Marvel's Midnight Suns Preview

Marvel's Midnight Suns is Marvel's latest videogame entry, as you'll take control of the first-ever original character to the videogame entries of the Marvel universe — The Hunter, Lilith's child.

This card- and turn-based combat title has you playing as a slew of Marvel characters, spread across two teams that fans of the comics (and movies) will know of: the Midnight Sons and the Avengers. The team, comprised of The Hunter, Blade, Nico Minoru, and Magik, and from Marvel's Midnight Sons lineup, and Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Robbie Reyes (Ghost Rider) and Spider-Man for the Avengers (though, he isn't an Avenger in this title... yet). Although more characters join the Midnight Suns throughout the playthrough, you'll spend most of your time with the original line-up of heroes, as the others are unlocked later on in the game.

Fated to fight your mother, The Hunter (which can be either gender depending on your preference, though I'll be using she/her pronouns throughout this preview, as that was my choice) is resurrected from the grave to fight once again, and must unite with this unlikely group of heroes to achieve that goal. You'll need to explore the Abbey (the hub world for Marvel's Midnight Suns), team up with the heroes to fight Hydra and Lilith, and interact with them daily to grow your friendship, which gives combat bonuses as well.

Interactions occur on a per-day basis, as each quest you undertake spans throughout an entire day. Upon waking up in the Abbey, you'll likely have a prompt to interact with one, or several, heroes. These conversations often range from silly interactions (such as the SUPERLINK social media, exclusive for heroes) to deeper connections that advance the plot in one way or another. Some of these are mandatory for you to be able to move on to your next quest and can sometimes feel a bit longer if you're not interested in the story.

The story centres around The Hunter and her feud with her mother, both past and present, having been the original one that defeated Lilith after she took hold of the Darkhold only a couple centuries prior. Guided by the Caretaker, Sara, The Hunter's aunt, you'll find a group of disgruntled heroes due to her leading and the way she's approached this apocalyptic scenario. The story is an oxymoron, starting way too fast and taking no time to introduce the player to the story or the characters, and too slow, making the story feel dragged out. That said, after enduring the initial uncomfortableness (as some characters seemingly don't know their place in the narrative, most notably The Hunter), it picks up and delivers that signature Marvel humour.

Interactions with the superheroes allow you to warm up to the cast quite quickly, though the forced interactions can feel like a hindrance for those that are more gameplay-focused, as I only managed to complete 16 missions in my 20 hours of playtime. These interactions work towards advancing your friendship with individual heroes and raising the overall Abbey friendship, providing combat bonuses to make your quests easier.

You'll level up with each hero in-between missions, both in the morning as you interact with them and at nighttime when the hangouts are made available. Some nights, you'll be able to spend some time with specific heroes, allowing you to level up your friendship with them and get to know them a bit more with an interactable, short scene that helps you connect closer to your colleagues.

Aside from daily conversations with your superheroes and SUPERLINK interactions, you'll have opportunities to do daily sparring with one hero daily, having a cooldown of four days before you can do it with the same one again. This provides them with a combat boost, a friendship boost, and can net nifty rewards, such as Arcane Keys that can be used to open the regenerating chests sprawled across the hub world.

You’ll also get access to explore the hub world and complete quests with Agatha… or rather, her ghost. Having been slain in events that took place before we take control, you’ll be able to fulfil some quests for her as she and The Hunter seem to have quite a close relationship. This’ll have you running around the Abbey trying to explore and find items, though I, unfortunately, ran out of time before I was able to take this quest to completion. Thankfully, I enjoyed starting a book club with Blade and joining the EMO KIDS (no, I’m not explaining how this came to be; you’ll have to play the game to figure it out), so I wasn’t too upset about missing out on my quest with Agatha.

Now, onto the gameplay. You'll have to make the arduous choice of selecting only three heroes to join you on each quest, with Story expeditions forcing you to take The Hunter and reducing your options down to two. You'll be able to embark on two different types of quests: General and Story. General quests offer rewards for you to upgrade your team and Abbey, such as Artifacts that raise your Research level and unlocks new machines and interactable objects across the Abbey with handy uses, such as crafting cards, increasing combat efficacy, healing speed, and more. Other items you'll find will be upgrade materials for your cards from the three variants, Intel Caches to send heroes on Hero Ops to gain unique cards and rewards at the cost of losing access to them for a day, and cards for every hero that was present in that particular mission. Everything you do regarding quests advances your team building one way or another, either through encouraging you to upgrade cards, unlocking research items, or progressing your story through "mandatory" side quests — an uncommon, yet welcome, reprieve from the story.

