Marvel's Midnight Suns Review: One of 2022's Best RPGs

By Cade Onder - November 30, 2022 09:00 am EST

Marvel's Midnight Suns is not only one of the best Marvel games out there, but it may be one of the best RPGs of 2022. Of course, that's going to sound like a pretty absurd statement in the year of games like Elden Ring, but it is really damn good. If you like games with a lot of meat on the bone, thoughtful combat, and characters that are titans in the general pop culture landscape, this is made with you in mind.

Marvel's Midnight Suns sees the titular supernatural group including Ghost Rider, Blade, and Magik joining up with the Avengers and other Marvel heroes, including a new original character named the Hunter. The new hero is the son of Lilith, the game's ancient and mystical antagonist that has been unleashed by Hydra to reign hell on the world. Not only is she quite formidable on her own, but she also utilizes her powers to strengthen and demonize other powerful characters such as Venom to do her bidding. Of course, with behemoths like the aforementioned Spider-Man villain at work, there's a lot of chaotic action and set pieces.

Every combat scenario places you in a small arena with the Hunter and two Marvel heroes of your choice. You're given a deck of cards that are based on the heroes you've chosen depending on the cards you've unlocked and assigned to them. It's very crucial – especially as the game goes along and gets harder – to take a close look at the cards assigned to your characters and customize them accordingly. If you don't have a good balance of cards that can heal, have passive effects like causing enemies to bleed across multiple turns, or damage-heavy attacks, you will inevitably set yourself up for failure.

The general formula of the gameplay is pretty standard for a turn-based game. You have a set amount of cards you can play each turn before the enemy attacks, but there's a lot more depth and layers to it that allow for a satisfying amount of strategy. If you're a player who loves to plan and execute, Marvel's Midnight Suns will scratch a major itch for you.

It's all about chaining the right set of cards and attacks together so you can be the most efficient, but it's also about doing it in the right order. For instance, you don't want to use a damage-heavy card on a guy that has very little health, or worse, to free a member of your squad that has been hit with a bind attack which prevents them from doing anything until they're cut loose.

There are a lot of ways to get creative beyond just the cards themselves, though. There are dynamic, environmental attacks that don't require a card play and can really change the tides of battle. Players will earn "heroism" during battles which can be redeemed on either extremely powerful cards or through these dynamic attacks such as throwing an object, blowing up a propane tank, or bouncing off of an object for a flashy aerial attack. You're also allotted the ability to reposition your character a set amount of times during a battle, granting you the ability to align yourself for better attacks or avoid certain attacks.

Captain Marvel, for example, has an ability where she can shoot a beam at a line of enemies, so if she's positioned in a way where she'd only hit one enemy because they're in a horizontal line rather than a vertical one, you can move her to the side and line them up to take out multiple foes. It's these little mechanics that come together to give you an arsenal of choices and tactics that reward your creativity.

As someone who likes a lot of control over the action, Marvel's Midnight Suns retains the important elements of turn-based combat while still making you feel empowered and not at the mercy of a hand of cards. It often feels very chess-like in terms of strategy and planning – when it all comes together you'll feel like a genius mastermind. It also spices things up by introducing other challenges within these combat scenarios. There may be a helicopter that needs to be disabled in a certain amount of turns, an object that needs to be retrieved in the midst of battle, or even endangered civilians that you have to quickly rescue and evacuate from the arena. It puts more pressure on the player, forcing them to think more about how they attack, but also complete the objective before it's too late.

When you're not not smashing skulls or saving civilians, you'll spend the rest of your time at the Abbey, a massive estate and base of operations for the heroes in a pocket dimension of Salem, Massachusetts. Despite this being a turn-based game, you can freely move around the Abbey which has a ton of secrets to discover, content to engage with, and characters to learn about. There are creepy witch caves, hidden rooms, chests, and numerous stations to upgrade characters, train, build new equipment, and more. You can even hang out with your favorite Marvel heroes like Doctor Strange by playing cards, going fishing, watching movies, and more, resulting in unique conversations as well as an evolving friendship that improves various stats. You can even customize everyone's clothes in the Abbey to make them feel more cozy and casual as opposed to always being suited up for action.

There's no shortage of ways to entertain yourself and progress between missions. Iron Man and Strange also hold down the Forge, a place where you can research artifacts to unlock new abilities, purchase new equipment that can make you unique cards, and much more. Captain Marvel also runs an ops center that allows you to send characters out on missions where they will be temporarily absent, but will bring back lucrative rewards. It's a lot to manage, but it isn't forced down your throat. It's there for the players that really want that sense of control and the ability to progress and build your characters out in a very purposeful way.

There's also a table that allows you to go on missions and as you progress through the story, these will begin to include optional side quests. This is where the meat and potatoes of the game lies. The story itself isn't really anything too compelling. It's perfectly serviceable, but it feels like a relatively by-the-numbers comic book story that you'd read because of the heroes within it and not necessarily the story itself. An evil witch-type character is causing chaos around the world and the heroes must use ancient magic and other resources to bring her to justice before it's too late! You've heard of this story before, and it's brought down a bit by having some relatively uninteresting melodrama with characters like Scarlet Witch, Agatha Harkness, and so on.

The story is largely held up by the performances of the characters and their bouncy dynamics. Given this is a pretty diverse group of characters in terms of backgrounds and power sets, it's not easy to make everyone feel like they pair well with others. A character like Blade who is dark, brooding, and filled with dry humor is going to be hard to integrate with some as animated and vibrant as Spider-Man. Anyone familiar with these characters knows they've interacted many times over the years, but to actually do this successfully is a tall task. However, the game pulls this off with flying colors. Everyone riffs well with each other, resulting in charming banter that keeps things feeling lively and fun. Spider-Man has his signature quips, this version of Tony Stark is emulating a bit of Tony Stark's sardonic, cocky attitude, and Doctor Strange speaks in long, detailed, intelligent sentences that captures his grasp on the mystic arts.

Marvel's Midnight Suns may not have the most exciting story, but it makes up for it pretty much everyone else. The characters are charismatic and charming, the gameplay is meaty and layered, and the player is empowered with freedom and choice in and out of combat. It's a rich RPG that superhero lovers will get a kick out of, turn-based fans will feel is remarkably satisfying, and genre naysayers may even become fond of it. It's a marvelous achievement worthy of the iconic comic publisher's branding.

I'm personally not a big turn-based combat fan because I like to be in direct control of my actions, such as feeling the weight of a sword as it swings or the vibration and recoil of a gun as it fires. This is a game I probably wouldn't have checked out until much later had I not been assigned to review it. However, I am glad to have given it a chance, and if you're also not a big turn-based fan, I strongly encourage you to try it as well.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Marvel's Midnight Suns will release on December 2nd, 2022 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. A release for Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch are planned for a later date. The publisher provided a Steam code for the purposes of this review.

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