Well... after nearly two or more months of playing Midnight Suns, I finally completed the game... and this are my thoughts on the hugely anticipated Firaxis and Marvel collaboration!
So... like most people, when Midnight Suns was first announced, I was expecting something that riffed off the XCOM style of gameplay. And that might have made some sort of sense if you were playing as SHIELD. However, the XCOM gameplay relies heavily on the fact that you are commanding faceless toons that are all too fragile and you are liable to have a squad wiped out in the normal course of gameply. However, in Midnight Suns... you are playing as THE superheroes... and superheroes DON'T get killed and taken out of the game permanently!
So, obviously, it wasn't possible for Firaxis to do the same game formula with headline superheroes like Captain Marvel and Iron Man! Of course, they could have pursued something similar with lesser superheroes that COULD be taken out... perhaps like a mutant colony or something like that, but what would be the fun in that... it would just be a XCOM game with a superhero skinning.
Instead they chose to rework the whole mechanics, and turn it into a card-battler with Sims- or Persona-like social interaction. It is a bit strange, but it sort of works! Mostly...
The Setup
You play as the Hunter... a newly awakened (reincarnated) superhero... well, Eternal/Demon/weapon, in response to the rise of a new threat (one of a long line of threats to Earth and the Universe in the Marvel universe... phew, it is a busy calender for superheroes to keep averting the apocalypse). This time, the latest in the string of apocalypses is the awakening of your mother Lilith... who has this plan to free an elder god, Cthon. And that will definitely be bad for the universe. Unfortunately for you, being the daughter of Lilith makes you part of the prophecy that is supposed to bring ruination to the universe... lucky you.
However, you won't face this apocalyptic apocalypse without friends. The Abbey plays host to the Midnight Suns (a group of angsty young superheroes that are itching to prove their worth) and the Avengers (yes yes... everyone's favourite movie franchise). This is one of the stranger combinations in the game... Avengers, Earth's most powerful heroes... fighting at a sort of parity with the Midnight Suns? Odd from a universe continuity point of view, but decent enough from a gameplay point of view. Still, I think the game would have been better with ONLY the Midnight Suns and a group of lesser known superheroes.
... oh, and the dialogue is sappy as all hell!
The Game
You awaken in a bit of a pocket dimension (or a hidden physical reality, I wasn't quite sure which it was...) known as the Abbey. It is a location from which your mother (Lilith) and her sister the Caretaker (Sara) last fought the entry of Cthon. It was also the location where your mother fell under the influence of the dark god, and where you died last time.
The area around the is full of interesting memories to rediscover.... it is a bit of an odd extended side-quest combined with a collect-em-up. It is decent enough from a story lore sort of perspective, even if I really really hate these collect-em-ups. In the end, I collected most of the things to give me a decent insight into the extended story of what happened the last time around... but I wasn't really compelled to find everything to completion. Like I said, these collect things are really quite irritating in games.
The Abbey is also home to The Forge... which is essentially a trapped fire demon that Doctor Strange and Tony Stark use to enhance their research and engineering.
... oh, these two are the odd couple... constantly bickering over their different approaches grounded in Science vs Magic. Stark is constantly needling the arrogant Strange... and it one spot that always brought a smile to my face as I passed them. The background sniping and griping...
And you will need this area to create, upgrade, and discover new cards to play on the field of battle. This section was really quite exciting at the start... but as the game progressed, I felt like there weren't as great a selection of card abilities as I had hoped. Each hero ended up having a legendary card, some epics/rares... but try as I might, I couldn't field anyone (except for the Hunter) without a couple of common cards that they spawned with.
You also have the opportunity to spaar with and solo train the various heroes in your roster... although, the game is pretty good at keeping all the levels relatively well clumped (which is important for the end game!).
The actual card battles aren't really the largest part of the game either... sure, they are the most interactive and the most "game" part of the game... but there is going to be a great deal of chatting to the various heroes, sometimes about superhero stuff.. and mostly about the personal lives and gripes of the "humans" that are the superheroes.
Most of the time, you are best off just answering within your preferred role-play... there are "light" and "dark" answers in addition to the friendship meters being affected, but none of these are really critical. You get more light/dark points from other interactions, and same for the friendship meters... so, just answer the way that you want to! Be nice, be a dick... doesn't really matter in the long run!
