For months, I was in doubt about paying for this game. I saw some reviews, but I was not certain if it would be fun to play. So, I decided to give Marvel's Midnight Suns a chance, and I can confidently say it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in the gaming industry in recent years.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is a unique blend of real-time strategy games like XCOM and card games like Hearthstone. I'm a big fan of games like XCOM, but I usually don't enjoy card games, which made me hesitant about this one. However, in the end, the card aspect is the heart of this game, and it enhances the strategy element, adding complexity and an element of luck.
About the gameplay, you have a stage with certain objectives, and you control a group of heroes facing off against enemies. Each hero has cards that require a certain amount of power to use and a designated area to cause damage. This requires you to strategically position your characters to attack your foes while avoiding enemy attacks. Meanwhile, you also need to manage your deck of cards.
The story is interesting and focuses on lesser-known heroes, although you still have a team that includes Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain Marvel. The connections between all the heroes are well-developed, and you'll become more interested in these lesser-known characters and how they come together to prevent the end of the world.
One downside for me is the hub area where you spend time between missions. It's quite large but not very enjoyable to explore.
The graphics may not be top-notch, but that wasn't a problem for me. During the missions, the game looks more beautiful because you get to appreciate the stage from an overhead perspective.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is a delightful surprise, and it's a shame that it doesn't receive more attention. It's a fantastic game that deserves more recognition. If you enjoy strategy games or are looking for something unique, I highly recommend giving it a chance. In my opinion, it's worth every penny!
Marvel's Midnight Suns is a unique blend of real-time strategy games like XCOM and card games like Hearthstone. I'm a big fan of games like XCOM, but I usually don't enjoy card games, which made me hesitant about this one. However, in the end, the card aspect is the heart of this game, and it enhances the strategy element, adding complexity and an element of luck.
About the gameplay, you have a stage with certain objectives, and you control a group of heroes facing off against enemies. Each hero has cards that require a certain amount of power to use and a designated area to cause damage. This requires you to strategically position your characters to attack your foes while avoiding enemy attacks. Meanwhile, you also need to manage your deck of cards.
The story is interesting and focuses on lesser-known heroes, although you still have a team that includes Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain Marvel. The connections between all the heroes are well-developed, and you'll become more interested in these lesser-known characters and how they come together to prevent the end of the world.
One downside for me is the hub area where you spend time between missions. It's quite large but not very enjoyable to explore.
The graphics may not be top-notch, but that wasn't a problem for me. During the missions, the game looks more beautiful because you get to appreciate the stage from an overhead perspective.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is a delightful surprise, and it's a shame that it doesn't receive more attention. It's a fantastic game that deserves more recognition. If you enjoy strategy games or are looking for something unique, I highly recommend giving it a chance. In my opinion, it's worth every penny!
You play from the viewpoint of "The Hunter" (who I assume is some Firaxis writer's D&D character they've decided to bruteforce into Super Hero™ World [if you've ever crossed the threshold of a City of Heroes RP shard you know it, you've seen it, I'm sorry]) and go to Hogwarts where all your favourite Marvel characters hang out with you in the after-school clubs and tell you how cool and important you are in between bickering with each other like 8-year olds (except Captain America, who is in Dream Daddy mode here). This is exactly as contemptible as it sounds.
There's a vaguely acceptable combat system buried in there somewhere, though it's nowhere near up to the level of Firaxis' X-COM efforts. I'm generally not a fan of card-based stuff, but volleying mooks into breakable objects is never bad and it is fun to figure out the best possible turn you can have with the hand you're dealt, how many free plays you can steal and how much damage you can squeeze out. The problem is that once you've nailed that - and you'll do that pretty early on - that's it. Before you've reached the halfway point, you've pretty much seen and done it all. The arenas are always the same flat boxes, there's no varied level layouts that make positioning any more interesting or challenging. This, combined with the several hundred different kinds of currency and rarity and crafting bollocks makes the combat side end up feeling like it was initially supposed to be one of the endless number of Marvel mobile games out right now. Unfortunate.
Also, it's a comic book game where there are no classic costumes available outside of paid DLC (the Blade one doesn't count, signing up for a 2K account is payment in blood). You'll get the greebléd Made For This Game guff and that's your lot. Just harrowing. It's full of bloat and it's yet another attempt to try and trick you into thinking the Scarlet Witch is interesting. Why did I finish it? Because I'm a pea-brained idiot who claps when he sees Spider-Man, mainly. Excelsior!
There's a vaguely acceptable combat system buried in there somewhere, though it's nowhere near up to the level of Firaxis' X-COM efforts. I'm generally not a fan of card-based stuff, but volleying mooks into breakable objects is never bad and it is fun to figure out the best possible turn you can have with the hand you're dealt, how many free plays you can steal and how much damage you can squeeze out. The problem is that once you've nailed that - and you'll do that pretty early on - that's it. Before you've reached the halfway point, you've pretty much seen and done it all. The arenas are always the same flat boxes, there's no varied level layouts that make positioning any more interesting or challenging. This, combined with the several hundred different kinds of currency and rarity and crafting bollocks makes the combat side end up feeling like it was initially supposed to be one of the endless number of Marvel mobile games out right now. Unfortunate.
Also, it's a comic book game where there are no classic costumes available outside of paid DLC (the Blade one doesn't count, signing up for a 2K account is payment in blood). You'll get the greebléd Made For This Game guff and that's your lot. Just harrowing. It's full of bloat and it's yet another attempt to try and trick you into thinking the Scarlet Witch is interesting. Why did I finish it? Because I'm a pea-brained idiot who claps when he sees Spider-Man, mainly. Excelsior!
This is a hard one for me to rate.
I like the tactical combat in Midnight Suns quite a bit. It is like a weird hybrid of Slay the Spire and, strangely, Into the Breach, but in 3d with super heroes.
You pick three heroes, impacting which cards will come up in your deck. There is some interesting puzzle-esque gameplay around kill order (certain moves are free if used to kill, certain enemies only have one hitpoint, you have other resources and options at your disposal to change the battlefield, etc...), and each of the heroes has fairly unique gameplay that is enabled by their cards or passive abilities.
As in Into the Breach, each fight takes place on a very small battlefield with reinforcements arriving every round. The number of abilities and cards that move units around also means you are constantly thinking about your positioning, the enemies positioning, and how you can exploit it.
The loop isn't quite as tight as Into the Breach or Slay the Spire, however. Actions can often have somewhat unpredictable results and movement is severely limited, except for every ability automatically moves you, so it is a hard resource to actually manage.
Despite that, it all adds up to an easy to pick up, satisfying little tactical experience with a lot of variety and a lot of flash.
Everything else about the game I really disliked.
Visually, this game is very rough. Character models are weird and low poly, textures take forever to load in and don't look that good, animations are stiff, boring, or just weird, and many of the visual effects don't know if they want to be super realistic or ripped directly from a comic book.
Beyond the tactical gameplay, Midnight Suns cribs from Persona, giving you sort of a day/night cycle you can use to get to know your fellow heroes, spending time with them and giving them gifts to increase their friendship levels for bonuses. This could be a cool idea (but see below about the dialog) if it were a bit more open in its implementation. There are specific, preset groups you join (a book club, a magic club, etc...) whose meetings are at set points over the course of the narrative. You are also given very few opportunities to actually pick who you will focus on (I specifically chose a hangout partner maybe 3-4 times through my entire playthrough). This makes the whole system feel like a pastiche, rather than specific events you are opting into, as in a Persona game.
The narrative in Midnight Suns is, at best, just really boring but usually really juvenile and silly. There isn't much driving things forward beyond a non-specific prophecy and an antagonist with unclear motivations. The characters engage in a lot of CW-style manufactured conflict and drama for reasons that are uninteresting or nonsensical. The game tries to create tension between the old school heroes (The Avengers) and the new school heroes (the Midnight Suns), but it just feels like schoolyard bullshit coming from people who are supposed to be competent adults. The characters are too busy one-upping each other or infighting to ever make me happy any of them are there.
They purposely throw agency and control over the team to the player avatar (why the most famous heroes in the world worship The Hunter is unexplained), but you are never actually given any agency to solve their squabbling or even take meaningful steps to advance your cause. You just end up waiting for the cutscenes that move the plot forward to happen.
The writing is similarly hard to deal with. Every character has one very obvious character trait and everything they say is just about that. Spider-man was bitten by a radioactive spider, Iron Man is a CEO, Ghost Rider has a vengeance demon inside him, etc... If these were small characters without much screentime, it would be fine, but this is hours and hours of dialog that just ends up being repetitive and uninteresting. It honestly feels like comic book writing from before comics writers realized they could make their characters have depth.
Additionally, every single line of dialog is some sort of snarky joke, usually related to that character's one identifiable trait. It is like every single character in every single scene is trying to steal the spotlight with every line they deliver. It makes every interaction trite and annoying in the extreme, especially because of the sheer amount of dialog that exists in the game.
This game has a glimmer of something really fun with the combat and even the basic structure of things, but it is just expressed in the wrong places. If they were less worried about The Hunter and the Midnight Suns, and just let you have fun vignettes with these heroes, solving problems on a smaller scale or in a shorter timeframe things would be more compelling, characters wouldn't be fighting for the spotlight, and the laid-back nature of things in the hub world would make much more sense.
The Deadpool DLC does exactly this and works much better and, if taken by itself, solves most of the problems I have with the game.
In the end, I like the tactical gameplay enough that I didn't completely dislike this game, but if you play it, be prepared to skip literally all of the dialog.
I like the tactical combat in Midnight Suns quite a bit. It is like a weird hybrid of Slay the Spire and, strangely, Into the Breach, but in 3d with super heroes.
You pick three heroes, impacting which cards will come up in your deck. There is some interesting puzzle-esque gameplay around kill order (certain moves are free if used to kill, certain enemies only have one hitpoint, you have other resources and options at your disposal to change the battlefield, etc...), and each of the heroes has fairly unique gameplay that is enabled by their cards or passive abilities.
As in Into the Breach, each fight takes place on a very small battlefield with reinforcements arriving every round. The number of abilities and cards that move units around also means you are constantly thinking about your positioning, the enemies positioning, and how you can exploit it.
The loop isn't quite as tight as Into the Breach or Slay the Spire, however. Actions can often have somewhat unpredictable results and movement is severely limited, except for every ability automatically moves you, so it is a hard resource to actually manage.
Despite that, it all adds up to an easy to pick up, satisfying little tactical experience with a lot of variety and a lot of flash.
Everything else about the game I really disliked.
Visually, this game is very rough. Character models are weird and low poly, textures take forever to load in and don't look that good, animations are stiff, boring, or just weird, and many of the visual effects don't know if they want to be super realistic or ripped directly from a comic book.
Beyond the tactical gameplay, Midnight Suns cribs from Persona, giving you sort of a day/night cycle you can use to get to know your fellow heroes, spending time with them and giving them gifts to increase their friendship levels for bonuses. This could be a cool idea (but see below about the dialog) if it were a bit more open in its implementation. There are specific, preset groups you join (a book club, a magic club, etc...) whose meetings are at set points over the course of the narrative. You are also given very few opportunities to actually pick who you will focus on (I specifically chose a hangout partner maybe 3-4 times through my entire playthrough). This makes the whole system feel like a pastiche, rather than specific events you are opting into, as in a Persona game.
The narrative in Midnight Suns is, at best, just really boring but usually really juvenile and silly. There isn't much driving things forward beyond a non-specific prophecy and an antagonist with unclear motivations. The characters engage in a lot of CW-style manufactured conflict and drama for reasons that are uninteresting or nonsensical. The game tries to create tension between the old school heroes (The Avengers) and the new school heroes (the Midnight Suns), but it just feels like schoolyard bullshit coming from people who are supposed to be competent adults. The characters are too busy one-upping each other or infighting to ever make me happy any of them are there.
