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Marvel meets Fire Emblem and Persona in a magical strategy game – Marvel’s Midnight Suns Review

18K View2022-12-06

Based on a relatively obscure comic arc from 1993, the video game version of Marvel’s Midnight Suns starts like a fever dream: An ancient goddess is raised from the “dead” to lead the fascist organization, Hydra. A team of Marvel superheroes gathers in an old abbey. There, a dead hero—this is the character I play—is brought back to life as well. It’s all quite different in tone from what the majority of the MCU films offer, but it’s definitely in keeping with the weirdness of ’90s Marvel comics.

But even newcomers should quickly get used to this somewhat strange corner of the Marvel universe. Long story short: The Midnight Suns are a team of young heroes who team up to fight the supervillain Lilith. They are ably assisted by Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and a gaggle of other cool guest stars. It’s up to me then to form a competent team from the heroes available to combat this latest rise of evildoers doing evil things.

After a brief tutorial, the game proper begins with creating a unique hero. This hero is called “The Hunter” and I was able to choose between a male or female character with a lightly customizable appearance Don't expect a City of Heroes level of detail here, though, because my influence on this new hero was purely cosmetic and quite limited.

Once in the actual game, I was introduced to the home base, the Abbey, which is, you guessed it, an old abbey where the Hunter and the other heroes of the Midnight Suns team live. This home base functions very much like the monastery from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, with side activities ranging from talking to the residents, training with them, buying costumes, and unlocking furnishings for the Hunter’s room.

However, time at the Abbey is mostly about building relationships with your fellow heroes. Through dialogue choices in conversations, the others determined what they thought of my Hunter, and better friendship levels brought bonuses. These slice-of-life elements were very reminiscent of the Persona games: I was treated to short scenes where I watched a movie or played games with the hero of my choice, and through dialogue options, I attempted to improve these blossoming friendships. “Friendship” is the key word here, though, because romantic relationships aren’t possible in Midnight Suns.

I spent so much time in the Abbey that I started to wonder if the developers at Firaxis didn’t have confidence in the turn-based, card-based battle system at the heart of Marvel’s Midnight Suns. It’s not that these quiet moments at the home base aren’t fun; it’s that they have a narrow scope that is aimed squarely at fanboys/girls who have been fantasizing for years about spending some quality time with Magik, for example.

If that was a concern the developers had, however, it was misplaced: The strategic gameplay of Midnight Suns is superlative. As previously mentioned, the game was developed by Firaxis, the studio that brought us the modern XCOM games. I was thankful to discover that Midnight Suns has done away with some of the more egregious, "Hey, that's total bullshit!" moments of the XCOM series, where your character could miss a shot at point-blank range with a 99% chance of success. In this game, the consequences of and damage dealt by my decisions was always clear.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of randomness in the game, as Midnight Suns uses a card system to generate attacks and abilities. Each hero has a set of cards that represent different abilities or powers. For example, The Hunter has a skill to grab an enemy with a whip, then toss said enemy against another enemy or object. The sets for each hero can gradually be expanded with new cards or by upgrading existing cards.

Each turn in combat, every card for every hero you’ve got on your squad is shuffled into a deck, which is then drawn from. Since the cards are selected randomly, it’s possible to start a turn with only cards for The Hunter, for example. In that scenario, I could have the Hunter perform multiple actions until I had exhausted my maximum number of playable cards. Heroes who I hadn’t drawn any cards for could still take actions, such as throwing a rock at an enemy, but they weren’t always able to do something particularly super.

Each turn in the battle thus consists of seeking the most efficient use of the heroes and the environment in order to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy. And because the cards I drew each turn were random, I never knew exactly what I could do on the next turn. Therefore, the combat always played out like a puzzle, where I regularly had to make the best of a bad hand. And this system works great...especially later in the game, when enemies gained new abilities (such as healing their teammates) that forced me to think twice before playing certain cards.

That well-crafted gameplay is unfortunately undermined at times by a few bugs present in the PlayStation 5 version. For example, there are some graphical glitches, such as texture pop-in, and other times I couldn’t pick up a collectible in the Abbey unless I was right in front of it. I didn’t encounter any game-breaking bugs, really, but the game still lacks some polish despite multiple delays.

What is perfect, though, is the music in the game, which really hit me with the epic MCU feels. The audio design on the whole is quite notable, as the voice-over actors bring these (mostly) well-known characters to life in high style. Sound effects during combat supply an extra “oomph” to the big blows that the heroes dish out. Coupled with tight, fast animations, Midnight Suns is an exceedingly enjoyable game both to play and to gawk at.

Let there be no doubt about it: Marvel’s Midnight Suns is an incredibly fun strategy RPG. It seems like a strange combination of ideas at first glance: superheroes, playing cards, friendships to maintain, and turn-based combat. Take a step back, though, and you’ll see what it actually is: a Marvel interpretation of Fire Emblem: Three Houses with a sprinkle of that Persona magic thrown in for good measure. And while it sometimes seems like the game bets a little too heavily on the friendship aspect, there are enough challenging tactical battles to satisfy even the most hardcore strategy fan.

SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Marvel Snap. Give Midnight Suns a go if the mobile madness of Second Dinner’s game is right up your super heroic alley.

• The three Marvel Ultimate Alliance games. Midnight Suns isn’t a Diablo-clone as the Alliance games are, but it is still a blast to play through for sure.

💬Are you getting burnt out on superhero content (i.e. games, movies, TV shows, etc.) as of yet? Let me know in the comments below!

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