Marvel’s Midnight Suns post-mortem

Welcome to a new year, fellow Disney gaming fans! I managed to squeak in finishing Marvel’s Midnight Suns on the latter part of Christmas day and while I don’t really want to write what might be considered a formal review with like a score (or in my case a ticket rating) I did want to discuss what worked for me and in a couple of cases what came close to being great but didn’t quite hit the mark. In some cases, this includes some pretty late game spoilers so be forwarned

So I touched on this the last time I wrote about Marvel’s Midnight Suns but probably what worked the best and surprised me just how well it worked was actually the combat itself. My apprehension with card-based games has pretty much always been that you might be dealt a hand that really screws you over, even if you have built a pretty solid custom deck it may just be your cards that you keep for common but specific occasions aren’t available when you really need them. The lack of options in a crucial turn is a serious concern. While there weren’t certainly rounds where sometimes I couldn’t really use any of the cards in my hand, be it because they were either useless for the situation or I didn’t have enough heroism built up, that rarely meant I just had to sit around for a turn and do nothing, environmental attacks and even merely moving my characters could make a huge impact if used correctly.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is great about always giving you an option even if at first it’s not really obvious but once you get deeper in you and know how to read the field it all clicks so well.

So, let’s talk about things that didn’t work quite as well for me. It’s not the biggest deal (and this is where I will really talk about spoilers), but Marvel’s Midnight Suns is not a short game (probably average length by RPG standards, took me about 40 hours) and yet the pacing seems wildly off in some aspects. I don’t feel the actual events in the story were rushed all that much, but you get some characters so late in the game they feel kind of superfluous when you’ve probably got a set number of team combinations that work for you already. In Hulk’s case, he literally joins you right before the last story battle in the game so unless you really want to spend some serious time developing him when you are already at the finish line, why would you bother (also much like Marvel’s Avengers, despite being the goddamn Incredible Hulk he seems like one of the least useful party members).

And then let’s talk about character interactions and relationships. Generally, this is something Marvel’s Midnight Suns does really well, you get a real sense of how to say Tony Stark and Ghost Rider work together and even the natural friction that might occur between two such characters, seeing these characters hang out is one of the highlights of the game for sure.

So it stands out more in some little moments when say it’s clear a cut scene is designed for one or two characters but you have additional ones there who should be saying something but are completely silent. Have you ever known Tony Stark or Peter Parker to shut up? Not really, so when they are very present in a cut scene and don’t utter a word, it stands out.

I also really wonder about upcoming DLC packs featuring additional characters. Like are they just shoehorned in with a mission or two and then might as well not be part of the story? That kind of wrecks the vibe of the game. Especially in the case of Venom who is an antagonist for a good chunk of the game. Will he just join up and then everything is cool with all the heroes he repeatedly tried to murder (this is also a question with Wanda but it gets set up and resolved and she’s not a villain just someone possessed)? Granted if Firaxis drops a pretty good set of missions with each character and we get a sense of how they gel with everyone else that may work but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Finally, there’s the hangout itself, the home base, The Abbey. The Abbey is deceptively huge and holds not only a ton of different activities but secrets. You can train, hang out to build friendship levels, send teammates on solo side ops, and so on. My biggest problem here is that for all its secrets, the game really doesn’t encourage you to find them out that much. I forgot for most of the game there are whole side activities having to do with finding words of power that unlock other areas or that there’s even a cauldron you can use to make stuff.

The game gives you a pretty brief intro to these things early on but then doesn’t really make mention of it again. But it sure tells you every time someone makes a post on your superhero social media or when a hero is back from injury or ready to have a scene with you or when it’s book club or goth kids' night. I’m just saying a little note in my quest log even just saying something along the lines of “continue to search for words of power” would’ve reminded me that that was even a thing I could be doing.

So in essence, Marvel’s Midnight Suns I felt really nailed it on the combat and is just so close on the other aspects that it really stands out exactly where it falters on those. But it’s still probably the game I was most dreading having to play this past year just because while I love turn-based strategy I’ve just not enjoyed X-Com and card-based systems are something that is usually a huge turn-off for me. But I loved my time with Marvel’s Midnight Suns, am at least interested to see how the DLC packs fit in, and hope that follow-up is going to happen.

That’s all for today, I probably won’t have another post this week, but definitely look for something next week, until then see ya real soon!