They purposely throw agency and control over the team to the player avatar (why the most famous heroes in the world worship The Hunter is unexplained), but you are never actually given any agency to solve their squabbling or even take meaningful steps to advance your cause. You just end up waiting for the cutscenes that move the plot forward to happen.
The writing is similarly hard to deal with. Every character has one very obvious character trait and everything they say is just about that. Spider-man was bitten by a radioactive spider, Iron Man is a CEO, Ghost Rider has a vengeance demon inside him, etc... If these were small characters without much screentime, it would be fine, but this is hours and hours of dialog that just ends up being repetitive and uninteresting. It honestly feels like comic book writing from before comics writers realized they could make their characters have depth.
Additionally, every single line of dialog is some sort of snarky joke, usually related to that character's one identifiable trait. It is like every single character in every single scene is trying to steal the spotlight with every line they deliver. It makes every interaction trite and annoying in the extreme, especially because of the sheer amount of dialog that exists in the game.
This game has a glimmer of something really fun with the combat and even the basic structure of things, but it is just expressed in the wrong places. If they were less worried about The Hunter and the Midnight Suns, and just let you have fun vignettes with these heroes, solving problems on a smaller scale or in a shorter timeframe things would be more compelling, characters wouldn't be fighting for the spotlight, and the laid-back nature of things in the hub world would make much more sense.
The Deadpool DLC does exactly this and works much better and, if taken by itself, solves most of the problems I have with the game.
In the end, I like the tactical gameplay enough that I didn't completely dislike this game, but if you play it, be prepared to skip literally all of the dialog.
I have been super excited for Midnight Suns ever since it was first announced. A Marvel game made by XCOM devs Firaxis where I replace my nameless troops for iconic superheroes? Sounds awesome to me! However Midnight Suns has very little in common with XCOM and while that might have been disappointing for a lot of people looking forward to the game, for me the game we got is somehow even better than Marvel themed XCOM because we got a Marvel themed Mass Effect/Persona/Slay the Spire hybrid instead and it is a game I never knew I wanted so bad until I actually played it, but more on that in a bit.
Let's talk about story first because as with all RPGs that is the primary focus and the bulk of your 50 to 100 hour runtime is going to center around it. Everything I'm about to talk about happens within the first hour so this is spoiler free btw. In Midnight Suns the big bad is Lilith, the Mother of Demons who was recently resurrected by Hydra mad scientist Doctor Faustus. Lilith's goal is to herald the second coming of the eldritch Elder God of chaos, Chthon (Basically the Marvel equivalent to Cthulhu) and bring about the end of all creation as we know it and to do this she creates her own army made up of mind controlled Hydra soldiers, corrupted super villains such as Venom and Sabertooth and of course her own demonic forces as well. The Avengers are no match for Lilith so who can stop her?
Well that is where the protagonist of our story comes in. Enter The Hunter, a Commander Shepard-like blank slate for the player to customize as they see fit in the form of an ancient demon hunter from 1,700s Salem and the prophesied chosen one to stop Lilith. Oh yeah did I mention The Hunter is also Lilith's child and is in a constant struggle between the light and dark powers inside of them? No? Well they are and that makes for a very compelling and emotional dynamic between the main hero and villain. I personally found the tale of The Hunter and Lilith to be more entertaining than 99% of the MCU. That is not to say the story is not without its tropes that plague nearly all superhero media, but the amount of unique charm and passion put into this story is simply undeniable and helps it stand out from its contemporaries.
The main plot is simply put, batshit insane and almost feels like it was torn right off the pages of a classic Silver Age comic to be portrayed as a campy B-movie in the best way possible (With all the one-liners and over-the-top action that comes with the territory). I know I'm in the minority when I say this, but THIS is the kind of stuff that I wish the MCU did more of (Precisely the reason Multiverse of Madness is my fave movie in the MCU), Midnight Suns is a game that was made by people who clearly have a deep love and understanding of exactly what makes the medium of comic books so fun and enjoyable and they transferred that Marvel(ously) into a video game with tons of over-the-top action and set-pieces that a silver screen just couldn't do justice.
With all that said the main plot is merely half of the game because as I mentioned earlier this game takes a lot of inspiration from Persona (or Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Trails of Cold Steel etc) and when you're not experiencing the crazy tale of Hunter and Lilith you'll be at your base of operations known as the Abbey which is essentially a magical boarding house for all the heroes to stay at and while in the Abbey The Hunter can do many things (Which I'll come back to later), but the most important one is bonding with your fellow heroes by doing social link style mundane day-to-day events including everything from playing video games with Ghost Rider to Meditating with Doctor Strange or just having a drink at the bar with Iron Man. I also want to mention aside from the day-to-day events there are also special side quest club-like activities you can follow at certain times through the whole game like joining a shop class with Iron Man and Ghost Rider or a book club with Blade and Captain Marvel.
During these hangouts you get a variety of dialogue choices and choosing the right one will help build your friendship meter with said hero. The dialogue trees themselves remind me of a classic BioWare RPG like Mass Effect or Dragon Age and there's even a light and dark system which changes how different characters view the Hunter and also give the Hunter new powers, cosmetics and various passive buffs in combat. As your Hunter hangs out with the heroes they will slowly get closer and open up to you more about their backstories, inner conflicts and likes and dislikes and everything between. Firaxis basically came as close to making a dating sim without actually making a dating sim (There is some light flirting though) and the Hunter can essentially become BFFs with any hero they max out their friendship with, some say the way the friendships progress comes across as very fanfic like, but personally I think it comes across as pretty organic and natural due to the Hunter's backstory and history being relatable to many of the heroes in various ways.
Midnight Suns is a game of many tones and it flawlessly executes them all, managing to capture that ridiculous over-the-top 70s campy comic book style in the main plot, yet knowing when to get suitably dark and emotional as well, but the best and most unique part of it all has to be portraying such a great down to earth vibe with the friendship and team building mechanics that show all the mundane day-to-day events between heroes during your down time from the main plot. From Avengers to X-Men, Runaways, the titular Midnight Sons and more this cast is absolutely stacked with some of Marvel's best and coolest characters and we get to see as friendships bloom between them, rivalries form and various team conflicts happens and that's just the tip of the iceberg, just walking around the Abbey after a mission you can listen to heroes have casual conversations with each other and there is even an in game text messaging app all the heroes use which provides some great interactions.
This one game did a better job of making all these characters feel like a family than 20 movies in the MCU did and I know that's in no small part thanks to the fantastic voice acting performances which really helped to capture all the characters personalities, the fact those personalities are closer to the comics than their MCU counterparts and also most of these characters are voiced by the main actors who have been voicing them for years like Yuri Lowenthal as Spider-Man or Steve Blum as Wolverine definitely helps too. Even the characters with fresh voices were done justice like Michael Jai White as Blade or Matthew Mercer (If you play as the male Hunter which I did) as the voice of the Hunter themselves and hearing Jennifer Hale as Lilith was always a treat as well and that's just a few examples out of this massive cast too because everyone gets ample opportunity to shine. Fun fact: Btw this game has over 60,000 lines of unique voiced dialogue and it shows because the characters never ran out of things to say for me even after 80 hours.
So remember how I mentioned you could do many things at the Abbey? Well aside from bonding with your fellow heroes you can also explore the fairly sizable overworld map of the Abbey grounds which other than a small tutorial is completely optional for those who don't want to however you'd be doing yourself a disservice since I found doing it to be very immersive and rewarding because it expands the world-building and connects to a side quest which reveals more mysteries about the Hunter and their past through various documents and lore that can be found on the grounds through some light puzzle solving. There's also a decently in-depth resource management and crafting system and you can find treasure chests which unlock tons of new cosmetic options for the Hunter and skins for the other heroes.
I focused on the story, characters world etc first because this is an RPG and there was a LOT to talk about and with this game I believe Firaxis has established themselves with BioWare, Obsidian, Atlus and Falcom as one of the best RPG makers so I wanted to really go in-depth about why I believe that, but If you're still reading and you made it this far into the review it is finally time to talk about the combat system and honestly it's just as amazing as everything else this game has to offer.
With Midnight Suns Firaxis has created one of the most fun and enjoyable tactical combat systems I've ever experienced. On the surface it doesn't look like it has a lot of depth, but the more you play the deeper you realize it is. Like I mentioned earlier this is a card based combat system like Slay the Spire and every individual character has their own unique play style and set of ability cards which perfectly represent them and their unique set of abilities from Captain America drawing agro, taunting enemies and building up his resistance to Blade applying bleed and using life-steal. You can build everyone in so many different ways as you unlock new cards and level up characters by completing missions, throw in team combo attacks, using the environment and positioning of your characters to your advantage and there's just countless creative options and I barely even scratched the surface. Also the RNG of the cards keeps battles fresh even after 80 hours and the fact all the characters are well balanced and no one isn't fun to use makes this combat system so addictive. This is the natural evolution of the Slay the Spire style and I hope more games start using now. Also want to mention the attack animations are over-the-top, flashy and have all the impact one would expect from such big name heroes and I never got sick of watching them.
I almost forgot to mention the OST, but that certainly doesn't make it bad, on the contrary it is quite great. The main theme is very triumphant, heroic and reminiscent of Alan Silvestri's Avengers Theme while some other tracks you hear around the Abbey have a more whimsical and magical Danny Elfman feeling to them and the battle themes really pump you up being a a mix of orchestral and metal/rock instruments, the final battle theme which is my fave track in the game and essentially instrumental symphonic black metal.
Midnight Suns is simply put, the best comic book game I've ever played and it isn't even close. Midnight Suns was everything I ever could've dreamed of and more. As a fan of classic Marvel comics, immersive RPGs with tons of dialogue, world-building and character bonding, tactics games and card games, Midnight Suns vastly exceeded my expectations across all fields becoming a truly one-of-a-kind experience and amalgamation of a bunch of my personal favorite things that it almost feels like this game was manifested from my own thoughts.
I'll admit it has performance issues, the graphics look outdated by 2 generations and I'm sure a lot of people would get bored by how slow the story progresses (especially early game) and how grindy the missions can be, but I love everything about this game so much that it feels like it was tailored to my own personal tastes and for that Midnight Suns won't be for everyone, but I can certainly say it is without a doubt one of my favorite games of 2022.
Let's talk about story first because as with all RPGs that is the primary focus and the bulk of your 50 to 100 hour runtime is going to center around it. Everything I'm about to talk about happens within the first hour so this is spoiler free btw. In Midnight Suns the big bad is Lilith, the Mother of Demons who was recently resurrected by Hydra mad scientist Doctor Faustus. Lilith's goal is to herald the second coming of the eldritch Elder God of chaos, Chthon (Basically the Marvel equivalent to Cthulhu) and bring about the end of all creation as we know it and to do this she creates her own army made up of mind controlled Hydra soldiers, corrupted super villains such as Venom and Sabertooth and of course her own demonic forces as well. The Avengers are no match for Lilith so who can stop her?
Well that is where the protagonist of our story comes in. Enter The Hunter, a Commander Shepard-like blank slate for the player to customize as they see fit in the form of an ancient demon hunter from 1,700s Salem and the prophesied chosen one to stop Lilith. Oh yeah did I mention The Hunter is also Lilith's child and is in a constant struggle between the light and dark powers inside of them? No? Well they are and that makes for a very compelling and emotional dynamic between the main hero and villain. I personally found the tale of The Hunter and Lilith to be more entertaining than 99% of the MCU. That is not to say the story is not without its tropes that plague nearly all superhero media, but the amount of unique charm and passion put into this story is simply undeniable and helps it stand out from its contemporaries.
