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| Probably the most iconic location you'll fight in this game is Avengers Tower |
| Quick Info | |
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| Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
| Developer: | Firaxis Games |
| Publisher: | 2K |
| Release Date: | 2 Dec 2022 |
| Time played: | 65 hours |
Firaxis Does Superheroes
At first glance, Firaxis doesn't seem the kind of studio to be dabbling with licensed IP, especially one that involves Marvel superheroes. Their track record has mostly involved bringing modern iterations of venerable PC game franchises such as Sid Meier's Civilization or even XCOM to new audiences. But this wasn't the case in 2022 when Marvel's Midnight Suns was released, a mix of turn-based tactics game, card game and RPG where you're given the opportunity to recruit a whole bunch of Marvel characters such as Iron Man, Wolverine and Blade to fight the evil demon Lilith.
Critically, the game was a success, and it currently holds a Metascore of 83 and a Steam rating of "Very Positive" based on 82% of the 13,288 reviews being positive. However, it wasn't considered a commercial success by Take-Two Interactive (parent of Firaxis's parent company, 2K) with the CEO Strauss Zelnick saying the game was "a commercial flop".
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| Lyrica Okano reprises her role as Nico Minoru in this game |
Superhero Tropes Assemble!
So, what is this game actually about? You play the role of a hero known simply as "The Hunter" or "Hunter" who is raised from the dead by a witch called Sara (aka The Caretaker) and Doctor Strange. Sara also happens to be your aunt who raised you as a child after your mother became the Big Bad, Lilith. Lilith who is awakened by H.Y.D.R.A. plans to unleash Chthon, an evil Elder God, onto the world and your job is to assemble a team of superheroes to stop them.
It's all typical superhero fare, so while the overarching plot is serviceable, it's nothing you haven't seen before. It mainly acts as a reason for you to fight enemies and recruit new allies. A big chunk of the game will involve bringing your ragtag crew of misfits together and contending with the inevitable drama that ensues. This is actually one of the game's strengths, but could potentially be seen as a weakness if you're the sort of player that doesn't really like talking to computer teammates and just want to get straight into the action every time. I have bad news for those players as there is a lot of dialogue in this game. In fact, the lead engineer of the game, Will Miller, says there's over 65,000 lines of voiced dialogue in Midnight Suns! Yikes! That's a lot of talking.
Thankfully, the developers went all out when recruiting voice talent, including the most prolific voice actors in the biz, Steve Blum (who often voices Wolverine in other media and does so again in this game) and Jennifer Hale (who voices Lilith). They even managed to get Lyrica Okano who played Nico Minoru in the live-action Marvel show "Runaways" to reprise her role. And while we're talking about the game's audio, Timothy Wynn (who also worked as the composer on XCOM 2) does a splendid job in bringing that epic, superhero feel to the soundtrack with Phill Boucher (who worked on the soundtrack to XCOM: Chimera Squad).
Wait… Don't I Know You From Somewhere?
Okay, when Marvel's Midnight Suns was first announced, everything made sense to me with respect to XCOM: Chimera Squad. Chimera Squad wasn't your typical XCOM game: soldiers were no longer fully customisable, they were now actual characters or even cartoon heroes that you were controlling. Each with their own unique personalities and special abilities. You even had the capacity to learn more about these characters when you were back in base (albeit in a limited fashion). The game also felt more story-focused, being broken into different acts.
Chimera Squad was a test run for Midnight Suns and while I know that sounds like a gross oversimplification, you can clearly see some of the parallels. Midnight Suns also has heroes, superheroes in fact, that you get to fight with and learn more about during their downtime. The game is also broken in acts with each act taking the world closer towards the precipice of doom. So, quite similar in some regards but that's where the similarities end: Midnight Suns is like Chimera Squad on steroids, it just has more of everything: more plot, more side quests and a merging of turn-based tactics with a card game. While I definitely appreciate the ability to learn more about your favourite Marvel characters and the accessibility of the card-based combat to a larger demographic, sometimes you can have too much of a good thing: wandering for hours around the Abbey grounds doing busywork makes me feel like Firaxis were aiming to cater to players who love open world games, completing collections and side quests just for the sake of it. Ultimately, it strikes a middle ground which means it probably doesn't satisfy fans of open world games, but it feels like an annoyance for players like me who want a more streamlined experience. I'm just thankful they didn't take it to the next level and become a Marvel version of Far Cry or Assassin's Creed.
KARD-BASED KOMBAT!
So, as mentioned, the main gameplay occurs when you're going on missions and fighting H.Y.D.R.A. and its minions. This is a combination of traditional turn-based tactics that you'd normally see in games like XCOM and a card game. Picking a mission is done from a table called the "Mirror Table" and it will give you a choice of a few missions to initiate. Often the mission will require you to bring a specific superhero along and then you can pick two other superheroes to complete the squad (one of these superheroes can even be your custom character, Hunter). Each mission available to you will have different difficulty ratings as well as objectives: this has an effect on what kind of rewards you will receive such as gamma coils (essentially ability card lootboxes), credits (used for upgrading your Keep), intel caches (used for unlocking additional ops that superheroes can do on their own) and essence (used for crafting items).