... ummm, and newly resurrected superheroes are also interior decorators.
Hang out with your various superheroes... and learn more about their fragile egos and all of that... they really appreciate it, and this is where you learn more about their desires and worries... this is the sappy Persona part of the game. Fun, but in the end, I ended up skipping through a lot of the dialogue... it is REALLY SAPPY!
... the Marvel humour from the movies is marked present as well! Witty one-liners... groaning dad-jokes... all of them... hilarious, if you like that sort of thing... I do! It is self-parodying takedowns at it finest!
So, this is the final list of heroes that you have at your disposal by the end of the game... I really like the starting crew of Avengers and Midnight Suns, but the ones that you pick up later in the game seemed a little bit too jammed in to enjoy spending time with them... yep, the endgame seems to be more than a little bit rushed.
Already, as I write this, there is DLC that introduces a new hero in the form of Deadpool... and there will be more DLC with a Season Pass already for sale. Hopefully, it will be like XCOM2 where each DLC really kicked the game up a level.. and the last one made it an almost perfect game.
Cards cards cards, yes this is a card battler... and you will have to pick and choose a bit to equip your heroes with a decent complimentary set of abilities and attacks. As I mentioned before, it really feels like only the Hunter was really flush with a range of cards... the rest of the heroes feel a little bit incomplete.
He hee... stats for the stats nerd. Actually, I only noticed this page when I finally was taking screenshots for this review. The back story and other tactical information was interesting... but in the end, you don't really need that much information, the tactical fights were generally easy enough.
Three heroes are available for each day's mission... and for each mission available (usually at least four per day) you are REQUIRED to use one particular hero. No problem, and it ensures that you start to come to grips with the relative uses and strengths of each hero as well as keeping everyone roughly equally leveled. Unlike XCOM, there is no real sense of urgency here. The apocalypse will just hang around waiting until you are ready to tackle the story missions... which did lead to me having some pretty OP-ed heroes!
ON the tactical map... cards are drawn for the three heroes, and you have three card plays per turn. Some cards will refund card plays, and using these to KO weaker enemies allows you to build up your heroism meter which you can then splash out on some pretty hard-hitting abilities! It is a nice balance chain of card plays which can leave you out in the lurch if you are too imbalanced on the various types of attacks, abilities, or combos.
Each card play will also shift you and the enemies around the small tactical zone, and this placement aspect is critical to maximising the effects if your abilities as there are many that are zone based or have a directional element to them.
Heh... and the most fun is had when one of the enemy super-villains makes a showing! This definitely ups the challenge from a walk in the part to a nice test of forethought and tactics.
Visuals, Sound and Performance
I did play this initially on the Steam Deck, and it was great... until it hit a point where it continually and reliably kept crashing. Probably (maybe...), the game is now patched so that that doesn't happen... but I gave up on the Deck and switched to the gaming laptop.
Midnight Suns did push the laptop hard, with the fans blasting away... but there were no issues with framerate and performance until the very last end battle. That was the only time I dropped frames to point of stuttering... however, everything else ran smoothly, which was a surprise as I had read many reviews of the Abbey hub being a problem!
The music is cinematic and well done, it isn't something that you directly notice... but as you march out to a battle, it does get the blood moving! This scene will never grow old!
... and there are heaps of cut-scenes as well. All of them looking pretty top-notch, and done in that usual Marvel self-deprecating style. I love it!
My Thoughts
Midnight Suns might not have been the superhero management/simulator game that I was hoping for or expecting... but if you let go of that expectation, it is a pretty decent card battler with a Marvel skinning. I would say that is more like a visual novel/movie with a card battler attached... and with a cool story, and all the fan-service in tow. I'm a Marvel fan, and so I loved it... but I would have preferred a more XCOM experience with you commanding a SHIELD detachment instead of OP-superheroes. Something like the Agents of Shield TV series?
But, I loved the game... even if it felt rushed at the end... and in true Marvel movie style, there were cut-scenes in the endgame credits... hinting at a new big-bad! Colour me intrigued!
Review Specs
Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:
XMG Fusion 15
CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD (SATA/Nvme)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 2070 Max-Q
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