In a time when Marvel's Spider-Man and The Avengers exist, Marvel’s Midnight Suns might not be the high-octane third-person action game that most fans have come to expect from a licensed superhero game; however, it does demonstrate that the incoming wave of Marvel titles has plenty of room for ingenuity. As the first RPG developed by Firaxis Games, Midnight Suns certainly has a few growing pains and often feels awkward, but its rock-solid turn-based tactics and team-building elements are enough to make Firaxis' take on the Marvel universe feel refreshing and welcome.

Midnight Suns is effectively two games: first, a tactics strategy game based around deck building and team synergy; second, a life-sim game where players strengthen their team of superheroes by building friendships and partaking in the day-to-day life of the Abbey. The former is fantastic, reworking the best parts of XCOM into a new type of tactical strategy game, while the latter comes up short in a few respects but still contains some great features to keep players coming back for more. Credit where it’s due; Firaxis’ first attempt at a strategy RPG game under the Marvel license is great for a first attempt, but plenty of things on offer could still use some work.

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Taking a trip to the occult side of the Marvel universe, Midnight Suns is an entirely new story bringing together the Avengers, the X-Men, and the Runaways as they team up to take down Lilith, the Mother of Demons. Hydra, Marvel's recurring terrorist organization, has resurrected Lilith after getting its hands on the Darkhold, and now Lilith will stop at nothing to corrupt Marvel’s gallery of villains and destroy the world. Players take on the role of a new character, the Hunter: Lilith’s child and the key to stopping her, haphazardly resurrected after players use the bare-bones character creator to make a very generic-looking custom hero.

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The main plot is an easily digestible, fun ride, but it can get repetitive as it bounces between tracking down and recruiting multiple side characters that could help defeat Lilith. However, comic fans may find themselves pleased with the main storyline of Midnight Suns. A clear love for the comics is always present, and the story does an excellent job of bringing forward Marvel heroes and villains that have yet to be in the spotlight. Newer heroes like Magik, Nico, and Robbie Reyes are here and get some time to shine, while villains like Sabertooth and Venom also get plenty of love along with a twist on staple heroes. The story’s most significant issues come from its character writing and tone, which sometimes feels inconsistent.

Midnight Suns is supposed to be a darker twist on the typically bright and cheery Marvel universe, but it can’t decide if it really wants to lean into those elements, and the final product lacks focus. The game regularly fluctuates between moody gothic themes featuring somber music and goofy character writing that never comes off as clever or funny. The Hunter periodically has to deal with eventually having to kill their mother, but sometimes that plot point feels like an afterthought to quips and gags. Characters regularly make jokes referencing pop culture or internet slang that often feel dated and can pull players out of the experience. Most of the time, it's worth questioning why these characters are written this way.

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Words like “boomer” and references making fun of the decade-old Twilight movies regularly come up in conversation, along with a poor imitation of Joss Whedon’s self-aware humor that the MCU pulls off much better. It does nothing to make the characters feel funny or relatable and often comes off as groan-worthy. Much of the enjoyment players will have with Midnight Suns' story comes down to how much they can tolerate this brand of comedy and writing. It’s not entirely unbearable, and personal preference will obviously play a role, but undoubtedly, the best parts of Midnight Suns come from its combat system and team-building mechanics.

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Part of what made Friaxis’ XCOM games so successful - and in some cases infamous - was the challenging and carefully crafted strategy mechanics that made players really consider what their next move would be. Midnight Suns carries XCOM’s torch but in a whole new way. Rather than the standard percentage-based system that Firaxis used in the past for XCOM, the studio has developed a card-based system where players will receive a new set of cards every turn, each card representing a hero ability from the decks players have created for the heroes on the field. There are buffs, debuffs, standard attacks, and heroic attacks to choose from, with lots of interplay between heroes depending on the team setup and relationship status.

The Card Play system seems daunting initially, but it’s much simpler than it looks and packs in depth with its treasure trove of options. Instead of combat relying on individual heroes performing well, success is predicated on how well players can use the cards they are dealt and using the team as one unit. There is an element of randomness as players never know what card they will get next and an element of strategy as Midnight Suns’ wide variety of enemies continue to pop up, and both come together to keep players on their toes. Figuring out how to maximize damage with the cards dealt, Heroic points stored and optimizing team synergy to come out on top is always satisfying and highly addictive.

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Midnight Suns also ensures that each hero has a purpose and is compelling to use. For example, Captain America works best as a tank that can draw aggro from all enemies on the field and whose abilities generate Block. While Blade is an excellent DPS character who can chain multiple attacks in one card play, and Doctor Strange specializes in buffing and debuffing teammates and enemies. The possibilities for team synergy in Midnight Suns are vast and deep, and there are plenty of beneficial combinations to discover with all twelve heroes. Finding the right group of heroes that work well together is part of the puzzle that is Midnight Suns’ combat system. When everything comes together on the battlefield, it makes digging deep into these characters and their abilities worth it. However, success on the field starts at home in the Abbey.