The hardest choice you'll have to make is how to build your team, though oftentimes, you'll find the choice stripped from you. Every hero in the game plays in different ways and has unique builds that are incredibly fun to experience, including tanks, damage dealers, and healer characters that you'll be able to take on each quest. Each Story quest has the possibility to force you to select up to three heroes (your whole team), but although this sounds irksome, it is less so thanks to automatic levelling for each hero according to The Hunter's level, allowing everyone to be at a decent level at all times for the quests. Each character is enjoyable to play, so it was a welcome change whenever I was forced to take a preset team, which is Marvel's Midnight Suns' approach at getting you to try, and love, every character you can select. This is also done through quests, where sometimes the heroes will ask you for a favour, which can range from chiming in on a conversation (such as being forced to pick between Iron Man and Captain America calling back to the events of Civil War) or they’ll ask you to take them on the next quest. A nice change of pace from my typical team, so again, no complaints.

I thoroughly enjoyed how each character brought a unique playstyle to the quests, meaning the experience never felt stale despite who I was bringing into the game. Whilst Nico Minoru's abilities all have a random factor to them, thanks to the Staff of One, Blade has a more aggressive and decisive playstyle thanks to his quick attacks and lifesteal. Tanks, such as Captain Marvel and Captain America, differ slightly in their approach to this; where Captain America works more as a health machine, Captain Marvel benefits from having a shield and maintaining her Binary mode in combat for extended periods of time. One of my favourites, however, was Magik's unique, environmentally-focused combat style, allowing you to send enemies flying with portals into hazards, making the fight feel very dynamic and unique, as I had to focus on what I could best use to cause the most damage.

The same applies, in part, to The Hunter's kit overall. Since I've always been a stickler for rules and tend to never, ever, play the bad guy, I decided to guide The Hunter down a path of good and used all of the nicest options I could choose in order to raise my morality (something Magik did NOT appreciate). I didn't have the time to try out The Hunter's kit whenever going dark side, but I did notice that some of the abilities differed drastically, with light attacks being centred around healing and supporting whilst dark ones were more aggressive and selfish (such as discarding other cards at random).

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a very combat-heavy turn-based strategy title, and it's a welcome change to the genre. Each card awards Heroic points that allow you to interact with the environment to attack your foes with or use special cards that are particularly great. There is little reason not to attack every turn, as you'll always redraw cards until you have a total of six cards in your hand. Each hero can carry eight cards, meaning you'll have a deck of 24 cards total to choose from, but abilities such as the draw card or play card refunds allow you to carry more than those often, meaning the system constantly encourages you to use your cards and favour aggressive play. 

Combat takes place in turn-based strategy and card-based combat, in a unique amalgamation of genres I've yet to experience. Each round, you'll have three card plays, which allow you to play cards from your deck; two redraws, which allow you to exchange cards from your deck for a new, random one; and one movement option, which will enable you to move one hero in the battlefield. Additionally to that, each card play attributes a set amount of Heroic points (up to 10) that allow you to cast the heroes' ultimate abilities for maximum damage. It took me a while to get used to the system and learn how to manage everything that I had to, but once I got the hang of it, it was a pretty smooth transition and an enjoyable one. I did have a minor qualm with the limitation of one movement for all three heroes, but I learned how to manoeuvre the difficult task of keeping in mind who would be the best character to move and, eventually, came to terms with the system. A neat addition I appreciated in combat allows you to move your hero freely across the battlefield without consuming your movement point until you've played an attack card, allowing you to reposition yourself if you managed to screw it up, despite the amount of indicators informing you of everything you'd need to know to move properly.

Unlike other entries in the genre, this is a very fast-paced combat system unless you're the type of person to sit down and overthink your every move, something you might want to do if you want to earn a high rating of stars per quest. Although I oftentimes find rating systems for performance meaningless in single-player titles, Marvel's Midnight Suns implements it in a passive way, only taking away currency you can strictly use for cosmetics in your party, though it more often than not served to make me feel slightly embarrassed at my performance at times.

Cosmetics are plentiful, as you'll be able to decorate your room in the Abbey (from a set of pre-set decorations already placed in a specific location) and the outfits for every character. You'll be able to choose from changing the way your main character looks (aside from gender), clothing, and battle clothing, with full reigns allowing you to do and undo as you please. These cosmetic changes, including for your other heroes, are present throughout cutscenes, a very welcome change once I felt that The Hunter was sufficiently well-presented. You'll unlock cosmetics as you complete quests and open chests scattered across the Abbey, though I was impressed by the implementation of casual clothes being used by both the heroes and protagonist whenever present in the hub, an interesting and enjoyable hint at how human our superheroes really are.

Aside from minor bugs present throughout the game, mostly visually-oriented issues occurring with Captain Marvel's helmet and her eyebrows distractingly clipping through her helmet or my resolution being locked at the incorrect one (an issue I've already been assured is receiving a fix), I had no issues with the game, despite its size. Commonly, with games of this calibre, bugs are found aplenty, but I managed to have a smooth experience throughout my playtime.

In the 20 hours I managed to play Marvel's Midnight Suns, I have to say that it is — by far — the most unique turn-based strategy title thanks to its implementation of known heroes, superpowers, card-based combat, cosmetics, and more. Look forward to the release of the game when it comes out on the 2nd of December on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch versions coming at a later date!