The main plot is simply put, batshit insane and almost feels like it was torn right off the pages of a classic Silver Age comic to be portrayed as a campy B-movie in the best way possible (With all the one-liners and over-the-top action that comes with the territory). I know I'm in the minority when I say this, but THIS is the kind of stuff that I wish the MCU did more of (Precisely the reason Multiverse of Madness is my fave movie in the MCU), Midnight Suns is a game that was made by people who clearly have a deep love and understanding of exactly what makes the medium of comic books so fun and enjoyable and they transferred that Marvel(ously) into a video game with tons of over-the-top action and set-pieces that a silver screen just couldn't do justice.
With all that said the main plot is merely half of the game because as I mentioned earlier this game takes a lot of inspiration from Persona (or Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Trails of Cold Steel etc) and when you're not experiencing the crazy tale of Hunter and Lilith you'll be at your base of operations known as the Abbey which is essentially a magical boarding house for all the heroes to stay at and while in the Abbey The Hunter can do many things (Which I'll come back to later), but the most important one is bonding with your fellow heroes by doing social link style mundane day-to-day events including everything from playing video games with Ghost Rider to Meditating with Doctor Strange or just having a drink at the bar with Iron Man. I also want to mention aside from the day-to-day events there are also special side quest club-like activities you can follow at certain times through the whole game like joining a shop class with Iron Man and Ghost Rider or a book club with Blade and Captain Marvel.
During these hangouts you get a variety of dialogue choices and choosing the right one will help build your friendship meter with said hero. The dialogue trees themselves remind me of a classic BioWare RPG like Mass Effect or Dragon Age and there's even a light and dark system which changes how different characters view the Hunter and also give the Hunter new powers, cosmetics and various passive buffs in combat. As your Hunter hangs out with the heroes they will slowly get closer and open up to you more about their backstories, inner conflicts and likes and dislikes and everything between. Firaxis basically came as close to making a dating sim without actually making a dating sim (There is some light flirting though) and the Hunter can essentially become BFFs with any hero they max out their friendship with, some say the way the friendships progress comes across as very fanfic like, but personally I think it comes across as pretty organic and natural due to the Hunter's backstory and history being relatable to many of the heroes in various ways.
Midnight Suns is a game of many tones and it flawlessly executes them all, managing to capture that ridiculous over-the-top 70s campy comic book style in the main plot, yet knowing when to get suitably dark and emotional as well, but the best and most unique part of it all has to be portraying such a great down to earth vibe with the friendship and team building mechanics that show all the mundane day-to-day events between heroes during your down time from the main plot. From Avengers to X-Men, Runaways, the titular Midnight Sons and more this cast is absolutely stacked with some of Marvel's best and coolest characters and we get to see as friendships bloom between them, rivalries form and various team conflicts happens and that's just the tip of the iceberg, just walking around the Abbey after a mission you can listen to heroes have casual conversations with each other and there is even an in game text messaging app all the heroes use which provides some great interactions.
This one game did a better job of making all these characters feel like a family than 20 movies in the MCU did and I know that's in no small part thanks to the fantastic voice acting performances which really helped to capture all the characters personalities, the fact those personalities are closer to the comics than their MCU counterparts and also most of these characters are voiced by the main actors who have been voicing them for years like Yuri Lowenthal as Spider-Man or Steve Blum as Wolverine definitely helps too. Even the characters with fresh voices were done justice like Michael Jai White as Blade or Matthew Mercer (If you play as the male Hunter which I did) as the voice of the Hunter themselves and hearing Jennifer Hale as Lilith was always a treat as well and that's just a few examples out of this massive cast too because everyone gets ample opportunity to shine. Fun fact: Btw this game has over 60,000 lines of unique voiced dialogue and it shows because the characters never ran out of things to say for me even after 80 hours.
So remember how I mentioned you could do many things at the Abbey? Well aside from bonding with your fellow heroes you can also explore the fairly sizable overworld map of the Abbey grounds which other than a small tutorial is completely optional for those who don't want to however you'd be doing yourself a disservice since I found doing it to be very immersive and rewarding because it expands the world-building and connects to a side quest which reveals more mysteries about the Hunter and their past through various documents and lore that can be found on the grounds through some light puzzle solving. There's also a decently in-depth resource management and crafting system and you can find treasure chests which unlock tons of new cosmetic options for the Hunter and skins for the other heroes.
I focused on the story, characters world etc first because this is an RPG and there was a LOT to talk about and with this game I believe Firaxis has established themselves with BioWare, Obsidian, Atlus and Falcom as one of the best RPG makers so I wanted to really go in-depth about why I believe that, but If you're still reading and you made it this far into the review it is finally time to talk about the combat system and honestly it's just as amazing as everything else this game has to offer.
With Midnight Suns Firaxis has created one of the most fun and enjoyable tactical combat systems I've ever experienced. On the surface it doesn't look like it has a lot of depth, but the more you play the deeper you realize it is. Like I mentioned earlier this is a card based combat system like Slay the Spire and every individual character has their own unique play style and set of ability cards which perfectly represent them and their unique set of abilities from Captain America drawing agro, taunting enemies and building up his resistance to Blade applying bleed and using life-steal. You can build everyone in so many different ways as you unlock new cards and level up characters by completing missions, throw in team combo attacks, using the environment and positioning of your characters to your advantage and there's just countless creative options and I barely even scratched the surface. Also the RNG of the cards keeps battles fresh even after 80 hours and the fact all the characters are well balanced and no one isn't fun to use makes this combat system so addictive. This is the natural evolution of the Slay the Spire style and I hope more games start using now. Also want to mention the attack animations are over-the-top, flashy and have all the impact one would expect from such big name heroes and I never got sick of watching them.
I almost forgot to mention the OST, but that certainly doesn't make it bad, on the contrary it is quite great. The main theme is very triumphant, heroic and reminiscent of Alan Silvestri's Avengers Theme while some other tracks you hear around the Abbey have a more whimsical and magical Danny Elfman feeling to them and the battle themes really pump you up being a a mix of orchestral and metal/rock instruments, the final battle theme which is my fave track in the game and essentially instrumental symphonic black metal.
Midnight Suns is simply put, the best comic book game I've ever played and it isn't even close. Midnight Suns was everything I ever could've dreamed of and more. As a fan of classic Marvel comics, immersive RPGs with tons of dialogue, world-building and character bonding, tactics games and card games, Midnight Suns vastly exceeded my expectations across all fields becoming a truly one-of-a-kind experience and amalgamation of a bunch of my personal favorite things that it almost feels like this game was manifested from my own thoughts.
I'll admit it has performance issues, the graphics look outdated by 2 generations and I'm sure a lot of people would get bored by how slow the story progresses (especially early game) and how grindy the missions can be, but I love everything about this game so much that it feels like it was tailored to my own personal tastes and for that Midnight Suns won't be for everyone, but I can certainly say it is without a doubt one of my favorite games of 2022.
This is a criminally under-talked about game imo most likely due to a combination of under-marketing, Marvel fatigue, and the fact that it came out right at the end of the year making it miss a lot of GotY discussion. I really liked this though. It's a turn based tactics game from the team behind the rebooted XCOM franchise, fused with card battle gameplay and with a hefty dose of BioWare inspiration as you talk to your team between missions.
If it wasn't for that BioWare bit this would've easily been a 5 star rating from me, but I really could not care less about the story in this game. The idea of being able to chat up and build relationships with my favorite Marvel heroes as the game progresses is appealing to me, but it just failed in the execution. The dialogue is the Joss Whedon quip stuff that most people have grown tired of by now. Your companions are split into two camps, The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel etc.) and The Midnight Suns (Nico Minoru, Magik, Ghost Rider, etc.) and much of the game's drama comes from these two groups bickering like petulant children. The plot is also a very generic supernatural good vs. evil story with a twist you'll see coming a mile away.
If you can put that aside though, there's some five star gameplay going on here as you'd expect from a Firaxis game. You're given a limited amount of card plays, but there are some cards which will extend your card plays if you get a K.O. with them. Weaker cards build up hero points which you can then spend to use more powerful cards. Positioning is also important as a lot of abilities involve pushing enemies into hazards, teammates, or other enemies. A lot of the gameplay is spent trying to find the optimal way to maximize the amount of moves you can make in a single turn, and it makes for a fun little puzzle every encounter. I also really like how you unlock difficulties over time, and that those difficulties are very transparent as to what values they're adjusting to make the game harder (enemy H.P. and damage, number of revives, stronger enemy reinforcements.) You get a star rating of 1-3 depending on how good you do with each mission, and after you've earned enough of those stars the next level of difficulty unlocks. It was fun playing on the harder difficulties and really having to optimize my moves to a much greater level of efficiency, and seeing myself get better at the game as more was demanded from me.
They also just really nailed making each character feel unique with the gameplay. Captain Marvel for example starts a match weak, but after playing 3 of her cards she can go into binary mode, doubling her damage and giving her a ton of block, which you have to maintain because she loses binary mode when out of block. Captain America is a super tank, having abilities that let him gain block as he damages and taunts enemies to target him. Ghost Rider will gain souls with each enemy he K.O.'s and after a certain number of souls are collected his max H.P. will increase and he will get an ability which will let him steal H.P. from enemies. Those are just three examples but each character is just as well thought out as these ones. It also incentivizes using a variety of characters by offering research rewards unlocked by using different characters, which I greatly appreciated as usually in these BioWare style games I will pick my team of 3 or 4 people for the gameplay and then only interact with the others in the hub area. It also just makes the whole experience that much more fun because you are constantly playing in different ways because of how these character's gameplay styles differ.
It's also quite a lengthy game if that's something that matters to you. You can easily sink over 100 hrs into this if you're playing through the whole story and exploring the hub area between missions. I definitely recommend this one to fans of the tactics genre.
If it wasn't for that BioWare bit this would've easily been a 5 star rating from me, but I really could not care less about the story in this game. The idea of being able to chat up and build relationships with my favorite Marvel heroes as the game progresses is appealing to me, but it just failed in the execution. The dialogue is the Joss Whedon quip stuff that most people have grown tired of by now. Your companions are split into two camps, The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel etc.) and The Midnight Suns (Nico Minoru, Magik, Ghost Rider, etc.) and much of the game's drama comes from these two groups bickering like petulant children. The plot is also a very generic supernatural good vs. evil story with a twist you'll see coming a mile away.
If you can put that aside though, there's some five star gameplay going on here as you'd expect from a Firaxis game. You're given a limited amount of card plays, but there are some cards which will extend your card plays if you get a K.O. with them. Weaker cards build up hero points which you can then spend to use more powerful cards. Positioning is also important as a lot of abilities involve pushing enemies into hazards, teammates, or other enemies. A lot of the gameplay is spent trying to find the optimal way to maximize the amount of moves you can make in a single turn, and it makes for a fun little puzzle every encounter. I also really like how you unlock difficulties over time, and that those difficulties are very transparent as to what values they're adjusting to make the game harder (enemy H.P. and damage, number of revives, stronger enemy reinforcements.) You get a star rating of 1-3 depending on how good you do with each mission, and after you've earned enough of those stars the next level of difficulty unlocks. It was fun playing on the harder difficulties and really having to optimize my moves to a much greater level of efficiency, and seeing myself get better at the game as more was demanded from me.
They also just really nailed making each character feel unique with the gameplay. Captain Marvel for example starts a match weak, but after playing 3 of her cards she can go into binary mode, doubling her damage and giving her a ton of block, which you have to maintain because she loses binary mode when out of block. Captain America is a super tank, having abilities that let him gain block as he damages and taunts enemies to target him. Ghost Rider will gain souls with each enemy he K.O.'s and after a certain number of souls are collected his max H.P. will increase and he will get an ability which will let him steal H.P. from enemies. Those are just three examples but each character is just as well thought out as these ones. It also incentivizes using a variety of characters by offering research rewards unlocked by using different characters, which I greatly appreciated as usually in these BioWare style games I will pick my team of 3 or 4 people for the gameplay and then only interact with the others in the hub area. It also just makes the whole experience that much more fun because you are constantly playing in different ways because of how these character's gameplay styles differ.
