PLATFORM: PC, PS4/5, XBOX ONE/SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Developed by Firaxis (current keepers of the XCOM series), Midnight Suns brings a handful of Marvel factions together in a cataclysmic battle against Lilith, the resurrected mother of demons. Playing as an all-new character known as The Hunter, you’ll team up with a host of familiar (and lesser-known) faces to fight back against Lilith – who also happens to be the Hunter’s mother, and also the sister of your own mentor, the Caretaker – in turn-based tactical battles with a couple of unique twists.
All of the moves and abilities that can be performed by the heroes are dictated by cards, of which each character can hold up to eight at any one time, with each battle’s hand being randomly chosen from your current party’s pooled decks. You’re able to play up to three cards in each turn (although there are several ways to extend this), and you’re given the option to discard any two and replace them with randomly-selected cards from your deck. Using attacks and skills builds up a “heroism” meter, which is required to use the super-special Heroic cards. That’s where the fun stuff happens, with the heroes performing just the sort of hard-hitting attacks you’d expect – Captain America throws his shield around to knock out enemies, Iron Man glides into the air to rain down laser beams, Wolverine dashes about slashing through packs of baddies… Endlessly satisfying, these turn-based battles become incredibly addictive, especially after acquiring some of the more devastating cards that appear as the game progresses.
Between battles, Midnight Suns has another unusual trick up its sleeve – instead of just clicking around a handful of menus, there’s a nearly-full-blown RPG that will demand a huge chunk of your attention. From your base in the Abbey, where you can visit the forge to create new abilities and undertake research projects for room / facility upgrades, combat items and outfits, upgrade your abilities and spar with different partners to increase your friendship level and earn other rewards in Blade’s training area, and head to Captain Marvel’s command centre to send heroes on special operations to gain even more loot. Making your way outside, the Abbey’s grounds offer plenty of secrets too, as you potter around gathering resources, training partners, unlocking new outfits and crafting new abilities, while also working your way through RPG-style side-quests to unlock a handful of “words of power” which allow you to explore even further into the surrounding area.
There’s a lot going on in Midnight Suns, but all of its different parts click together really well and the gameplay loop of explore / battle / hang out / sleep / pick up your rewards / repeat is way more enticing than you might expect. Everything you do gives you some sort of reward, so you’re constantly unlocking cards, items, upgrades and perks as the game goes on, and the seemingly endless dripfeed of new toys very much gives a it a “oh go on then, just one more go” feeling. If there were any downsides, there’s a lot (really, a lot) of fairly inconsequential dialogue, but it can thankfully be skipped past easily enough, and a wider variety of mission objectives could remove any slight sense of doing the same thing over and over again, but neither of those are really the end of the world when everything else is so well put together. Midnight Suns is a bit of a quirky and unusual proposition, but if you’re into Marvel, turn-based strategy, and RPGs with hefty amounts of collecting, upgrading and Persona-style relationship-building, then it’s got pretty much everything you could possibly want!
