Marvel’s Midnight Suns Review: More RPGs, Less XCOM

When I signed up to write our review of Marvel’s Midnight Suns, I wasn’t expecting to play what I can confidently call the hit of the year. For sixty hours, the superhero game amazed me with puzzles, well-developed characters, and more. Suffice to say, Firaxis has created a truly excellent tactical RPG worthy of a place in the XCOM series, and I’m already hungry for more.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns starts off quickly with Vibranium, introducing you to card battle almost immediately. While it will take some time to fully understand what this system has to offer, you’ll soon relish the prospect of embarking on another mission as soon as possible once the training wheels loosen.

Each card in Marvel’s Midnight Suns is an ability or item that your superhero team can use to deal damage or apply status effects. The powers, divided into three types, include attack, skill, and heroism; the last of these is the most powerful. At the start of a turn, you draw random cards from each super’s deck, then figure out the best way to use what you have to achieve your goals or survive until your next turn.

Unlike XCOM, your abilities are still tied to their target, but there’s no way of knowing exactly when they’ll be available to you. This gives Marvel’s Midnight Suns a completely different flavor than its spiritual predecessor. By removing the frustration that can arise from hitting percentiles, it allows you to focus solely on maximizing your resources to shape the battlefield in your favor on a turn-based basis.

When I say “shape the battlefield,” I mean both figuratively and literally. Marvel’s Midnight Suns have destructible items that you can use to deal a lot of damage to your enemies. Although they can also be used against you, which makes positioning an important strategic factor. This concept also extends to the environment itself, with battle arenas visibly worn after you’ve traversed them, helping to illustrate just how strong your team is.

As with many of the best strategy games, each round in Marvel’s Midnight Suns is just as exciting as the last, as they all feel like unique puzzles that tease your brain every time. Should I focus on a particularly strong enemy this turn, or should I prioritize reducing their number? Should I return some cards to my hand or fold with the ones I already have? What is the ideal order to play my abilities to maximize my damage?

Successful answers to these questions are quite satisfying, especially seeing how galactic brain games come together. You don’t have to worry about things getting old either, as Marvel’s Midnight Suns brings you new maps and heroes quite regularly. You will discover new strategies and synergies as you play.

Combat is only one part of Marvel’s Midnight Suns though, and what really amazes me in the game is the character development and RPG mechanics. To lead the Midnight Suns, you must navigate between the team’s strong personalities, who often cross over into another, in order to create a sense of camaraderie between them.

You will do it as the first customizable hero of the Marvel Universe: The Hunter. He is an ancient warrior and skilled slayer of all things demonic, tasked with putting an end to the nefarious plans of Lilith, the mother of demons, and preventing the utterly apocalyptic prophecy of the Midnight Sun. While his personality is primarily stoic, you’ll be able to influence the type of hunter you want to be with dialogue options that affect the types of abilities they have and how characters view them.

Naturally, most of his downtime on Marvel’s Midnight Suns is spent interacting with Marvel icons like Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, and Iron Man, as well as darker faces like Nico Minoru and Magik. Thirteen playable heroes make up an excellent roster of characters, each with unique abilities and personalities, and at the same time, each one is interesting and likeable in their own way.

Fortunately, the voice acting and writing of Marvel’s Midnight Suns is grounded in an obvious respect and passion for the source material from which it is drawn. Those intimately familiar with Marvel comics should find a lot to like here with links to deep cuts into universe lore, but Firaxis gracefully avoids the trap of alienating more casual fans like myself. The more time I spent with my team, the more I wanted to learn about them, especially Magik, which led me to search for more information on the X-Men: New Mutants series.

While the writers at Marvel’s Midnight Sun clearly love the original works they came from, they’re not afraid to have fun with them, either. The game has a good sense of humor, but thankfully it doesn’t get in the way of the more laid-back moments that the Marvel Cinematic Universe falls victim to all too often. However, from time to time there are jokes that fail, especially after hearing them for the hundredth time, but that’s more the exception than the rule.

After drinking together, playing cards together, occasionally dipping in the pool, and even starting a book club, I feel like a real bond has formed between me and Marvel’s Midnight Sun characters. The gamification of relationships can make interaction seem empty in small RPGs, but as my team and I neared the final mission, the game brought back memories of the best RPGs like Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect series. I will really miss these characters now that all is said and done and I sincerely hope we get a sequel so I can spend more time with them.

I just want the visual representation of Marvel’s Midnight Suns to match the quality of the writing and game mechanics. To be clear, most of the game looks great and many abilities are easy on the eyes. It’s enough that it looks decidedly lagging, which is very noticeable, and character models unfortunately bear the brunt of this problem.

While your superhero team looks fantastic when they’re in costume and boots, talking to them in plain clothes can be a bit distracting for a number of reasons. First of all, due to the lack of detail in the skin textures, characters like Blade can look a bit worn down, while Tony Stark looks more like a Sim or a plastic figure. This toy comparison isn’t helped by the mostly stiff body and facial animations used throughout the game, with more complex movements relegated to surprisingly low bitrate pre-rendered cutscenes.

In addition to the visual complaints, I also encountered some game-breaking bugs and general stability issues. Most of the quests went smoothly, but I ran into endless enemy spawns despite completing the task. There was another one where a unit refused to die, but I highly doubt there’s an immortal among the ranks of Hydra. The game also has a slight tendency to crash on save, forcing me to resume a previous autosave.

However, in most cases these are forgivable flaws in a fantasy game. I hope Firaxis can fix these glitches with patches and I hope the modding community saves the day with new texture packs.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a triumph, successfully blending elements of the XCOM formula into something completely different, but cool. I sincerely hope this becomes a new series for the studio, especially after seeing the creepy post-credits scene. Now if you’ll excuse me, my new game+ won’t start on its own.