It's also quite a lengthy game if that's something that matters to you. You can easily sink over 100 hrs into this if you're playing through the whole story and exploring the hub area between missions. I definitely recommend this one to fans of the tactics genre.
Did I seriously go out of my way to play through a honestly pretty mid-strategy card game and pay an extra 20 dollars for DLC just so I could get the privilege to enjoy a good version of Deadpool..........well....yeah........... :/
I mean don't get me wrong if you like X-Com and other strategy games I'm sure you'll like this, it's just that I honestly don't personally care for strategy games and if I'm being 100% stright with you the game is beyond easy for like the first 20 hours; I just wanted to see a character I once loved actually done well and not like how's they've been portraying every single medium since the movie. Does this make me possibly the most reddit pilled out of all my friends? OH YEAH 100% UNDOUBTEDLY, but at least for me I can pull out the long time fan card and say I like this character before they became completely insufferable and a tool for Marvel's neverending slop machine of a cinematic universe.
When I say that Deadpool that we have in this game is probably the most well written and suddle he's been since his 2013 run that should probably tell you how dire it's been for the last 10 years. For some reason for the longest time Deadpool has been a hard character for writers to work on for some reason, see most hacks writers looked at the movie as their main influence or they think they've understood the character through cultural osmosis which is pretty the much equivalent of thinking you've understood the character by reading an unfunny bumper sticker. Deadpool at his best is when he's an annoying jackass but everyone around him either hates him or feels some sort of pity, He's not a character you wanna laugh at he's a character that bottles up his emotions and pushes other people he perceives to be his friends away while hiding all of his more nuanced aspects behind a super thick wall of irony so no one can hurt him. He can sometimes get better and in the case of his 2013 run even work on himself to be a better person for him and his kid, but at the core of his character he's a sad pathetic worm that can't die and refuses to go away. The movies kinda did that but as soon as Ryan Reynolds signed on to play the character the films stopped being Deadpool movies and instead became another linchpin in Reynold's adventure capitalist money chasing one note acting nepo career.
The game gets this dynamic down almost perfectly, although it stumbles a little bit here and there at times. He still has traces of his "lol chimichangas aren't I clever that I know I'm in a video game" that gets on my nerves but that dynamic of everyone else in the game just hating Deadpool constantly is still there and it works really well; especially with Blade. He’s pretty much an outcast for a majority of his time in the game and since the game gives you the ability to go on activities and hangouts with him you get to see a much more personal side of him. More a majority of the time you try to make a somewhat tangible connection with him he’ll either bounce off the question with a stupid joke or make a light-hearted threat until you get to the very near end of his relationship arc where he’ll finally open up just a tiny amount but enough to where your words actually get to him and make him care, granted it’s not a lot and he’ll still push you away with his annoying jokes but he’ll care more about you as a friend; which is technically growth for him and you know what that’s better
Out of the other characters in the game and even it’s DLC Deadpool feel ultimately out of place because this a game centered around the supernatural side of the Marvel universe and having a pudo-XMan running around killing vampires, demons, and a supernaturally corrupted Sabretooth with Blade and Ghost Rider is…..well…..dumb..dumb..it………it’s really fucking dumb. But like in a way that’s very camp and comic booky and honestly I’ll take this over any of that MCU coded poorly written Insomniac slop shit (My opinion on Spider-Man 2 has soured in the months I played it in). So yes I did indeed play a 50 hour long strategy card game just for Deadpool, and I will probably never touch this game ever again. Could I have just gotten all my info from clips on youtube instead of paying 20 plus another 20 for the season pass…..probably, but do I regret it? ……………..eh it’s still a better version of Deadpool then last comic run so I’d say it was worth it.
(Also in case anyone was wondering what my thoughts on Deadpool and Wolverine are, it looks like a movie scientifically designed to piss me off and to make Reddit soy. I will not be watching because I have standards and would rather go see Sonic 3 or a real movie instead.)
I mean don't get me wrong if you like X-Com and other strategy games I'm sure you'll like this, it's just that I honestly don't personally care for strategy games and if I'm being 100% stright with you the game is beyond easy for like the first 20 hours; I just wanted to see a character I once loved actually done well and not like how's they've been portraying every single medium since the movie. Does this make me possibly the most reddit pilled out of all my friends? OH YEAH 100% UNDOUBTEDLY, but at least for me I can pull out the long time fan card and say I like this character before they became completely insufferable and a tool for Marvel's neverending slop machine of a cinematic universe.
When I say that Deadpool that we have in this game is probably the most well written and suddle he's been since his 2013 run that should probably tell you how dire it's been for the last 10 years. For some reason for the longest time Deadpool has been a hard character for writers to work on for some reason, see most hacks writers looked at the movie as their main influence or they think they've understood the character through cultural osmosis which is pretty the much equivalent of thinking you've understood the character by reading an unfunny bumper sticker. Deadpool at his best is when he's an annoying jackass but everyone around him either hates him or feels some sort of pity, He's not a character you wanna laugh at he's a character that bottles up his emotions and pushes other people he perceives to be his friends away while hiding all of his more nuanced aspects behind a super thick wall of irony so no one can hurt him. He can sometimes get better and in the case of his 2013 run even work on himself to be a better person for him and his kid, but at the core of his character he's a sad pathetic worm that can't die and refuses to go away. The movies kinda did that but as soon as Ryan Reynolds signed on to play the character the films stopped being Deadpool movies and instead became another linchpin in Reynold's adventure capitalist money chasing one note acting nepo career.
The game gets this dynamic down almost perfectly, although it stumbles a little bit here and there at times. He still has traces of his "lol chimichangas aren't I clever that I know I'm in a video game" that gets on my nerves but that dynamic of everyone else in the game just hating Deadpool constantly is still there and it works really well; especially with Blade. He’s pretty much an outcast for a majority of his time in the game and since the game gives you the ability to go on activities and hangouts with him you get to see a much more personal side of him. More a majority of the time you try to make a somewhat tangible connection with him he’ll either bounce off the question with a stupid joke or make a light-hearted threat until you get to the very near end of his relationship arc where he’ll finally open up just a tiny amount but enough to where your words actually get to him and make him care, granted it’s not a lot and he’ll still push you away with his annoying jokes but he’ll care more about you as a friend; which is technically growth for him and you know what that’s better
Out of the other characters in the game and even it’s DLC Deadpool feel ultimately out of place because this a game centered around the supernatural side of the Marvel universe and having a pudo-XMan running around killing vampires, demons, and a supernaturally corrupted Sabretooth with Blade and Ghost Rider is…..well…..dumb..dumb..it………it’s really fucking dumb. But like in a way that’s very camp and comic booky and honestly I’ll take this over any of that MCU coded poorly written Insomniac slop shit (My opinion on Spider-Man 2 has soured in the months I played it in). So yes I did indeed play a 50 hour long strategy card game just for Deadpool, and I will probably never touch this game ever again. Could I have just gotten all my info from clips on youtube instead of paying 20 plus another 20 for the season pass…..probably, but do I regret it? ……………..eh it’s still a better version of Deadpool then last comic run so I’d say it was worth it.
(Also in case anyone was wondering what my thoughts on Deadpool and Wolverine are, it looks like a movie scientifically designed to piss me off and to make Reddit soy. I will not be watching because I have standards and would rather go see Sonic 3 or a real movie instead.)
Despite recently writing in my Persona 5 Tactica review that games like this weren't my cup of tea, along comes Marvel's Midnight Suns, a tactical RPG that does just about everything it can to win me over - and succeeds. In fact, it's more akin to a trading card game than anything else, mixed with a healthy dose of social simulation - a fact I probably would have been way more enthused about sooner if this game was at all marketed properly. Instead, I'm coming to the party late, but nevertheless happy to be here.
While this game comes from the makers of Xcom, I would actually describe its closest comparable as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. However, a couple of key changes in design turned it from something was largely carried by its non-gameplay elements (as Three Houses was for me) to one that almost perfectly married combat and social sim in execution. The card-based nature of Midnight Suns was one part of it, although the lack of a grid for movement was a bigger deal (positively!) than I expected. While there is a limited number of moves in a turn, you have the freedom to move anywhere on the board, meaning strict positioning plays a much less prominent role. No worrying about being on the wrong tile and having the entire enemy team gang up on you, especially because (aside from bosses) all enemies telegraph which of your units they'll attack. There are no surprises, meaning you're free to concentrate on crafting your strategy from the cards in your hand.
These enemy encounters also have a lot of different win conditions present, resulting in no shortage of variety to combat, especially when you factor in that each Marvel character you control also has their own unique playstyle. Some characters, like Blade, are built around inflicting status effects like bleed on enemies, while others such as Wolverine and Spider-Man are about chaining together attacks on multiple enemies, either with your cards or by using environmental hazards on the battlefield. If I had one complaint with this part of the game, it's that there aren't a lot of unique enemy units - you'll be staring down hydra goons and green demons for most of your playtime. The DLC adds an entirely different set of units to fight (vampyres), but those DLC missions also bring in an additional problem I'll touch on later.
Then you have the social aspect of Marvel's Midnight Suns, the thing I had no idea was even present yet becomes the star of the show. A big part of this game's enjoyment comes from simply hanging out with your favorite Marvel guys. Want to go fishing with Blade? Play video games with Spider-Man? Join a book club with Captain Marvel? Go on friendship dates and give presents to Iron Man? If so, you'll be spending a lot of time doing that. Talking with all these various Marvel characters and learning their stories forms a core part of the gameplay loop, as doing so also helps you level them up and gain better cards/stats. This is ultimately an RPG, after all, but being able to see a different side to these iconic characters than most games allow is genuinely cool.
So who's doing all this, you ask? Your very own Marvel OC, of course. Also something I had no idea about, but when you start the game, you create your own character, dubbed "The Hunter" by others. This could easily be something cringe or forgettable but they actually took the time to make Hunter their own character, complete with voice acting! Yeah, you're super OP so you can stand alongside the giants of the Marvel universe but they somehow make it work. Speaking of voice acting, this game has a TON of dialogue. A little too much, in fact.
See, if I have one major gripe with Midnight Suns, is that there's almost TOO much content. This is factoring in the DLC, mind you, since I got the complete version on sale, and those characters and the entire DLC storyline are integrated almost seamlessly into the main narrative, so you'll be doing those missions as you work your way through it. This game took me over 60 hours, way more than I was expecting, and while I don't mind long games, Midnight Suns really drags towards the end. As I said, there's a lot of dialogue - characters usually have something to say after anything that happens - and while you can skip or ignore it, there are opportunities for friendship points in nearly every conversation, so it pays to pay attention. That said, by the end, I was almost entirely checked out as I pushed towards the final mission. Believe me, it's a lot.
The story itself is also pretty blasé. It's your pretty standard Saturday Morning superhero affair, with a bunch of good guys banding together to fight a mystical evil with mostly PG language and scenarios. It's also about these two groups - the titular Midnight Suns and the Avengers - being forced together to deal with this threat and the constant internal conflict these bands of heroes rub against. In theory, it works, but again, not nearly for the runtime of the entire game. There are three chapters and the repetitive nature of constant bickering between the two groups does wear on you well before they put their differences aside for good at the end. There is at least some really good character work for the individual heroes here and there, however, and if you do have the DLC, I would even say Midnight Suns features the best-written version of Eddie Brock ever put forward in media. Another surprise!
Nitpicks with story and length aside, I really adore Marvel's Midnight Suns. This game went overlooked by a lot of people, myself included, but there's so much here that I can definitely say it's worth your time, at least if you're into Marvel. Hell, I didn't even get into the fact this game has a hub world, with third-person exploration! Fucking wild! How did they not market this shit better?
