When you think of Marvel games what do you think of? Over the last decade, almost forty different Marvel games have been released on a variety of consoles. When you think of active Marvel titles what do you think of, Marvel’s Spiderman, Marvel’s Avengers, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy? Just between those three titles alone, gamers got to experience the good and bad of Marvel games. Last month, 2K and Firaxis Games released Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Now a month after the game’s release, we dive into their tactical RPG. Will it hold up? Is it better after launch? Let’s find out in our Marvel’s Midnight Suns review through the Epic Game Store!
Jumping into Marvel’s Midnight Suns, we expected combat to focus on deck building with XCOM-like tactical strategy. What we got was closer to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, where the game focuses more on the characters’ interactions with one another than the overall combat. After fifty hours (50) in the game, we can say that we spent at least thirty-five hours (35) just in character interaction. Now, this isn’t to say that this was unnecessary entirely, but it certainly felt like too much. Now let’s dive into the gameplay portion of our Marvel’s Midnight Suns review and explain why character interactions are important.
Gameplay
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a story about different Marvel forces attempting to stop Lilith, Mother of Demons, from resurrecting Elder God, Chthon. The story begins with Hydra Scientist Doctor Faustus resurrecting Lilith from her dark slumber. Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Captain Marvel are forced to go to the Abbey to recruit additional support while leaving Wanda to defend the Sanctum Sanctorum. At the Abbey, the Avengers and the Midnight Suns decide to resurrect the Hunter, Lilith’s original killer.
This sets players on a path to take down Lilith, Hydra, and all others that get in their way. The Hunter is one of the first custom-created characters to be the focal point of a Marvel game. Players can choose whether they want the hunter to be male or female and customize them as they see fit. Throughout the story, the player is given a morality system to choose between focusing on Light and Dark, similar to Mass Effect and other games; the decisions the player makes with the dialogue affects the end of the game.
Friendship Impacts the Game
These dialogue choices also impact the player’s relationship with other Marvel characters. By Increasing The Hunter’s friendship with the different Marvel characters, they are able to unlock new abilities for those characters. Friendship can be increased by selecting the different MCU characters for missions, training with them, giving them gifts, hanging out, and taking them to exciting locations around the Abbey.
The biggest downside to this is the player is rather limited by these character interactions. You can only increase friendship on their terms. These will typically be done either through club meetings, hangouts, or occasional invitations from the characters. Invitations are typically sent out through their social media platforms and do not always result in interaction at that moment. Friendship plays an important part in the story with the characters you have the strongest bond with being totems against Chthon.
Deckbuilding & Resources
Marvel’s Midnight Suns deckbuilding element is primarily controlled by Gamma Coils that are unlocked by completing missions. Each Gamma Coil grants a minimum of three cards for the player to choose between but can later be upgraded to grant more card choices as the game progresses. Throughout the game, the player must gather artifacts and resources to progress the story and level character abilities; later on, resources can be traded for other resources. If you do not feel like grinding out resources through missions, this is another option. Arcane Chests can also grant resources and skin shaders.
If players want stronger abilities then they will need to upgrade their cards. Each player’s deck is comprised of eight cards with only four attack cards permitted. As new cards are unlocked, they can be swapped into each hero’s deck and former cards can be used to upgrade other copies of the card. Later in the game, modified cards become a staple of each hero’s deck; these modifications can eventually be changed to fit the player’s playstyle.
Combat
In combat, the game will shuffle each hero’s cards into a bigger deck and draw out a minimum of five cards. Depending on the choices the player has made throughout the game will determine how many cards can be played each turn. At the minimum, three action cards can be played each turn. Cards that require Heroism can only be played if the player has enough Heroics. Other attacks and skills can increase the amount of Heroism stored. Heroism can also be used to revive players, accomplish mission objectives, and use terrain features as attacks.
Players must manage their decks and cards played in order to win each battle. During combat, players can move their hero freely at least once. Thankfully, the game does give the player at least two redraws each turn to swap out cards; this can be upgraded through passive abilities and card modifications. Later in the game, it is important to focus on who each enemy has focused on since certain missions can be failed if a hero is downed. This especially makes the last fight in the game frustrating.
Gameplay Bugs and Issues
Now that we’ve at least explained the core gameplay elements, let’s discuss some issues we experienced during our Marvel’s Midnight Suns review playthrough. Certain missions requiring exploration of the Abbey do not have waypoints. These missions are required to progress certain parts of the story so it can be rather frustrating when trying to find out where you have to go.
During our playthrough, the game would require us to speak to a certain character to progress but they would be nowhere to be found or glitched behind a door or another object; at one point we were required to speak to Nico, but she was bugged in her room. We only discovered this by entering photo mode and changing the camera angle. We were able to fix these instances either by saving and loading back in or by completing a basic mission.
The second biggest gameplay bug we faced was Heroes falling through the map during combat. Thankfully this did not make them unusable but made it rather difficult to plan attacks, remove bindings, and even revive. Sadly, restarting the encounter or mission did not fix this issue. The only way we could resolve this issue was by exiting out of the game entirely, resetting any progress since the last save. This could also be a headache depending on if the game wanted to register the saved data. On multiple occasions, we noticed issues with the game being able to load saved data.
