Marvel's Midnight Suns Review

It's finally time to take control of the prophecy and face Lilith, Mother of Demons, with the release of the highly-anticipated Marvel's Midnight Suns. Take control of a slew of characters and fight back the Lilin hordes as you embark on an adventure with a cast of characters from the Midnight Sons and the Avengers! But... is the title worthy of its hype?

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a big game. So big, in fact, that it puts Galactus to shame (I would've said either Infinity or Eternity, but let us be honest... nothing can get as ridiculously large as that)! All jokes aside, this title is the Marvel game that "does it all", and as such, I will definitely not be able to cover everything in one compact review. Instead, I will focus on the basics and my opinion on them, but do consider reading our preview, where I detail the mechanics in-game.

Starting off with the story, you take control of a brand-new character named The Hunter, a child of Lilith before she gave in to the power of the Darkhold. Centuries ago, The Hunter defeated Lilith but lost their life in the process, and now — with Lilith stirring up trouble again — The Hunter is resurrected by humanity's last hope: the Midnight Suns and a handful of Avengers.

The story takes no time to properly introduce itself to you and instead throws you straight into the fray with Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Johnny Blaze's conversation about the state of the world. This, paired with the criminal amounts of tutorials you have to read through, makes it a bit difficult to follow the story, but once you get into the flow of it, it gets excellent. The interactions sway perfectly between signature Marvel humour paired with world-ending doom that lurks around at every turn of the corner.

Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of comics; despite numerous attempts at trying to enjoy them to learn more about the Marvel universe, I've failed. With that in mind, I came into the story knowing only half of the cast, with characters like the Caretaker, Lilith, Blade, Magik, Nico Minoru, and Robbie Reyes being personalities I only knew from off-hand comments or occasional research. Despite that, however, I came to really appreciate them, with their personalities shining through and very believable (and valid) quibbles with the Avengers, that come into the Abbey and disrupt the "natural order" of the Midnight Suns.

It's worth noting that Marvel's Midnight Suns is chock-full of dialogue and conversations; you'll spend most of your time interacting with one of the numerous characters present throughout the game. While this isn't a criticism on my end, as I personally sincerely enjoyed the story elements, even I sometimes felt like the gameplay aspects were few and far between; I can see how that'll easily frustrate some of the more gameplay-focused gamers. I'd say about 66% of the game is focused on cutscenes, conversations, and dialogues that help you interact with some of your favourite Marvel characters. That said, most of the dialogue is skippable, with the occasional cutscene that you could, theoretically, skip. How much and how little you interact with each hero is primarily up to you, as you'll be able to decide whether you join hangouts, converse with them, and complete their individual tasks, but I personally tried to take in all of the stories that I could to get the most out of the game.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ voice acting and overall sound design are decent, though they’re neither groundbreaking nor a dealbreaker; they’re just okay. The sound effects are quite repetitive, but none of them got annoying or frustrating. On the voice acting end of things, while some of the lines felt a bit forced and weaker than others, I do have to sincerely give my props to the voice actor for Tony Stark, Josh Keaton — he gave it his all, and it shows. Talking to Iron Man throughout my playthrough was a joy, as the way he was portrayed very closely resembles the MCU's Iron Man (played by Robert Downey Jr.), and I feel he did a fantastic job.

Whenever you aren't talking to Spider-Man about videogames, Blade about training, or Doctor Strange about his precious Sanctum (he really loves that place), you'll spend it fighting against Lilith and the Lilin threat. With the prophecy at stake, you'll take control of The Hunter, the son or daughter (depending on your chosen gender) of Lilith and the one prophecised to bring about her end. This character is imperative to the overall story, and you'll spend a lot of time getting to know them both in stories and in battle; they make up one-third of your party, as they're a mandatory character for every Story mission. At first, The Hunter felt out of place in a world full of my favourite superheroes, and everyone seemingly liked them and admired them before that was deserved, but they slowly fit into the game very nicely and managed to become a delightful character that I came to appreciate — one of my favourites, in fact.

Gameplay-wise, The Hunter can lean into Dark or Light magic depending on how you work your morality by interacting and using abilities in-game. You'll start at 0 and can go up (either Dark or Light) to 200 points. As you increase your affinity to either of these two, you'll get access to numerous attacks that differ, with Dark attacks being more aggressive and DPS-focused, whilst Light can work as a heavy-hitter, self-sacrificial support with some tank abilities. I didn't have the opportunity to try out the Dark path too much, considering Marvel's Midnight Suns is way too big and getting even 100 affinities on either can take dozens of hours, but I did have a gander at some of the abilities early in the game. I enjoyed the Light path, focusing more on healing and tanking, especially considering how strong these two abilities are. Though, The Hunter did feel relatively weaker in comparison to some of the more fleshed-out personalities, with the other heroes having more potent abilities focused on their comic characters. It isn't so evident that it makes The Hunter a liability in combat, especially with the surprisingly scarce healing options, but it was something that felt noteworthy for a character that's otherwise supposed to be the "Savior" of the prophecy.

Going into Marvel's Midnight Suns, I was cautiously intrigued by the prospect of a turn-based card strategy title. I worried that these two wouldn't meld properly, but after having played for so many hours, I can confidently say that it has been quite a joy. The card-based battler side of Marvel's Midnight Suns fixes some of my quibbles with the turn-based strategy genre, including the repetition of some abilities in some of its titles. Once you have your hand selected and a deck ready to go, it's up to luck for you to get a good ability to take advantage of. It isn't nearly as horrifying as it might sound, with the random chance of getting a good card being somewhat of a bittersweet feeling, as it allows you to use a wider variety of attacks rather than getting obsessed with a single one (like Captain America's shield throw). The random chance could be irksome at times whenever I wasn't getting good enough cards to complete a particular objective, but that is primarily due to my own inability to strategise correctly and lack of expertise with the genre than a fault from Marvel's Midnight Suns. Changing hero decks around (consisting of eight cards: at least one heroic, a maximum of four attacks, and a support ability) eased up my ineptitude with the random chance system.

Meanwhile, the card-based battler aspect of Marvel's Midnight Suns is rather enjoyable, with the system mostly focusing on aggressive play; there aren't many buffs you can apply to your character, but numerous debuffs, attacks, and even environmental attacks you can take advantage of. This aggression focus made it fun to just destroy Hydra and Lilin forces as you plough your way through enemies, but it wasn't so mindless that I could easily win any fight even though I was playing on Normal (the second easiest difficulty of eight). However, I did have a bit of an issue with the deck building and some limitations, such as being forced to have only four attack abilities (different from heroic abilities), meaning that attack-focused characters with otherwise shoddy support techniques fell short with some of them — most notably, Spider-Man, in my experience. The deck building feels a bit restrictive for my taste, but it wasn't frustrating; merely a minor quibble I had with the gameplay.

Building a team of three superheroes isn't overly complex, as their synergies and interactions are easy enough to understand. I did struggle with some of the randomised aspects of the game, where I got stuck in a hard side quest because of a bad deck of cards with Nico Minoru, Captain America, and The Hunter, but after a quick reset and getting a new deck, I breezed through it. They can be difficult in their own right, but mostly you'll struggle against the RNG more than anything, at least on Normal difficulty.

Marvel's Midnight Suns gives you enough choices to let you enjoy the game the way you want to — whether you want an arduous turn-based strategy title with hard-hitting foes or a story-based game filled with iconic heroes from Marvel, you'll be able to find it here. The story, with its jokes, setting, and overall mood, is enjoyable, and the gameplay is fun, especially with its aggression-focused gameplay; it's easy enough that even a newcomer to the genre like me managed to get through it.