While this game comes from the makers of Xcom, I would actually describe its closest comparable as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. However, a couple of key changes in design turned it from something was largely carried by its non-gameplay elements (as Three Houses was for me) to one that almost perfectly married combat and social sim in execution. The card-based nature of Midnight Suns was one part of it, although the lack of a grid for movement was a bigger deal (positively!) than I expected. While there is a limited number of moves in a turn, you have the freedom to move anywhere on the board, meaning strict positioning plays a much less prominent role. No worrying about being on the wrong tile and having the entire enemy team gang up on you, especially because (aside from bosses) all enemies telegraph which of your units they'll attack. There are no surprises, meaning you're free to concentrate on crafting your strategy from the cards in your hand.
These enemy encounters also have a lot of different win conditions present, resulting in no shortage of variety to combat, especially when you factor in that each Marvel character you control also has their own unique playstyle. Some characters, like Blade, are built around inflicting status effects like bleed on enemies, while others such as Wolverine and Spider-Man are about chaining together attacks on multiple enemies, either with your cards or by using environmental hazards on the battlefield. If I had one complaint with this part of the game, it's that there aren't a lot of unique enemy units - you'll be staring down hydra goons and green demons for most of your playtime. The DLC adds an entirely different set of units to fight (vampyres), but those DLC missions also bring in an additional problem I'll touch on later.
Then you have the social aspect of Marvel's Midnight Suns, the thing I had no idea was even present yet becomes the star of the show. A big part of this game's enjoyment comes from simply hanging out with your favorite Marvel guys. Want to go fishing with Blade? Play video games with Spider-Man? Join a book club with Captain Marvel? Go on friendship dates and give presents to Iron Man? If so, you'll be spending a lot of time doing that. Talking with all these various Marvel characters and learning their stories forms a core part of the gameplay loop, as doing so also helps you level them up and gain better cards/stats. This is ultimately an RPG, after all, but being able to see a different side to these iconic characters than most games allow is genuinely cool.
So who's doing all this, you ask? Your very own Marvel OC, of course. Also something I had no idea about, but when you start the game, you create your own character, dubbed "The Hunter" by others. This could easily be something cringe or forgettable but they actually took the time to make Hunter their own character, complete with voice acting! Yeah, you're super OP so you can stand alongside the giants of the Marvel universe but they somehow make it work. Speaking of voice acting, this game has a TON of dialogue. A little too much, in fact.
See, if I have one major gripe with Midnight Suns, is that there's almost TOO much content. This is factoring in the DLC, mind you, since I got the complete version on sale, and those characters and the entire DLC storyline are integrated almost seamlessly into the main narrative, so you'll be doing those missions as you work your way through it. This game took me over 60 hours, way more than I was expecting, and while I don't mind long games, Midnight Suns really drags towards the end. As I said, there's a lot of dialogue - characters usually have something to say after anything that happens - and while you can skip or ignore it, there are opportunities for friendship points in nearly every conversation, so it pays to pay attention. That said, by the end, I was almost entirely checked out as I pushed towards the final mission. Believe me, it's a lot.
The story itself is also pretty blasé. It's your pretty standard Saturday Morning superhero affair, with a bunch of good guys banding together to fight a mystical evil with mostly PG language and scenarios. It's also about these two groups - the titular Midnight Suns and the Avengers - being forced together to deal with this threat and the constant internal conflict these bands of heroes rub against. In theory, it works, but again, not nearly for the runtime of the entire game. There are three chapters and the repetitive nature of constant bickering between the two groups does wear on you well before they put their differences aside for good at the end. There is at least some really good character work for the individual heroes here and there, however, and if you do have the DLC, I would even say Midnight Suns features the best-written version of Eddie Brock ever put forward in media. Another surprise!
Nitpicks with story and length aside, I really adore Marvel's Midnight Suns. This game went overlooked by a lot of people, myself included, but there's so much here that I can definitely say it's worth your time, at least if you're into Marvel. Hell, I didn't even get into the fact this game has a hub world, with third-person exploration! Fucking wild! How did they not market this shit better?
I'm not done with it yet, i have 63 hours of gameplay and i'm still on act 1. I'm loving every second of this game, it's a ton of fun and the characters are great. I don't give a shit about marvel, i played it because it was super cheap and the gameplay looked interesting. It's one of the most fun games i've played in a while and i'm addicted.
Doing extra side missions, upgrading my decks, trying new strategies, hanging out with the heros, it's a great loop. If i played it back in 2022 i would have considered it my GOTY.
Edit: I finished it a few days ago on Ultimate 1 after like 160 hours and loved every second of it. Most of the time is me just farming resources to upgrade my decks for every hero and maxing relationships. I'd go for 100% completion but i'm too lazy to get the light balance achievment right now, maybe in a future replay.
Spoilerish: My final team was Ghost Rider/Magik/Venom/Iron Man
Doing extra side missions, upgrading my decks, trying new strategies, hanging out with the heros, it's a great loop. If i played it back in 2022 i would have considered it my GOTY.
Edit: I finished it a few days ago on Ultimate 1 after like 160 hours and loved every second of it. Most of the time is me just farming resources to upgrade my decks for every hero and maxing relationships. I'd go for 100% completion but i'm too lazy to get the light balance achievment right now, maybe in a future replay.
Spoilerish: My final team was Ghost Rider/Magik/Venom/Iron Man
This proves that some games are not greater than the sum of their parts. The combat is probably the strongest part, feeling almost like a game of Chess. The controversial card system plays a part in this by making you think about having the most efficient turn with the tools at your disposal. While half of the game is combat, the other half is a Persona-like social sim, with your custom character making friends with the other Marvel heroes making up the team. The main issue is that the game is far too long, each story mission is unnecessarily bloated due to the fact you have to do a random mission between each one. This doesn't factor in all the exploration and light puzzles scattered around the area surrounding your base of operations. Personally, a much more focused game would have made it perfect.
Take and XCOM and...
- Remove the emergent narrative capabilities.
- Remove permadeath.
- Remove the satisfyingly interlinked visual and mechanical progression.
And add:
- An incredibly cheesy and generic Marvel fixed narrative.
- An MC so uncharismatic it could serve as a template for how not to write custom mcs.
- Real money skins shop.
- A third-person base management and exploration system that is mildly entertaining at best, actively annoying at worst.
- TERRIBLE DIALOGUE
- Passable card-game mechanics.
- Collectathons.
- 2012 graphics.
- 2008 morality system.
Terrible game, very disappointing.
- Remove the emergent narrative capabilities.
- Remove permadeath.
- Remove the satisfyingly interlinked visual and mechanical progression.
And add:
- An incredibly cheesy and generic Marvel fixed narrative.
- An MC so uncharismatic it could serve as a template for how not to write custom mcs.
- Real money skins shop.
- A third-person base management and exploration system that is mildly entertaining at best, actively annoying at worst.
- TERRIBLE DIALOGUE
- Passable card-game mechanics.
- Collectathons.
- 2012 graphics.
- 2008 morality system.
Terrible game, very disappointing.
Midnight Suns is a very strange game about a bunch of Marvel rejects, some well known heroes, and Lilith, the mother of demons, summoning Chthon, a slumbering ancient god. The premise is really simple: No one wants to help Lilith summon a literal god, so the heroes need to stop her in order to save earth.
The game is a tactical turn based card game, mixed with social sim elements, where your heroes need some friendly talk from time-to-time, and maybe they even invite you into a book club, or ask for some advice. This aspect from the game works wonderfully, as you learn to love each and every hero from the roster, making their "friend story" unique, and rewarding. If you max one of them out, you are rewarded with a very powerful ability, and even a cool costume, so your investment at the end pays off.
The main character (The Hunter) is also fairly customizable, and your cards are very varied compared to the rest of the cast. However, when you enter combat, the mixture of your hero and your selected partners will create a deck, that you can customize however you like. Every playstyle is supported, and even encouraged, as the game constantly gives you cards, perks and upgrades to toy around with.
I really liked the combat, the social sim aspect, and even the fun hub world, that connects everything together, but I started to get tired from the story, that seemingly never wanted to end, and even came with a lot of clichés. Being a Marvel product, I was ready for some very cartoony story, but overall, the stakes were there, and the motivations were fine, but the pacing was horrible.
Also, some of the characters are utterly annoying, while others are way too likeable, and some of them are weird. Every person can easily find a favorite from this bunch, because they are very varied when it comes to personalities.
Some of my favorites were Blade, Deadpool (DLC), Magik and Scarlet Witch.
Overall, I had way too much fun with this game, and I was utterly invested in it's gameplay loop, but the story's length is way too much, and I wanted a bit more variety in terms of combat scenarios but that is about it. I can wholeheartedly recommend Midnight Suns to anyone who wants to have a fairly good time with a somewhat Lovecraftian Marvel game, and enjoys turn based combat.
The game is a tactical turn based card game, mixed with social sim elements, where your heroes need some friendly talk from time-to-time, and maybe they even invite you into a book club, or ask for some advice. This aspect from the game works wonderfully, as you learn to love each and every hero from the roster, making their "friend story" unique, and rewarding. If you max one of them out, you are rewarded with a very powerful ability, and even a cool costume, so your investment at the end pays off.
The main character (The Hunter) is also fairly customizable, and your cards are very varied compared to the rest of the cast. However, when you enter combat, the mixture of your hero and your selected partners will create a deck, that you can customize however you like. Every playstyle is supported, and even encouraged, as the game constantly gives you cards, perks and upgrades to toy around with.
I really liked the combat, the social sim aspect, and even the fun hub world, that connects everything together, but I started to get tired from the story, that seemingly never wanted to end, and even came with a lot of clichés. Being a Marvel product, I was ready for some very cartoony story, but overall, the stakes were there, and the motivations were fine, but the pacing was horrible.
Also, some of the characters are utterly annoying, while others are way too likeable, and some of them are weird. Every person can easily find a favorite from this bunch, because they are very varied when it comes to personalities.
Some of my favorites were Blade, Deadpool (DLC), Magik and Scarlet Witch.
Overall, I had way too much fun with this game, and I was utterly invested in it's gameplay loop, but the story's length is way too much, and I wanted a bit more variety in terms of combat scenarios but that is about it. I can wholeheartedly recommend Midnight Suns to anyone who wants to have a fairly good time with a somewhat Lovecraftian Marvel game, and enjoys turn based combat.
After playing the DLC, it is criminal y'all let this game flop because it is exactly what comic fans want out of the MCU. Not to mention people criticizing the fact its a "card game" when it really isn't.
Excellent dialogue, incredible story, awesome character moments, and a tight combat system.
Excellent dialogue, incredible story, awesome character moments, and a tight combat system.
This was a really solid experience pretty much all-around and was insanely good for the genre of game it comes from.
Going into this, I was pretty skeptical. I'm not that familiar with card games, or even turn-based ones for that matter, so I really wasn't sure at all whether I'd enjoy it or not. Almost pretty much instantly though as soon as I got my hands on the characters and gained control, I was having a really good time. It's actually, surprisingly, a very complex strategy game that combines the turn-based, card elements of the gameplay with a simplified RPG aspect that makes pretty much every faucet of the game really fresh. You can either grind encounters, grind encounters for resources to upgrade your abilities or the currency to tailor your heroes' appearances to your liking or, perhaps one of my favourite parts of the game, literally sit and chat with the roster of heroes.