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When players aren’t out fighting Hydra goons or Lilith's demons, they will participate in the day-to-day life in the Abbey, sort of like Fire Emblem or Mass Effect. The deeper players invest in the characters living in the Abbey, the more Marvel’s Midnight Suns feels like a reality TV show rather than a video game. But it comes with the benefit of character progression for the combat system and actually becomes a fun part of the game once its initial awkward introductions are over. Midnight Suns has a rough first few hours when all the characters feel like cheap imitations of their MCU and comic book counterparts, but there is more to them than that.

Eventually, keeping up with the latest drama in the Abbey becomes increasingly compelling as the Hunter gets to know his team. Players may start champing at the bit to see what becomes of Blade’s infatuation with Captain Marvel or Tony Stark’s struggle to make friends as he adapts to working with this new group of heroes. All twelve heroes have their own storylines, cliques, and drama to attend to, but not all have the most exciting or fleshed-out arcs. With a cast this large, some characters will naturally be sidelined throughout the story, and that is the unfortunate truth of Midnight Suns.

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However, a lot of the life-sim entertainment is undercut by generic, cheesy dialogue and poor voice acting. The voice acting, in particular, sounds half-baked, as most voice actors are rigid in their line deliveries and bring generic tones and intonations to each character in Midnight Suns. The few heroes who truly deliver stand-out performances are Spider-Man and Wolverine, and the voice actors for both of those heroes have been working with those characters for several years anyway. The voice-over work is something players can get used to, but the already cheesy dialogue mixed with generic-sounding Marvel characters can sometimes get grating.

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As a whole, Midnight Suns could still use some polish. Minor things like character lip-syncing have a budget look and often don’t line up with the audio cleanly. Additionally, the audio itself likes to abruptly shift around the player’s sound space as the camera changes focus on who is talking. These issues, in combination, can be pretty jarring to experience during the Abbey character-building sequences. Moreover, characters will regularly snap their heads around their bodies during in-game dialogue sequences or T-pose during combat which never looks good.

Omnipresent elements like animations look stiff, and physically controlling the Hunter in the Abbey feels clunky and unfinished. While the handcrafted animations during combat sequences and pre-rendered cutscenes look great, the game can’t hold up when anything dynamic happens on screen. It's clear that Firaxis struggled to use its skillset to create a third-person experience in Unreal Engine 4. Midnight Suns also has some stability issues, with a few crashes that sometimes result in lost progress, and on an RTX 3080, the game couldn’t hold a stable 60 fps in the Abbey. There is a general unfinished feeling to Midnight Suns that should hopefully be patched up in the future, but at launch, it is rough.

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However, none of these issues ever detracted too much from the enjoyment of playing Marvel’s Midnight Suns. It is always worth chugging through the worst part of Midnight Suns because the game’s gameplay loop is so addictive and constantly rewarding that players can't help but get their next fix. Slogging through tons of questionable dialogue doesn’t feel so bad when the team is stronger at the end of the day, and players have unlocked brand-new Hero Combos, buffs, and abilities to play with for hours on end. In some cases, even the worst writing in the game might become part of its charm for those who can fall under Midnight Suns’ spell.

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Midnight Suns is an engrossing game because players are always building toward something, and there is always a new reward for their efforts both on the battlefield and off it. It isn’t long after players save and quit the game that they will be thinking about who they want to hang out with next to build up their friendship level or thinking about the best combinations of heroes for the next mission. That constant loop of build-up and reward is heavy in Midnight Suns, and it's hard to get away from.

The worst thing a strategy game fan or a Marvel fan can do is not give Marvel’s Midnight Suns a chance. Midnight Suns regularly feels like a game that shouldn’t be as entertaining as it is because it has some flaws with its presentation, technical performance, and writing. However, the combat system and team-building mechanics are so good that the game can stand tall despite its issues. Firaxis stepped out of its comfort zone and did an admirable job at making Midnight Suns its first tactics RPG game, even if its rock-solid gameplay foundations often pick up the pieces where other elements fall short.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns releases December 2 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The PS4, Switch, and Xbox One versions will release at a later date. Game Rant was provided a PC code for the purposes of this review.

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Midnight Suns

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a tactical RPG developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K. Players create and customize their own protagonist known as "The Hunter" and can team up with numerous Marvel characters like Wolverine, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Blade, Doctor Strange, and more. Combat is turn-based with ability cards that can be played, and between missions, players can manage both the team and their base of operations called The Abbey. 

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