Midnight Suns

I grew up with Marvel comics. Then fell in love with Bioware style RPG games, like Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. And finally found XCOM 2 with its top notch turn based gameplay.

For me, Midnight Suns is pure bliss because it masterfully combines the best aspects of those three.

Gameplay consists of basically two main sections: interacting with iconic (and some less known) Marvel characters in the main hub called the Abbey and then missions, where you fight Hydra agents, demons, vampyres, and Marvel villains. Fights are very strategic, and its so satisfying to find 1000+ damage combo with heroes like Iron Man and Captain America or Wolverine and Storm.

After the fights you get to build your relationship with many classic characters. This is where this game brings something unique to the table: how often can you get to play video games with Wolverine or go fishing with Doctor Strange? This gameplay loop is very fun, and even after 60+ hours I still cannot get enough of it.

The actual story is very epic and contains massive amount of cinematics and twists. Voice acting is great, for me the best voices go to Iron Man, Magic, Hunter (female), Deadpool and almost every othe character too. All characters are well written and really resemble their comic counterparts.

Graphics are fine - partly great (like hero combo animations), partly just ok (like Captain America's t-shirt). Sound effects and music are fantastic.

The main hero Hunter is amazing: up there with Commander Shepard from Mass effect. They are right at home with younger cast members (Midnight Suns) and on par with legends like the Avengers or X-Men.

Really hoping the game finds its players in slow burn and Firaxis will make a sequel some day.

Pros: The combat has surprisingly a lot of depth, it is very much a card battler but also very much a party based RPG. And it is very much an RPG with a 20 hour tutorial so expect a very long playthrough.

They didn't really show it off much but the Abbey is very much a big part of the game and is half of the gameplay. It is very fun to explore the Abbey, think of it like the Monastery from Fire Emblem Three Houses or the Crypt from Mortal Kombat 11 but Marvel based and some more stuff to do.

The writing is good and very funny at times it pays much homage to other media that the heroes have been in and other pop culture references you'd expect from a Marvel project. It's very enjoyable getting to know each of the heroes and the story is interesting enough to get invested.

Cons: No Moon Knight! And some other heroes from the comic Midnight suns are missing like Elsa Bloodstone. But Morbin Time is coming as DLC so yay I guess.

The current stability isn't great, some in part due to the 2k launcher in PC, because with it disabled the game runs a lot smoother, for some reason it tanks the fps loading times, even crashing on the loading screen twice.

Microtransactions are not fun, but none of what they can buy are necessary or gameplay altering, it's all just cosmetic and some are really good and some pretty meh, ultimately up to you if you want to sirens a couple extra bucks on a different costume.

It's like if you took everything associated with 2k out of the game it would be perfect.

Ok by now you know this is a turned based strategy games where you play cards to attack or heal or buff. Those mechanics are super slick. If everything else was that quality it would be a 9. So good news, the core gameplay is pretty much perfect - although the learning process takes some time.

Interacting with some of marvels most famous super heroes can be a lot of fun. But it does go on a bit! The interactions with them start to drag after a while. Then on top of that there is the other part of the game where you explore the grounds. They are simply not diverse enough to be interesting. I found a few things, and I obviously missed a key moment to activate the cauldron, which I never worked out what to do with that, but at the same time I don't feel like I missed out on the game. The bottom line is that the stuff back at base is pretty bland.

Then there's the lack of polish. There are a number of key moments where there's some bad clipping on character models, and even some poor animations of characters in cut scenes. Which leads onto the final battle. No spoilers, but while all games want to finish with an epic crescendo this over stays its welcome by about half an hour. It just goes on and on, and not in a good way. I did it first time, but it's safe to say that once the credits rolled I had no interest in playing anymore.

This is a great start, and I would be really interested in a sequel, provided it fixes the main problems with this version.

The combat is pretty cool, and I'm sure as it builds it gets more complex and challenging and fun. But I really wish I didn't buy this game.

But ultimately this is an over-packed mobile game and it should have been that. I really don't know how it got $uch good review$.

+ No one wants to wander around a stupid hub area collecting random, floating, thingamajigs to combine into a whatchyamacallit that adds up to a nothingmuch. It's packed with time-wasting fluff.

+ The story is a very stilted, derivative, every-hero-cameo with the old end-o-the-World-trope. Feels like this was written by 13 year old for a 13 year old.

+ The best part of the game is the banter - but if everyone's a smart-ass then there's not much contrast there either.

+ The graphics & physics are last gen at best.

+ And the cloud saves are busted at launch (with Steam Deck at least.)

Spider-man and Guardians of the Galaxy were amazing. Unfortunately, this belongs in that other pile with Marvel's Avengers.

Strategy + Marvel Characters = Perfection.

This game is a fantastic strategy, action adventure. The cinematics are fantastic ... I especially like how your character (that you create), moves, speaks and interacts with the characters, environment, story, etc. They don't just "float" so to speak. The controls are easy to use, combat is AI controlled but still a lot of fun to watch and enjoy once you execute that move. The game also tells an amazing story, the dialogue is fluent and the graphics are gorgeous (Playing on the PS5) ... If you enjoy strategy and Marvel then this is the game for you 🙂