I really enjoyed trying to get onto the good side of some of my favourite characters and getting to know them (Wolverine, Deadpool, Iron Man, Captain America) as well as doing the most random as fuck activities with them to make them even more powerful in combat. The game has a very unique way of approaching encounters given which heroes you use and certain combinations are a lot better than others, so it's not really just mindlessly picking whoever to take with you nor does the game reward you for not putting effort into upgrades or tools used to give you an advantage. All of those factors actually make the gameplay a lot more satisfying than you'd think, so grinding in this game isn't nearly as draining especially given most of the grinding really is the core of the gameplay outside of the story missions, it didn't feel repetitive at all.
The narrative, although, is pretty subpar. It's not great but it has it's moments and in the end was pretty enjoyable for the most part, I think it was honestly leagues better than Square Enix's attempt at an Avengers game, (I even preferred some of the voice acting.) It get's the job done, basically, as Magik would say. It doesn't outstay it's welcome nor does it try to take itself too seriously, though given whether you have the DLC addition of Deadpool or not, that probably changes things, but overall I think it does a really good job of utilising each character to their fullest, despite Hulk not getting as much screen time as a Midnight Sun at the end.
As said, it's a really solid experience, even more so if you're into Marvel. It's a very fresh, unique take on the franchise in darker waters that has such a great atmosphere and ambience, it's nice seeing the characters in a different light and I'm interested to see where the series goes next with who I can assume to be is Dr. Doom (and the addition of the Fantastic Four.)
Going into this, I was pretty skeptical. I'm not that familiar with card games, or even turn-based ones for that matter, so I really wasn't sure at all whether I'd enjoy it or not. Almost pretty much instantly though as soon as I got my hands on the characters and gained control, I was having a really good time. It's actually, surprisingly, a very complex strategy game that combines the turn-based, card elements of the gameplay with a simplified RPG aspect that makes pretty much every faucet of the game really fresh. You can either grind encounters, grind encounters for resources to upgrade your abilities or the currency to tailor your heroes' appearances to your liking or, perhaps one of my favourite parts of the game, literally sit and chat with the roster of heroes.
I really enjoyed trying to get onto the good side of some of my favourite characters and getting to know them (Wolverine, Deadpool, Iron Man, Captain America) as well as doing the most random as fuck activities with them to make them even more powerful in combat. The game has a very unique way of approaching encounters given which heroes you use and certain combinations are a lot better than others, so it's not really just mindlessly picking whoever to take with you nor does the game reward you for not putting effort into upgrades or tools used to give you an advantage. All of those factors actually make the gameplay a lot more satisfying than you'd think, so grinding in this game isn't nearly as draining especially given most of the grinding really is the core of the gameplay outside of the story missions, it didn't feel repetitive at all.
The narrative, although, is pretty subpar. It's not great but it has it's moments and in the end was pretty enjoyable for the most part, I think it was honestly leagues better than Square Enix's attempt at an Avengers game, (I even preferred some of the voice acting.) It get's the job done, basically, as Magik would say. It doesn't outstay it's welcome nor does it try to take itself too seriously, though given whether you have the DLC addition of Deadpool or not, that probably changes things, but overall I think it does a really good job of utilising each character to their fullest, despite Hulk not getting as much screen time as a Midnight Sun at the end.
As said, it's a really solid experience, even more so if you're into Marvel. It's a very fresh, unique take on the franchise in darker waters that has such a great atmosphere and ambience, it's nice seeing the characters in a different light and I'm interested to see where the series goes next with who I can assume to be is Dr. Doom (and the addition of the Fantastic Four.)
There's a lot to like about this game, but enough to keep me from absolutely loving it. The idea of taking all the spooky Marvel characters and sticking them in an insane plot full of Darkholds, Cthon, and all that other crap is so up my alley it's nuts. I don't get why characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man are here, but its' still fun. I just feel like some elements could have been tightened up. The whole card-based gameplay gets a little tedious after a while, and the game can just drag at certain points. I liked wandering around the grounds and befriending everyone, but it felt like it was so close to being a really fantastic game, and just didn't quite get there.
Combate divertido.
Com certeza um dos jogos de todos os tempos!
Com certeza um dos jogos de todos os tempos!
The Goddess in Green sighs, tracing an eyeline between the girl across from her and the cards in her hand. It’s a stacked deck, no matter how you cut it, yet still the girl agonizes over her decisions. Ten, maybe twenty minutes ago, this was fun, exciting even, but with the fifth reshuffling of the deck, the allure had gotten old. Yet still the girl crunched numbers in her head, a million simulations running into the same walls, chasing a fairy tale solution. Two rerolls, a move, three interactables, Witchfire… No, a reroll, two interactables, Make ‘Em Bleed, move, interactable… Maybe start with the Witchfire –
“Please, play something. Magik’s dead. You still have a revive. What are you doing?”
“Nah shut up I’m cooking.”
She wasn’t. No amount of rerolls would save this botch job of an operation, and the reality was dawning on her. She gazed out onto the field – A half-vampire, a moody Russian, and a catty goth against an endless sea of hellacious hellforged and nefarious Nazis – and laid her face in her palms. The Goddess’s army was too strong, too quick, too lucky… A floodgate of poor excuses couldn’t hold back the waves of embarrassment washing to shore. The girl held the glowing red button, ending yet another turn. The horde consumed her heroes, and everything went black.
Bolting awake in bed, the haunting charm of the abbey provided little in the way of respite. Defeat had soured the girl’s mood, and even the cheery faces of close friends, their tiresome quips ever ready, couldn’t save the day. It was all so… morose. Until he, tall, firm, decked in dark leather, came into view. Towering over her, her heart would skip a beat at the mere sight of him, her brain melt from a wayward glance of his ruby red eyes. At the subtle hint of his fangs, she would swoon, unable to catch herself…
He was Blade, the Damphyr, and he was the lone purpose for her struggle. Her moniker, “The Hunter”, was an excuse, a pointless exposition to connect an unrequited A-to-B, a boy meets girl of a supernatural variety. Sure, evil mom, old gods, Salem, witches, whatever; the vampire had dug his teeth in, and she found no reason to complain. He made it all seem worth it… The countless hours in battle, locked in mortal combat with the Goddess in Green, the endless monotony of gamma coils and reforged cards, the insipid dialogue spewing from our compatriots… it was all worth it, to spend time with Blade.
Sixty hours, seventy missions, eighty days, thousands of cards. It all stacked up so neatly, but whereas the many found their thrills in the uninspired tale of The Hunter, or another showcase of The Avengers as prime show-stealers, I lay alone in a singular rationale for finishing this journey.
I played a sixty hour game because I think Blade is neat :)
“Please, play something. Magik’s dead. You still have a revive. What are you doing?”
“Nah shut up I’m cooking.”
She wasn’t. No amount of rerolls would save this botch job of an operation, and the reality was dawning on her. She gazed out onto the field – A half-vampire, a moody Russian, and a catty goth against an endless sea of hellacious hellforged and nefarious Nazis – and laid her face in her palms. The Goddess’s army was too strong, too quick, too lucky… A floodgate of poor excuses couldn’t hold back the waves of embarrassment washing to shore. The girl held the glowing red button, ending yet another turn. The horde consumed her heroes, and everything went black.
Bolting awake in bed, the haunting charm of the abbey provided little in the way of respite. Defeat had soured the girl’s mood, and even the cheery faces of close friends, their tiresome quips ever ready, couldn’t save the day. It was all so… morose. Until he, tall, firm, decked in dark leather, came into view. Towering over her, her heart would skip a beat at the mere sight of him, her brain melt from a wayward glance of his ruby red eyes. At the subtle hint of his fangs, she would swoon, unable to catch herself…
He was Blade, the Damphyr, and he was the lone purpose for her struggle. Her moniker, “The Hunter”, was an excuse, a pointless exposition to connect an unrequited A-to-B, a boy meets girl of a supernatural variety. Sure, evil mom, old gods, Salem, witches, whatever; the vampire had dug his teeth in, and she found no reason to complain. He made it all seem worth it… The countless hours in battle, locked in mortal combat with the Goddess in Green, the endless monotony of gamma coils and reforged cards, the insipid dialogue spewing from our compatriots… it was all worth it, to spend time with Blade.
Sixty hours, seventy missions, eighty days, thousands of cards. It all stacked up so neatly, but whereas the many found their thrills in the uninspired tale of The Hunter, or another showcase of The Avengers as prime show-stealers, I lay alone in a singular rationale for finishing this journey.
I played a sixty hour game because I think Blade is neat :)
The corporate incubator heading the design of Marvel's © Midnight Suns , checking steam reviews on release: "oh boy can't wait for all the
---{ Graphics }---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☑ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10s we're gonna get!!!"
---{ Graphics }---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☑ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10s we're gonna get!!!"
incredibly underrated game. I’m so glad I found this hidden gem, it’s such a fun time being able to choose from a huge roster of marvel characters to join your party but also being able to insert your own customised character into the fold!??
turn based games were not really for me but if you’re a fan of marvel there’s no way you won’t enjoy this
turn based games were not really for me but if you’re a fan of marvel there’s no way you won’t enjoy this
WELL that was a long time! 62.4 hours according to Steam, which is the longest time I've played a more-or-less story based game in a loooooong time! Cyberpunk was like just over 30 hours I think for me!
SO y'all should know that I love love LOVE tactical games, and this game, which is basically Fire Emblem Three Houses: Marvel Edition with a really lovely card system, is so wildly up my alley I almost couldn't believe it. I am a lifelong capes comics lover (I will admit that the monstrosity that is the MCU and how much I dislike those movies makes me kinda be very lowkey about how much I love capes) and I love that we get more-or-less comic book versions of folks here.
SINCE it's so up my alley, and I trust my skill in the genre, I don't cheat on games like this. In fact, I bumped up the difficulty to the second highest one as soon as I unlocked it. I feel ok boasting that I only had to restart a single mission [smug sunglasses face]
What else can I say? I loved this game a ton. I loved Hunter's friendships (especially with Nico and Magik and Wanda) and I loved the Abbey and I just loved what this game had going on.
Tips and tricks? Gotta say that, having not read anything else so I could be way off base here, Spider-Man is probably the “best” character. He has lots of abilities that can be upgraded to be “free” and if I’ve learned anything from a lifetime of really loving games with action economy it’s that being able to use moves that don’t count against your action economy is as good as it gets!
Anywho, I cannot recommend this game highly enough!
SO y'all should know that I love love LOVE tactical games, and this game, which is basically Fire Emblem Three Houses: Marvel Edition with a really lovely card system, is so wildly up my alley I almost couldn't believe it. I am a lifelong capes comics lover (I will admit that the monstrosity that is the MCU and how much I dislike those movies makes me kinda be very lowkey about how much I love capes) and I love that we get more-or-less comic book versions of folks here.
SINCE it's so up my alley, and I trust my skill in the genre, I don't cheat on games like this. In fact, I bumped up the difficulty to the second highest one as soon as I unlocked it. I feel ok boasting that I only had to restart a single mission [smug sunglasses face]
What else can I say? I loved this game a ton. I loved Hunter's friendships (especially with Nico and Magik and Wanda) and I loved the Abbey and I just loved what this game had going on.
Tips and tricks? Gotta say that, having not read anything else so I could be way off base here, Spider-Man is probably the “best” character. He has lots of abilities that can be upgraded to be “free” and if I’ve learned anything from a lifetime of really loving games with action economy it’s that being able to use moves that don’t count against your action economy is as good as it gets!
Anywho, I cannot recommend this game highly enough!
A Marvel themed tactical deck builder with persona like social elements is supposed to be a perfect match for me but unfortunately the experience is severely bugged down by weird pacing and bloat.
The game was clearly designed as a live service and while there is no mtx in the final product the design philosophy poisons every aspect of the game.
There are like seven currencies and four different types of loot boxes. Cosmetics are double locked - you randomly get them from loot boxes or activities and then they need to be purchased with another currency.
Some activities require all sort of currencies despite them being limited and unfarmable. - these things don't feel like a balance decision, they feel like things that originally meant to suck actual cash out of players. It's hard to ignore.
