Marvel’s Midnight Suns Review: A Strange Combination That Mostly Works

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a weird game. One part XCOM, one part Fire Emblem (minus the romance, sorry if you want to date Blade), one part card game, and all parts Marvel, it mixes a ton of different elements together in ways that don’t feel like they should work, yet they almost all do. The weirdest part may just be that Midnight Suns’ biggest issues often come from areas that feel like they should have been the easy part of making a Marvel title.

Saving The World

The mother of demons, Lilith, has returned from hundreds of years in a near-death state, resurrected by Hydra. She plans to revive Elder God Chthon and let him destroy the universe and time itself. Naturally, the Marvel heroes don’t think that’s such a great idea, but they’re unsure how to stop her. Thankfully, some of the more supernatural characters in the Marvel universe have a plan which involves resurrecting Lilith’s long-dead child, The Hunter, who defeated her last time, and using them to do it again.

Creating an original character and putting them in the center of a cast that includes some of the biggest names in all of media isn’t easy. The Hunter isn’t up to the challenge. While you spend the entire game playing as your own created version of the character, who can be male or female, they never become particularly interesting, even with you having the choice to take them down a light or dark path. Their story of destiny is far too generic, and they never display nearly enough personality.

It doesn’t help that the presentation here leaves a lot to be desired. Characters are dead-eyed and lifeless. The quality of voice acting varies from character to character, with some, like Wolverine and Spider-Man, nailing their parts while others, like Dr. Strange and Captain America, never quite feel right in the roles. Cutscenes end, and characters will still be there for a moment before vanishing suddenly. It feels sloppy.

Why Am I Hooked?

Yet somehow, this generic story that wasn’t told all that well completely hooked me. Why? It doesn’t hurt that we are dealing with some of the best characters in all of media. Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, and The Hulk are big hitters. The versions we get here are much more steeped in the comic books they’re based on than the movie versions that a mainstream audience will be more familiar with, but they’re all recognizable no matter which side of Marvel you prefer. There’s also a nice cast of deeper cuts, largely from the spooky side of Marvel, who actually end up frequently being more interesting. Characters like Magik, Nico Minoru of The Runaways, Blade, and Robbie Reyes are the beating heart of this game, and I loved spending time with them, whether it was hanging out or getting to enjoy some of the side content like an internal messaging system which features some of the game’s best writing. There are also constant references to other Marvel properties. This isn’t one of those licensed games where it feels like the developers were only allowed to focus on a specific portion of the universe, it feels like the entirety of Marvel was open to the developers, even if a lot of it is just references.

Speaking of hanging out, you get to do a lot of it. Your entire adventure is headquartered at The Abbey, a supernaturally protected headquarters and the surrounding grounds. You get to explore these areas opening up new abilities, finding an obscene amount of unlockable collectibles, solving environmental puzzles, and mostly going on friend dates with some of Marvel’s biggest names. Want to go fishing with Blade? How about bird watching with Wolverine? Or you could forage for mushrooms with Captain Marvel, though she’s more into star gazing. This is where the influence of a game like Fire Emblem is most keenly felt. No, you won’t romance any of these characters, a few flirty comments notwithstanding, but you will deepen your friendship and train your characters to be stronger, giving you real boosts when you get into combat.

Draw!

The combat in Midnight Suns has a lot more in common with Firaxis’ XCOM titles, though it’s far from a straight clone. This is a strategy title, but you won’t be running from cover point to cover point and hiding away. You’re playing superheroes, after all. The gameplay here is more about putting your team of three heroes in each fight into the best advantage to use their cards.

That’s right, I said cards. Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a card game, with you earning new abilities in the form of cards and building a deck over time. Your decks are composed of three types of cards. You have skills which generally power something up or provide bonuses, attacks that are what they’re called, and hero powers which can be a lot of things but are mostly just big flashy attacks with a big impact. At the start of a battle, you’ll draw an opening hand from the decks of the three heroes you brought into battle. Each turn, you’re allowed to play three different cards. You can also redraw a single card twice if you don’t like what you have available, and reposition one character to better take advantage of one of your cards, get out of the way of an upcoming attack, or make the best use of environmental actions which don’t use your cards and are a big help in the right situation.

The More Things Change

Using these abilities in wise combinations makes all the difference in battle. You’ll often face huge groups of foes, and sometimes a boss on top of it, and three actions per turn doesn’t seem like a lot. There are multiple ways to gain extra actions each turn, though, through use of specific cards, and some moves can hit a number of enemies in a single turn. Smart strategy is essential, and I quickly fell in love with a combat system that continues to throw a ton of variety at the players, with unique situations asking you to come up with all new ways to handle them even when you’re more than twenty hours in.

There actually might be a bit too much variety as the game goes on. Even in the third act, you’re still entering missions that feel the need to give you a full-on tutorial before combat starts so you’ll understand some new mechanic you’ll only use once. I love that the developers wanted to keep players on their toes, but you never quite get to a point here where it feels like the training wheels have been removed, and I wish you had a stretch of that at some point.

Conclusion

Despite presentation that leaves something to be desired, Marvel’s Midnight Suns packs a ton of interesting strategy into its adventure, and smart writing around the edges helps to offset a main story that feels quite generic. Midnight Suns might be a flawed game in some ways, but I also couldn’t put it down, and it’s the rare game that made me truly want to run around collecting everything. Anyone who loves strategy games or Marvel should absolutely check it out.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: Xbox Series X(Reviewed), Xbox Series S, PS5, PC; Publisher: 2K Games; Developer: Firaxis Games; Players: 1; Released: December 2nd, 2022; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $69.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Marvel’s Midnight Suns provided by the publisher.