactables and movement skills can lead to very explosive turns. While a quick fear of it being card based is that sometimes you get complete bricks of turns, I had very little turns over the course of my 60~ hour playthrough that felt like i just couldn't do shit. Recycle often can ungum up hands and if your hands are still getting gummed up while skill issue man put less heroics in your deck.
To go with the good core is both varied enemy list with each their own rules and missions with their own unique rules. The dogs all aggro on the same target, giving you pause to either try not to have 3 dogs hit your squishy hero, or abuse a hero with taunt/counter to force all of them to hit them with one taunt skill. The nest mother summons towers that you dont want to keep alive, but also damage her if you break them, and shes always protected by a guardian that makes you unable to target her. Do you prioritize killing her rocks and whittling her down, or do you have a line that lets you just sheer brute force it? These kind of decisions are often, and it's really just enjoyable even when you're grinding.
Your deck is made up of what heroes you bring to a mission, each hero comes with their own unique card pool and gimmicks. Deadpool gets a stacking buff based on how many people he kills and his cards improve in various ways basd on his stack. Most of Iron Man's cards dont get recycled when you discard them, but instead improve in various ways from either extra keywords or more damage. Ghost riders cards do great damage but all come with downsides like forcing you to discard or taking damage. I think the card pools per character are oddly small which is disappointing but the characters are varied enough that it doesn't get that repetitive, and also there's an endgame grind mechanic to let you roll for extra effects on cards for even more deckbuilding options
Outside of the combat is a combination of xcom base building and like hero social links. Interact with the heroes between missions to build relationships giving individual heroes boosts while getting permanent boosts by upgrading the abbey, or also exploring the abbey grounds for its own questline. Unfortunately, the not combat parts of this game are definitely its weakest part.
The main story is pretty sauceless. It's a very clean cut heroes fight corrupting evil elder god for the most part. It tries to mix it up with some hero drama between, particularly like between the original midnight suns getting frustrated with the avengers abruptly showing up taking command, but it's not good and feels like highschool soap drama. Most of the social links stuff is also pretty unmemorable opening up about their doubts and anxiety dumps or just talking about how cool the protag is. There's a couple fun little side things but it's played almost too straight most of the time for how weird the cast of characters are. And also when its trying to funny it's often not.
Most of the xcom building stuff doesnt have a lot of depth either. While the things they unlock are good and add layers to combat, there isn't much to them other than Do Unlocks Requirement (probably do X missions with Y hero or upgrade Z amount of skills with Y hero) > research it > unlock it next day, maybe gotta spend money to actually unlock it.
DLC is pretty good. If the game is on sale the complete edition is probably also on sale and I think the DLC is worth the on sale price upgrade. The season pass gets you 4 heroes and around 15~ missions and its own story line about killing vampires. The story still isn't good and the social links have the same issues but the missions are the equally high quality and amongst the hardest in the game, and also you can get Venom. Everyone loves Venom.
It's good. Playing it is fun and it's a unique and well designed combat system with good missions to back it up. But the story, writing, and in-between events are uninteresting and lets down what should be a fun setting of standoffish super heroes working together. I learned I like Magik a lot though, she's cool.
The combat is fine, even good.
However, the story, to be more precise the acting and script is unbearable. Every character is quirky, "sassy," like if you got MCU's RDJR's Iron Man and cranked it to 11 - and made this the personality of pretty much the entire fcking cast.
Holy sht
However, the story, to be more precise the acting and script is unbearable. Every character is quirky, "sassy," like if you got MCU's RDJR's Iron Man and cranked it to 11 - and made this the personality of pretty much the entire fcking cast.
Holy sht
It just depends on whether or not you like superheroes. If you don't, it won't change your mind on them. If you do, it's a fun ~50 hour game with a lot of meat on its bones. The dialogue is lighthearted and ultimately persistent - it got chuckles out of me through quantity, not quality. There's a bit too much technobabble in the cutscenes, and hearing characters say "Erm, could you repeat that in ENGLISH, doc???" for the billionth time did get an eye-roll from me. The story is wholly original which is nice, and the variety of heroes here means that you'll find yourself attached to somebody, eventually. There's a support system in place mechanically identical to FE Three Houses, and it works just fine. Getting close to different heroes means new combat perks, and there are some solid mechanics in place to hasten development. I enjoyed Wolverine's support the most, as it was the most well-rounded in covering his character.
I will echo the sentiment that the combat is the best part of the game - though I didn't see it that way at the beginning. The early game is rough. Enemies spam attacks that stun your allies, you don't have many ways to counter things, and the constant reinforcements are annoying as hell... It's just a bad time all around. The mid and late game are where it's at: better enemy variety, varied objectives, and deck-building opportunities save the whole experience. Heroes that you could bin earlier as "low-damage" or "too situational" become viable as utility characters, thinning enemy numbers or providing buffs. It's at this point where the hand of Firaxis is most obvious, equalizing the playing field and ensuring you can have fun with most setups.
Midnight Suns is fun, has a big budget, and is finely focused even if the delivery is flawed. It's a flavor of SRPG that's quite unique, and one we'll probably never see again considering how hard it flopped commercially. Even so, I'm excited to see what Firaxis comes up with next.
I will echo the sentiment that the combat is the best part of the game - though I didn't see it that way at the beginning. The early game is rough. Enemies spam attacks that stun your allies, you don't have many ways to counter things, and the constant reinforcements are annoying as hell... It's just a bad time all around. The mid and late game are where it's at: better enemy variety, varied objectives, and deck-building opportunities save the whole experience. Heroes that you could bin earlier as "low-damage" or "too situational" become viable as utility characters, thinning enemy numbers or providing buffs. It's at this point where the hand of Firaxis is most obvious, equalizing the playing field and ensuring you can have fun with most setups.
Midnight Suns is fun, has a big budget, and is finely focused even if the delivery is flawed. It's a flavor of SRPG that's quite unique, and one we'll probably never see again considering how hard it flopped commercially. Even so, I'm excited to see what Firaxis comes up with next.
the only good thing about the game is its combat