The pacing is off, there are a million things going on between battles. It's actually mostly fun stuff like hangouts and club meetings the characters form that all carry small social plots that make the game come alive, it's nice but they stack up and every single conversation in this game goes on for too long.
There's also a whole exploration part that I don't care for but seem to be significant for the other aspects of the game.
I always end a session feeling like I achieved very little compared to the time I've put on.
The gameplay itself is very fun! The tactical elements mesh well with the deck building and ends up being a fairly unique experience. The different characters are very well defined by their cards and most of them are fun to use. The combat has a lot of kick to it.
Letting characters change their clothes and costumes daily is a spark of brilliant design.
The story is kinda basic but the characters are fun (though overly chatty) and even the player's avatar is not a complete cardboard. They actually have enough history and personality traits to help them relate to the cast, it's well thought out.
I like that they chose a rather obscure team and featured minor characters like Magik and Nico, I wish they would go all in and avoid slapping the Avengers on top of them. On the other hand I wouldn't mind seeing an Xmen game in this style.
Just tone it down a little and drop the predatory design.
The game was clearly designed as a live service and while there is no mtx in the final product the design philosophy poisons every aspect of the game.
There are like seven currencies and four different types of loot boxes. Cosmetics are double locked - you randomly get them from loot boxes or activities and then they need to be purchased with another currency.
Some activities require all sort of currencies despite them being limited and unfarmable. - these things don't feel like a balance decision, they feel like things that originally meant to suck actual cash out of players. It's hard to ignore.
The pacing is off, there are a million things going on between battles. It's actually mostly fun stuff like hangouts and club meetings the characters form that all carry small social plots that make the game come alive, it's nice but they stack up and every single conversation in this game goes on for too long.
There's also a whole exploration part that I don't care for but seem to be significant for the other aspects of the game.
I always end a session feeling like I achieved very little compared to the time I've put on.
The gameplay itself is very fun! The tactical elements mesh well with the deck building and ends up being a fairly unique experience. The different characters are very well defined by their cards and most of them are fun to use. The combat has a lot of kick to it.
Letting characters change their clothes and costumes daily is a spark of brilliant design.
The story is kinda basic but the characters are fun (though overly chatty) and even the player's avatar is not a complete cardboard. They actually have enough history and personality traits to help them relate to the cast, it's well thought out.
I like that they chose a rather obscure team and featured minor characters like Magik and Nico, I wish they would go all in and avoid slapping the Avengers on top of them. On the other hand I wouldn't mind seeing an Xmen game in this style.
Just tone it down a little and drop the predatory design.
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.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns was a weird mix of systems, the concoction consisting of a hub area with exploration and relationship management along with missions with turned based combat and deck building. Many have preferred the action itself rather than the friendship busywork, but the whole package just clicked with me. I couldn’t help but like the drama and dysfunctional family dynamics.
It shouldn’t be compared to XCOM, though, as while being turn based it differed quite a bit. Combat took place in small arenas and was simplified overall, cards acting as skills with the choice of upgrading them as well as swapping them in and out. Again it worked for me to the point I was addicted to the loop.
It shouldn’t be compared to XCOM, though, as while being turn based it differed quite a bit. Combat took place in small arenas and was simplified overall, cards acting as skills with the choice of upgrading them as well as swapping them in and out. Again it worked for me to the point I was addicted to the loop.
I usually play just a few contemporary ‘zeitgeist-y’ AAA games a year - when in the weeds with indies, art games, and retro titles, it’s a bit easy to turn one’s back on the chorus of what actually funds the spotlight budget on the medium. As much as, for me, the beating heart of games is the romantic concert of those projects which question the context of interaction within defined systems interrogating thematic concern towards the ideas of choice, ill-portented rationality, gasping deprivation, and other hard to mention excitations of the spirit that can be considered less dangerously in the antiseptic environment of digital reproduction than the cruel world of necessary application, the reality of the games industry is that the actual viscous muscle which pushes through veins ichor are the massive, corrupt, lowest common denominator infatuated blockbuster title games. We can say in all seriousness that the games which matter most are the heartfelt, earnest, no ulterior motive itch.io micro-games about things like desperate backroom abortions, archival practices in the Middle East, or the history of an individual family’s cooking, but the titles which are the most congregated matter/makeup are the games about shooting, looting, and rooting for the US government. I say this with no happiness about the fact, but it is a fact - Nintendo or Bioware may not be the ones who push many, or any, envelopes these days, but they codify where the postage can be sent.
All that said, and that’s usually about the word count that can be dedicated in good faith to thematic discussions of any AAA game’s themes, Firaxis’ Midnight Suns brings enough polish, spectacle, and distillation to ideas that have percolated in the indie scene since their last major release. Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, and, I’ll say it, Ladykiller in a Bind, combine with an egregious amount of bloat (which is nonetheless compelling for longer than it has any right to be) to make one of the more exciting and accessible tactics games that has come out in the past few years. While it doesn’t have the depth of any of its influences, and certainly nowhere near the strategic complexity of previous Firaxis games, it does have some truly delightful pageantry that sets it uniquely, expensively, apart from the games it cribs.
Midnight Suns’ truest success comes in a small mechanical dictionary that appends itself to so many of the systems interlocking and rewarding overlapping play; if Into the Breach is the better three member team strategy game, Midnight Suns at least is the more verbose one. The many status effects and terms of ability may seem on their face like a minor part of strategic play, and indeed in other games with statuses like bleed, vulnerable, or frenzied do tend to backseat those effects to turn order and damage numbers. I think that, however, these small appended terms come into the major arm of MS’s strategic play precisely because of their second layer order of application to the major elements of both the base play and the mission play. The ‘set-up’ portion of the game, the interactions between heroes and exploration jaunts throughout the abbey grounds, reward with new collections of potions and item recipes that largely enforce a system interplay between the terms of application that the enemy hordes and your own heroes are tackling each other with. You are assembling your arsenal, as well as building relationships (in an albeit facile and kind of insultingly childlike way), throughout all the downtime periods of a play session, and with the ability to quickly launch a mission and complete it in 5-15 minutes, immediately reaping and bearing witness to the benefits of exploration and narrative play. It’s an integration of non-exclusively mechanical systems with the hard numbers play that Firaxis didn’t really engage with in any of the XCOM games, with an exception to the Chosen DLC for 2 that began a ramp up into what they do here in Midnight Suns.
Of course, the play with the heroes is the draw that makes the above order of mechanics work, and on that front, Firaxis still has excellent heads on their hydra. The different uses and mixes of their roster, including both in how it is made spectacle and how it works on the spreadsheet of the backend, really does nothing short of amaze when considered beside the simple and pandering superhero action of the last two decades that must have been heavy on the designer’s minds. What could have been a pathetic MCU smashup of variously strong people having minorly different HP and damage numbers is instead a varied and widely developed cast that all mix and match with enormous spread and possibility. Nico, Wolverine, Magik, Hulk; all play with each other and on their own in ways that offer totally different tactical assumptions and varying feelings of accomplishment when tackling goals. Say you are on a defeat all enemies mission - a real basic ‘knock-out’ order (whose idea was KOs anyways? as if being shattered into dust after flying through limbo only rendered one unconscious): maybe you take Captain America, Hunter, and Ghost Rider, leaving the battlefield strewn with enemies absolutely beaten to a pulp with massive damage crumblers after turtling up and prepping for turn one; maybe you take Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, and Magik, gathering all the enemies together with little moving plinks only to take them down with a flood of AoE spells that have been buffed with free play cards and heroic multipliers. Both of these squads ultimately end up doing pretty similar things - dealing damage and buffing - but the progression from deployment to departure by way of the different strengths and weaknesses of team composition legitimately do transcend the vague progression of number climbing that can plague turn-based team tactics.
Of course, as has been said elsewhere, the tactics are the highlight in a lowlight totalised experience. While there is more to agree with in this sentiment than not, and I say this as someone who’s primary access to art remains through novels, poetry, and theatre, I don’t think that the writing which is so criminally derided is pablum. There is definitely far too much of it, and the conversations don’t flow with the tone of the work as it reaches its third act; I wouldn’t say the self-consciousness of the heroes is asinine but it is childish when compared to the confidence that is displayed in the tactics portion of the game. Nevertheless, when considering the source, the dialogue is a worthwhile representative of the source the characters come from. I think so much of what people expect from superheroes is from the poisoned well of cinematic universe storytelling, but Midnight Suns clearly draws far more from the comics, for better or worse, than the movies, if it draws anything from the movies at all. The little hangouts are so Chris Claremont it hurts, and you just know that the plotting is more Walter Simonson or Kurt Busiek than Russo brothers - and over this is a sheen of Bendis that even the Ultimate universe didn’t shine with. Maybe people forgot that superhero stories are soap operas with tights and tanks, but Midnight Suns sure remembers.
The real problem with the game is that which I started with: it's a AAA whale game. There is too much here: between foraging, combat puzzles, making friends, deploying on side missions, researching, crafting, decorating, and petting cats and dogs, the game just has too many tasks over too long a campaign to both remain consistently engaging or competitively challenging. I played on Heroic 2, which I think is basically a very hard or hard mode - it’s 2 degrees above normal difficulty, and I was mowing through every encounter after maxing out the friendships of my heroes, collecting all the mushrooms, and opening all the money/gloss boxes around the grounds. In a less bloated game that had half the runtime, I would have bumped up the difficulty to engage more aggressively with the tactics, but after 40 hours of the same enemies and the same Hydra bombs, the tactics being harder would just be tedious and not engaging. If I’d been barely scraping by on 15 hours, the game could conceivably be called a masterpiece of economy and tension, but like Tony Stark, at the end of the game, the player has accumulated all the capital a small country of super people can generate, capital which can only be used to manipulate hot aliens and vampires into punching their problems away instead of thinking their way through them.
All that said, and that’s usually about the word count that can be dedicated in good faith to thematic discussions of any AAA game’s themes, Firaxis’ Midnight Suns brings enough polish, spectacle, and distillation to ideas that have percolated in the indie scene since their last major release. Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, and, I’ll say it, Ladykiller in a Bind, combine with an egregious amount of bloat (which is nonetheless compelling for longer than it has any right to be) to make one of the more exciting and accessible tactics games that has come out in the past few years. While it doesn’t have the depth of any of its influences, and certainly nowhere near the strategic complexity of previous Firaxis games, it does have some truly delightful pageantry that sets it uniquely, expensively, apart from the games it cribs.
Midnight Suns’ truest success comes in a small mechanical dictionary that appends itself to so many of the systems interlocking and rewarding overlapping play; if Into the Breach is the better three member team strategy game, Midnight Suns at least is the more verbose one. The many status effects and terms of ability may seem on their face like a minor part of strategic play, and indeed in other games with statuses like bleed, vulnerable, or frenzied do tend to backseat those effects to turn order and damage numbers. I think that, however, these small appended terms come into the major arm of MS’s strategic play precisely because of their second layer order of application to the major elements of both the base play and the mission play. The ‘set-up’ portion of the game, the interactions between heroes and exploration jaunts throughout the abbey grounds, reward with new collections of potions and item recipes that largely enforce a system interplay between the terms of application that the enemy hordes and your own heroes are tackling each other with. You are assembling your arsenal, as well as building relationships (in an albeit facile and kind of insultingly childlike way), throughout all the downtime periods of a play session, and with the ability to quickly launch a mission and complete it in 5-15 minutes, immediately reaping and bearing witness to the benefits of exploration and narrative play. It’s an integration of non-exclusively mechanical systems with the hard numbers play that Firaxis didn’t really engage with in any of the XCOM games, with an exception to the Chosen DLC for 2 that began a ramp up into what they do here in Midnight Suns.
