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.