Prior to entering a mission you're able to pick eight cards per superhero deck. These cards are shuffled into the deck and then you draw five cards each round. You're also given the opportunity to redraw cards if you're unhappy with a particular card or you're wanting to activate a special ability (some cards only confer certain benefits when redrawn). The cards at your disposal tend to either be offensive cards that will inflict damage on your enemies or defensive cards that provide defensive bonuses or healing for your squad. The defensive cards tend to also generate points in Heroism and these can be spent on activating a hero's superpower or using the environment to damage enemies like vaulting over a box or throwing debris. You're also given the ability to move your heroes during a turn which is handy for avoiding attacks or positioning them for abilities that work in a line, like Captain Marvel's Photon Blast or even kicking a box into an enemy. Every turn, there are limits to how many times you can redraw cards, how many times you can move superheroes and how many times you can play cards, and once you're out of these options, it's time to end the turn and let the opponent take theirs.
As you progress through the game, the difficulty will ramp up due to time limits, environmental damage or fighting bosses. This means you have to take extra care in picking your cards so that you can optimise how much damage you do a turn, even if that means pushing enemies over a cliff or using knockback abilities to push one enemy into another giving you a double KO. Where this game really shines is when all the stars align and you can see your favourite heroes taking on ridiculous numbers of enemies and winning. Watching as Captain Marvel wipes out an entire enemy team by blocking and countering all their attacks, or Captain America finishing off remaining forces with a shield throw are the moments your inner child live for.
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| Customisation options are limited in this game when compared to other AAA titles |
Crafting, Customising and Socialising
In between missions you'll be spending your time exploring the Abbey grounds. This is where your character, Hunter, grew up as a child and it's also your aunt Sara's home. It serves as a base for your motley crew of superheroes where you're able to craft, customise and socialise.
There are many resources you can collect and they can be used for a variety of things such as crafting cards that can give you a boost in combat or customising your room and costumes. Customisation is rather basic and feels somewhat limited compared to other Western CRPGs, especially when it comes to the initial creation of your character, but it's good enough.
Thanks to crafting and customisation though, there is so much busywork in this game, involving the hunting of ingredients to craft a whole bunch of stuff not to mention the unlocking of new cards that smell suspiciously like lootboxes, but thankfully this was never implemented in the game.
So, besides crafting and customising, there's also the socialisation aspect. Spending time with other superheroes and giving them gifts will increase your friendship score with them which eventually unlocks combos for the characters that will help you in combat. Reviewers and fans of the game alike often say that this part of the game is similar to the Persona series but since I've yet to play that series, my only experience with similar mechanics are in games like Hero-U or just about any other RPG with a focus on follower interactions and loyalty quests (such as Mass Effect 2). I admit, this part of the game is somewhat addictive especially when I first started playing but towards the end, I started having mixed feelings about it.
On the plus side, you have a decent number of well-known Marvel superheroes here, and there are plenty of one-liners and wisecracks that you'd expect from an MCU film (especially from Tony Stark with his frequent pop culture references). There's even a superhero version of Facebook called "Superlink" which gives you even more insight into how the characters tick and how they get along with each other.
Scriptwriting is somewhat hit and miss. While there's definitely a huge volume of characterisation and exposition, unfortunately some of the interactions feel bite-sized, with only short conversations and not many dialogue options to choose from. Conversely, sometimes the characters talk too much and just waffle on using circular arguments. Sometimes your character contradicts itself: I'm pretty sure at the end of the game I told not one, but two people they were the "heart of the team". It's almost like Shepard telling every store on the Citadel is their favourite...
Also, since my main reference for Marvel superheroes is the MCU, it sometimes felt jarring how occasionally the characters were different to their MCU counterparts, but that might just be a "me" problem since I suspect fans of the comics won't have the same issue.
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| Spending time with your team helps build friendship levels which unlocks new conversations and combat bonuses |
Buggy Graphics and Audio
While the graphics are probably the best I've seen in a Firaxis PC game it doesn't hold a light to other AAA titles such as Detroit: Become Human. The game does have a cool Photo Editor that seems to be common in many games nowadays: you can even create your own custom comic book covers: just pick the characters, poses, facial expressions, backdrops, text and graphics and you're good to go. You can even frame your work in the Abbey.
However, the game does have some graphical issues. Sometimes my GPU overheated causing corruption of audio samples and I came across several graphical glitches, texture clipping and comical instances of my character's cape facing the wrong way. The most painful episode I had to contend with was the game's final battle which runs extremely slowly. The framerate kept dropping, especially after each time I used a legendary Midnight Sun ability. In fact, each time this occurred I had to restore the game so that the framerate would reset to a playable level.
I also encountered several issues with audio such as dialogue playing over each other or auto-skipping so you don't hear characters finishing their sentences. Sometimes lines were repeated twice when they shouldn't have and there was also a time where I took Captain America on a mission but somehow he was also talking to the team from headquarters, I guess the devs didn't consider that Cap could've been selected for the mission!
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8
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Although Midnight Suns could've done with a bit more polish in the graphics and audio department, especially towards the end of the game, this is a solid card game mixed with turn-based tactics where you get to play the hero leading a motley crew of Marvel superheroes in their quest to vanquish evil. Top voice acting talent, an epic soundtrack and a huge amount of characterisation and dialogue shows Firaxis went all in on this one, but despite all this, it looks like a sequel for the game isn't on the cards (no pun intended) and since the game ends on a cliffhanger, it's a damn shame. |
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Special thanks to my mother in-law and her partner for gifting this game as a 2023 birthday present!
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