Of course, the play with the heroes is the draw that makes the above order of mechanics work, and on that front, Firaxis still has excellent heads on their hydra. The different uses and mixes of their roster, including both in how it is made spectacle and how it works on the spreadsheet of the backend, really does nothing short of amaze when considered beside the simple and pandering superhero action of the last two decades that must have been heavy on the designer’s minds. What could have been a pathetic MCU smashup of variously strong people having minorly different HP and damage numbers is instead a varied and widely developed cast that all mix and match with enormous spread and possibility. Nico, Wolverine, Magik, Hulk; all play with each other and on their own in ways that offer totally different tactical assumptions and varying feelings of accomplishment when tackling goals. Say you are on a defeat all enemies mission - a real basic ‘knock-out’ order (whose idea was KOs anyways? as if being shattered into dust after flying through limbo only rendered one unconscious): maybe you take Captain America, Hunter, and Ghost Rider, leaving the battlefield strewn with enemies absolutely beaten to a pulp with massive damage crumblers after turtling up and prepping for turn one; maybe you take Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, and Magik, gathering all the enemies together with little moving plinks only to take them down with a flood of AoE spells that have been buffed with free play cards and heroic multipliers. Both of these squads ultimately end up doing pretty similar things - dealing damage and buffing - but the progression from deployment to departure by way of the different strengths and weaknesses of team composition legitimately do transcend the vague progression of number climbing that can plague turn-based team tactics.
Of course, as has been said elsewhere, the tactics are the highlight in a lowlight totalised experience. While there is more to agree with in this sentiment than not, and I say this as someone who’s primary access to art remains through novels, poetry, and theatre, I don’t think that the writing which is so criminally derided is pablum. There is definitely far too much of it, and the conversations don’t flow with the tone of the work as it reaches its third act; I wouldn’t say the self-consciousness of the heroes is asinine but it is childish when compared to the confidence that is displayed in the tactics portion of the game. Nevertheless, when considering the source, the dialogue is a worthwhile representative of the source the characters come from. I think so much of what people expect from superheroes is from the poisoned well of cinematic universe storytelling, but Midnight Suns clearly draws far more from the comics, for better or worse, than the movies, if it draws anything from the movies at all. The little hangouts are so Chris Claremont it hurts, and you just know that the plotting is more Walter Simonson or Kurt Busiek than Russo brothers - and over this is a sheen of Bendis that even the Ultimate universe didn’t shine with. Maybe people forgot that superhero stories are soap operas with tights and tanks, but Midnight Suns sure remembers.
The real problem with the game is that which I started with: it's a AAA whale game. There is too much here: between foraging, combat puzzles, making friends, deploying on side missions, researching, crafting, decorating, and petting cats and dogs, the game just has too many tasks over too long a campaign to both remain consistently engaging or competitively challenging. I played on Heroic 2, which I think is basically a very hard or hard mode - it’s 2 degrees above normal difficulty, and I was mowing through every encounter after maxing out the friendships of my heroes, collecting all the mushrooms, and opening all the money/gloss boxes around the grounds. In a less bloated game that had half the runtime, I would have bumped up the difficulty to engage more aggressively with the tactics, but after 40 hours of the same enemies and the same Hydra bombs, the tactics being harder would just be tedious and not engaging. If I’d been barely scraping by on 15 hours, the game could conceivably be called a masterpiece of economy and tension, but like Tony Stark, at the end of the game, the player has accumulated all the capital a small country of super people can generate, capital which can only be used to manipulate hot aliens and vampires into punching their problems away instead of thinking their way through them.
What an awesome surprise.
The XCOM people made Marvel Emblem Three Houses and it absolutely rules. I went into this game after hearing some good things and I still expected it to be a bit of a slog. Now after 50+ to finish, I'm ready for DLC. Firaxis managed to make something unique, heartfelt, and fun out a property that feels almost worn into the ground by the MCU.
The combat? An interesting spin on "tile" games disguised as a card battler. The hub world? Marvel dating sim without the dating. The customization? Nearly Flawless. Give or take some uncanny valley NPCs and a crash or two along the way, and this was one of my favorite releases of 2022. Big recommend to fans of the genre.
The XCOM people made Marvel Emblem Three Houses and it absolutely rules. I went into this game after hearing some good things and I still expected it to be a bit of a slog. Now after 50+ to finish, I'm ready for DLC. Firaxis managed to make something unique, heartfelt, and fun out a property that feels almost worn into the ground by the MCU.
The combat? An interesting spin on "tile" games disguised as a card battler. The hub world? Marvel dating sim without the dating. The customization? Nearly Flawless. Give or take some uncanny valley NPCs and a crash or two along the way, and this was one of my favorite releases of 2022. Big recommend to fans of the genre.
A great, and also very flawed, game.
Overall, I was hooked. While the plot is relatively predictable and the gameplay loop outside of combat is a bit shallow, the game had me thinking about it whenever I was not playing. I wish it had sold more, so the developers could improve upon the foundation laid out in this game, but I know that it’s not for everyone.
Overall, I was hooked. While the plot is relatively predictable and the gameplay loop outside of combat is a bit shallow, the game had me thinking about it whenever I was not playing. I wish it had sold more, so the developers could improve upon the foundation laid out in this game, but I know that it’s not for everyone.
They're cowards for not letting me smooch the hulk
This was a really fun experience with a killer combat and deck building system. While the characters are written in a way that's almost teenage drama like, I ended up being charmed by their portrayals. Sadly, for me the game had several crashes after decent hours of play that ended up being annoying alongside graphics not being the best and finding that the team ran out of budget towards the end of the project with a tease for a sequel that might not evenr happen.
Marvel's Midnight Suns is what you get when you combine Marvel's superheroes and a digital trading card game into an XCOM style 3D strategy game. The story revolves around the titular Midnight Suns, Marvel's supernatural and mystical themed faction, reviving an ancient "chosen one" in order to combat the return of the demon Lilith. Despite the magic themed story and name, Hydra comes to the aid of Lilith, and Ironman lends his and the Avenger's assistance to the Midnight Suns, allowing for all manner of Marvel heroes and villains to appear, magic or otherwise. The story feels good, and mostly in line with how Marvel does their comics, but being stuck behind a player created "chosen one" character in a Marvel story feels like an obstacle to enjoying the universe. Every character in the game has their own deck of cards that can be used in battle, each with their own specific traits and quirks that give them their own strengths, combos, and playstyles. There is plenty of customization between your own character, the other heroes, and the Abbey, the Midnight Suns' base of operations. If you're a fan of games like Hearthstone and Gwent, and you appreciate Marvel, you'll enjoy this, but don't expect much if you're not into card games. Not worth it at full price, but if you can get it on sale, you'll get your worth out of it.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Zoomers.
"Shit, religious people startin' to scare me"
"Shit, the government wrote the Bible"
Someone wrote their marvel fan fic and turned it into a sexless mass effect. Playing this was as engaging as watching those perky housewives on Bravo, but without any hint of sexuality. Superheros are so scared of sex, my super god person should not fuck whatsoever. Jesus didn't fuck either because he was to good for that too. Dude, why even put Venom in this shit. That man wears a pregnant martian.
Sex aside, talking to the characters here is just talking to a wall, you're also a wall in this game too, so its two walls talking to each other. Wow, they did a really good job remaking Mass Effect!
Games really love to tip their little toes into dating sims mechanics just to waste your time and not do anything interesting with it, just cause its funny or something. What the hell is this bit?
Oh right, gameplay. No one cares, use iron man, kill everyone, next mission. (Iron Man, Venom, Dark Hunter, is all you really need.) Anyone thats trying to be a tank or whatever is fucking useless. Captain America is a bum! Then you got nerds that would be like 'bro you don't understand if you play like nightmare survival hardcore oddball mode you will wish you had the captian.' and all I will say is bitch, clean your room.
Hold on, let me add this shit right here. Fuck that stupid fucking demon dog dude, That useless piece of shit should get turned into sausage or something. Way more useful that way. I love this stupid mission that was like holy fucking shit dude, your DOG is here! And all I'm thinking is, oh great, this dumb fucking dog is ruining my deck cuz it's now filled with the most useless fucking cards in existence. Oh fuck hes not ok cuz I didn't pet the fucking shithead every day. Video games are pointless, brain smoothing tools.
They made Blade fucking ass in this game too. How the hell you fuck that up?
Why do all the women sound the same?
Why can't ya smoke sherm with Magick?
They gave plastic surgery to a skull. Ghost Rider wack.
Everyone Dripless.
I'll stick to XCOM, my guy.
"Shit, religious people startin' to scare me"
"Shit, the government wrote the Bible"
Someone wrote their marvel fan fic and turned it into a sexless mass effect. Playing this was as engaging as watching those perky housewives on Bravo, but without any hint of sexuality. Superheros are so scared of sex, my super god person should not fuck whatsoever. Jesus didn't fuck either because he was to good for that too. Dude, why even put Venom in this shit. That man wears a pregnant martian.
Sex aside, talking to the characters here is just talking to a wall, you're also a wall in this game too, so its two walls talking to each other. Wow, they did a really good job remaking Mass Effect!
Games really love to tip their little toes into dating sims mechanics just to waste your time and not do anything interesting with it, just cause its funny or something. What the hell is this bit?
Oh right, gameplay. No one cares, use iron man, kill everyone, next mission. (Iron Man, Venom, Dark Hunter, is all you really need.) Anyone thats trying to be a tank or whatever is fucking useless. Captain America is a bum! Then you got nerds that would be like 'bro you don't understand if you play like nightmare survival hardcore oddball mode you will wish you had the captian.' and all I will say is bitch, clean your room.
Hold on, let me add this shit right here. Fuck that stupid fucking demon dog dude, That useless piece of shit should get turned into sausage or something. Way more useful that way. I love this stupid mission that was like holy fucking shit dude, your DOG is here! And all I'm thinking is, oh great, this dumb fucking dog is ruining my deck cuz it's now filled with the most useless fucking cards in existence. Oh fuck hes not ok cuz I didn't pet the fucking shithead every day. Video games are pointless, brain smoothing tools.
They made Blade fucking ass in this game too. How the hell you fuck that up?
Why do all the women sound the same?
Why can't ya smoke sherm with Magick?
They gave plastic surgery to a skull. Ghost Rider wack.
Everyone Dripless.
I'll stick to XCOM, my guy.
This game is a weird one. Its not superhero X-COM and its not your usual superhero game. Instead its a card battler, deck builder with some light social aspects sprinkled onto after missions where you get to have close platonic relations with your fellow heroes.
However I will say that it takes awhile for the gameplay to get good, it needs a few of the upgrades you get from research and a lot of the better cards for the general combat to become more fun. One major downside for me had to be the small maps, and general lack of enemy variety as well not many Marvel Mystical Villains that weren't just Fallen Villains we know, Lilith and Cthon. Doctor Doom is teased about but will seemingly appear in a sequel that will not happen. One of the positives is the lack of MCU, this game takes more from comics while changing some aspects like aging up characters like Nico, and changing who takes Magik into limbo as little girl.
Overall I'm a little sad that there won't be a sequel but im also glad that Firaxis didn't get sent to the Marvel mines.
However I will say that it takes awhile for the gameplay to get good, it needs a few of the upgrades you get from research and a lot of the better cards for the general combat to become more fun. One major downside for me had to be the small maps, and general lack of enemy variety as well not many Marvel Mystical Villains that weren't just Fallen Villains we know, Lilith and Cthon. Doctor Doom is teased about but will seemingly appear in a sequel that will not happen. One of the positives is the lack of MCU, this game takes more from comics while changing some aspects like aging up characters like Nico, and changing who takes Magik into limbo as little girl.
Overall I'm a little sad that there won't be a sequel but im also glad that Firaxis didn't get sent to the Marvel mines.