Marvel Midnight Suns

Developer: Firaxis Games Publisher: 2K Release: December 2, 2022 Playtime as of writing: 64 hours Code provided

Marvel Midnight Suns is a turn based, tactical card game. You play as The Hunter (no given name), a 300-year-old resurrected demon hunter brought back to fight Lilith, the Mother of Demons, who is also your mother. The Hunter is a customizable character, allowing you to choose their appearance and gender. The Hunter is never referred to as a he or she so that way voice actors don’t have to record their lines twice. You choose your body and face at the beginning and those are the only things that are set. At any time you can change your hair, hair color, eye color or skin color. You can also unlock special eye and skin colors like all black eyes and green skin.

The game mostly takes place at The Abbey, which is the home base for the Midnight Suns. The Midnight Suns are a team of supernatural heroes that have been brought together by The Caretaker and Agatha Harkness to stop the prophecy of the Midnight Sun. The Midnight Suns (the team) are Blade, Nico Minoru, Magik, and Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes). The Midnight Sun (the prophecy) is the return of the Dark God Chthon. The Caretaker (first name Sara) is an immortal from a race of people called The Blood and she is Lilith’s sister, which makes her The Hunter’s aunt. Caretaker raised Hunter to be a weapon in the fight against Lilith and Chthon, with Hunter and Lilith killing each other 300 years before the game starts.

The Midnight Suns team up with some of The Avengers after Hydra and Lilith attack Dr. Strange in his own Sanctum. Lilith being the mother of demons has her own army of lilin, corrupted villains (and heroes) known as The Fallen, as well as Hydra. There are 3 types of enemies: grunts, elites and super villains. Grunt can all be taken down in a single hit, elites have an HP bar, and super villains are the bosses who have multiple health bars.

The game is divided into 3 parts: The Abbey in the morning, The Mission, and The Abbey at night. In the morning The Hunter and go to the forge, go out to the yard, send heroes on solo missions and choose what mission to do. At the forge you open up coils which contain cards (known in game as abilities), open artifacts which increase your research level, research upgrades to the Abbey and eventually craft cards for the heroes you have. In the yard you can combine abilities into stronger versions, spar with one of your team mates and eventually you can gain access to the T.H.R.E.A.T. room. The T.H.R.E.A.T. room is a place in limbo where you can fight the Soulless using one hero to help them level up.

The missions are the combat sections of the game. The combat is turn based with your team having a set number of moves you can do before you have to end your turn and let your enemy have a turn. You get three card plays, one move, and two redraws. There are 3 types of cards: attack, skill, and heroic. Attack and Skill cards add to your Heroic gauge. Some cards are marked quick and if you KO and enemy with one you get a card play refund allowing you to play another card. Your Heroic gauge is a resource used to play your Heroic cards which are more powerful attacks and skills. Heroic gauge can also be spent to use environmental attacks (such as picking up a rock and bashing an enemy with it) so even if you’re out of card plays you can still use environmental attacks to take out enemies. On the enemies turn each regular enemy gets one attack and super villains get two. On your turn it shows you which enemy is targeting which hero so you can prioritize enemies targeting heroes with low health. Most missions you play as a team of three and each hero has eight cards, so your deck is comprised of those 24 cards.

After the mission you head back to the Abbey where Hunter can join the other heroes and just kind of hang out. Some heroes make clubs that you can join and they meet on different nights. There is a social aspect to the game where you can develop friendships with the other heroes which unlock passive abilities that the heroes have during the mission. You can also explore the grounds to find Blood Gates, challenges by the Gods to unlock powers so you can explore more. Blood Gates are supposed to be solo challenges but do to a loophole Hunter is able to summon their dog to fight alongside them. Since Charlie (the dog) doesn’t fight in normal missions you can increase the power of her cards by petting her every day.

There isn’t really an rpg system but you can level up. As you play cards you gain experience and level up. Leveling up increases your attack power and HP. As The Hunter levels up unused heroes also level up so there isn’t a huge level gap just incase that hero is needs to be used in a story mission. Enemies scale to your level

There is also a morality system in the game. Dialogue choices and certain cards played can push Hunter to either the light or dark side. I don’t know if it has an impact on the story because I only played through it once. Based on Steam achievement statistics 18.1% of players reached maximum light and only 4.5% reached maximum dark.

Walking around the Abbey and surrounding forest, the music and art style made me think of Fable on the original xbox.

I played the Steam version, which “can you run it” says my PC just barely makes the minimum so I can’t speak on the performance because my PC is 7 years old. The game crashed a few times and lagged between lines of dialogue but I don’t know if it was the game itself or because I was running recording software the whole time (all these screen shots are pulled from my own recordings). The lag also made the game unplayable while working my day job. Lucky for me the game auto saves at the end the enemy’s turn, so after it crashed I lost a turn at most and was able to replay it.

When you launch the game in Steam, it opens the 2K launcher and you have to launch it again.

The game also has microtransactions, and not just DLC. You can buy eclipse credits which you can spend in game for cosmetic outfits for the heroes. Each hero has 2 cosmetic skins and going by the cost of the Dr. Strange Defender skin they’re $3 each? At 24 skins for three dollars each that’s $72, also known as the price of a brand new game. As a mentioned there is also DLC packs which include a new hero and story missions for that hero. DLC packs are $15 and there will be 4 of them totaling to $60. You can save money by buying the season pass which bundles all of that for $50. Or you can buy the legendary edition which is the base game and the expansion for $100 ($60 for the game and $40) for the expansion.]

I liked the game, but it seems tailor made for me, I love both Marvel and card games. However, my advice is to wait until the Legendary Edition is on sale. The game is good, just not $100 good.

Anthony

Anthony spends most of his time thinking about games. When not playing games, writing about games, or thinking about games he can be found hunting pokemon in the wilds of downtown Clermont.If you like the words I write, maybe consider supporting me on Patreon?