Additionally, we had a few issues where in combat an ally would be downed and was unable to revive them. Rather than the mission failing, it just would continue forward until all allies had been defeated. This made certain longer missions to be rather infuriating.
Graphics
Negatives
Now onto the graphics portion of the Marvel’s Midnight Suns review. Marvel’s Midnight Suns have both positive and negative aspects when it comes to graphics. As previously discussed, we faced issues with characters not loading in appropriately and characters falling through the map. These are both gameplay and graphical bugs. When an ally would fall through the map, any attack against them would force the camera to wherever they were located at the time. In the Abbey, certain characters could have a mission marker but would be unable to be talked to even when properly spawned in.
The game also has weird issues with clothing, on numerous occasions, you will see a hero’s outfit bounce or be thrown in a weird direction. Ultimately this is just the game rendering something but it still looks unusual. During missions, if you fail a mission and must restart it, some characters will reset to their base outfit until the end of the mission.
Our last gripe with the graphics is the occasional frame rate issues. During the last fight, the frame rate can drop drastically, at one point the game was only allowing 16 FPS due to everything going on. What made matters worse is enemies would not despawn. Even when failing a mission, some enemies would not be taken out of the arena. This can make things difficult when planning attacks since some enemies would be untargetable.
Positives
Marvel’s Midnight Suns does offer a variety of positive aspects. Each cutscene is beautifully designed and rendered allowing the player to soak in the world around them. No matter which character is chosen for a mission, the player can see the characters interacting properly. The use of multiple areas allows no singular map to feel stale and overutilized. The characters are masterfully crafted giving each one its own unique feel. If you were to take out the combat elements and focused just on the visual cutscenes, you can easily enjoy the Marvel universe coming to life.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns does utilize both comic book adaptations and the real-life actors that portrayed them in some instances. Nico Minoru character model is based on Lyrica Okano portrayal in the Runaways TV series; she is also the voice of the character. When comparing each character to their comic and Marvel movie adaption, it is nice to see their portrayals blended for this game.
Outside of the visual bugs, which can be fixed over time, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a rather solid game graphically. The only downside, some cutscenes are not skippable.
Controls
For our Marvel’s Midnight Suns review, we attempted to play the game with both a controller and using a mouse and keyboard. Since we started out with a controller, there were certain options we did not know the commands for when using the keyboard. This did cause us to have to restart certain encounters. Overall, both options are viable but make sure you figure out the controls before switching.
The game’s controller layout feels a bit awkward with most of the buttons not being utilized. Ending the player’s turn using down on the directional pad feels a bit awkward since everything else does not utilize the directional pad. If you like either controller or mouse and keyboard, you are able to play the game with ease.
Audio/SFX
Most of Marvel’s Midnight Suns characters are voiced by the same voice actors as their animated or video game counterparts. If you are a fan of voice actors, you can look forward to hearing Steve Blum (Wolverine), Laura Bailey (Magik), and Yuri Lowenthal (Peter Parker). Matthew Mercer voices the Male version of the Hunter, while Elizabeth Grullon voices the female version.
When playing through Marvel’s Midnight Suns it is easy to miss out on the voice acting since it is faster to read the lines internally than it is to listen to the dialogue. By doing such, you will easily miss out on some of the great voice acting. There are times when some lines do not work, but at the end of the day, most feel right. Special effects and sound effects in the game sound like they were ripped directly out of real life or a movie letting players have that Marvel Cinematic feel.
Replayability
Now on to the final section of our Marvel’s Midnight Suns review, the replayability factor. Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a game you can play in a variety of ways but the story’s ending remains the same. The major aspect the morality system plays is the character interactions and which cards are stronger than the others. So if you are looking for some shocking alternate ending, at the moment it does not appear to feature one. The game does seem like it will have support at least for the upcoming year. If successful, we could see a sequel or multiple season passes.
Ultimately, replayability comes down to whether or not you want to see the different interactions, any challenges you might want to do, and if you want to limit yourself on who you can use in missions. The game does offer a variety of difficulties to play on making for more challenging experiences.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns Review Verdict!
Looking back on our time with Marvel’s Midnight Suns, it was a relatively positive experience. The gameplay is solid with combat taking a backseat to the game’s narrative and world-building. The different Marvel characters are enjoyable to talk to, however, the game will sometimes make it difficult to do so. The overall gameplay can be enjoyable to experience but the inability to fast-forward through enemy combat makes combat exhausting. Additionally, some of the game’s bugs both visually and gameplay wise can make combat a bit difficult.
Graphically, Midnight Suns does a lot right but the game’s bugs and frame rate drop hold it back a bit. The cinematics are beautiful but it can suffer when exploring the world or during combat. The voice acting for the most part checks all the boxes we were looking for and the sound effects give a cinematic feel; the overall soundtrack is what we have grown accustomed to from Marvel movies and games, so it is enjoyable if you like that style.
Finally, replayability comes down to how much time and effort the player wants to put into the game. A player who loves the game could easily find hundreds of hours of gameplay in it while someone who is just curious can find 35 hours. If you are able to find it for $30 then it is a steal, the game is rather fairly priced with multiple hours of gameplay to expect.
A review copy of Marvel’s Midnight Suns was provided by 2K for the Epic Games Store. Marvel’s Midnight Suns is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.
