Marvel’s Midnight Suns – PS5 Version, Reviewed on PS5 – Tactical Combat, Turn-Based, RPG
A different type of super-hero affair, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a turn-based, tactical card-based RPG full of high-flying action and tense scenarios. While it may not be for everyone, those willing to invest time learning its systems will find a very rewarding adventure capable of making the player feel like a successful war-time strategist.
Story:
As mother of demons Lilith is resurrected by Hydra scientists, the world is pushed into chaos. Magic users are destabilized, and there are dark forces invading Earth’s plane. Lilith pushes Hydra to reawaken her own master, Chthon, and bring an ancient prophecy to fruition.
Naturally, Earth’s heroes are unhappy about this, and put up a fight. Lilith’s own child, The Hunter, is the main player’s character, and can be either light or dark or a combination of the two. The Hunter teams up with multiple heroes at a protected church abbey. As the world is swarmed by Lilith and her demons, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Ghost Rider, Blade, Scarlet Witch, Magik, Nico Minoru and The Hunter form an unstoppable team, fighting back against the dark forces.
As the story progresses, clash with heroes and villains caught up in the nightmare world. There are quick and basic event missions, as well as an overarching story that involves the greater tale of stopping Lilith from succeeding and saving the Earth.
Gameplay:
Gameplay here is definitely new to me. While turn-based is something I gravitate towards, and Midnight Suns offers just that, it is driven by a card-based combat system. While the game’s publisher is used to turn-based combat via its excellent human vs. alien XCOM series, Midnight Suns combat differs from XCOM significantly.
When battles hit, your team of heroes gets a certain amount of actions per turn. You can move/reposition, take cover, and/or play cards. “Cards” are all unique to super-heroes, and you build a “deck” with them as you progress and unlock more variations while playing. Cards can either be attacks on enemies, boosts to yourself or teammates, healing spells, magic buffs/debuffs, combo attacks, ultimate attacks, and more. They will come up randomly in battle, leaving you to use the combination of cards available to you as your strategy to build around.
You can use action points and play a card (which all have respective point requirements), or discard something and hope something else comes up that you’d rather use. The system may sound odd or intimidating, but honestly, I found it to be a total blast, especially not having played something like it before.
The right cards right off the bat can make combat smooth and easy, and longer boss battles become tense as you must balance your points and cards knowing what you have already spent and what is likely to be available next. Finding new power ups and new cards is always exciting, and added a nice level of management and fun to the gameplay.
Deck management is vital, however never too much of a time suck. Creating stronger cards using extra copies earned in combat is fun, and is another way of leveling up characters beyond their main experience levels.
Battle environments contains all sorts of interactable objects as well and most can be turned into weapons. It is always fun to kick enemies into exploding cars or gas tanks, or into chasms that take them to the underworld.
Outside of battle, players spend their time as The Hunter back at the home-base abbey and its surrounding grounds. You can train, talk to heroes, and explore. There are mini quests and reasons to explore that lead to power ups and unlocks, however they are more of back burner events to the main tale.
While the exploration of the abbey is more of a chore compared to the fun combat, it does add a nice balance to the gameplay and exposition dynamic to learn more about the other heroes, and the magic events surrounding the story.
Basically, if turn-based strategy if your vibe, this game will hit the right marks, despite its unique (to me at least) card-based combat system.
Graphics:
While this game won’t win any awards for its graphical presentation, it is in-line with XCOM type and other similar top-down strategy games. The environments are well detailed, and the character models are sufficient to perform the attacks on screen.
It’s definitely got a bit of an older feel to it, but it did not stop any enjoyment for me, as it’s more about the gameplay and execution than the graphics for the most part. Mostly I thought the character models were pretty solid and the comic-type action looked good on display.
Fun-level:
Mileage will vary here based on the turn-based and card-based aspects of the game. The story is sound and interesting, however does focus on the more “magical” side of the Marvel Universe, so a few of the characters included may be lesser known to most players. That being said, don’t sleep on Magik or Nico Minoru.
I had a total blast with all the aspects of this game, including the role-playing elements, abbey exploration, side quests, lore, training, leveling up, cameos, costumes, photo mode, and more.
Downloadable Content (DLC) Review:
I have not played any of the DLC, but I would expect it is pretty good just like the rest of the game’s story. Each DLC contains an additional playable character, and additional related story missions and trophies for that character. DLC packs/characters are:
- Deadpool
- Venom
- Morbius
- Storm
Final Score: 8.5
DLC Score: N/A