It’s crazy how sometimes a game can pop out of the woodwork and completely surprise you with the quality.
For me it was Marvel’s The Midnight Suns. I never heard about this game’s existence until a couple days before its release at the end of 2022. It has some characters from the mystical side of Marvel, such as Nico Minoru, Magik, Robbie Reyes, Scarlet Witch, and Blade. The game also includes the more well-known Avengers characters like Captain America, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Captain Marvel. It also has Wolverine, and some really cool DLC characters in Morbius, Venom, Deadpool and Storm.
Some of the Midnight Suns team: From left to right, Nico Minoru, Blade, Hunter, Spider-Man. Robbie Reyes, and Majik
The Good
This story is really fun and leads into a tunnel through the mystical Marvel universe. The Midnight Suns have to team up with the Avengers to take down Lillith, the mother of demons, who had taken the Darkhold. The custom character you create is the child of Lilith so that provides for a nice dynamic between them, which leads me to the dark and light alignment. The game allows you to choose what path you take, the light or dark, which makes for different playstyles. It also affects how you interact with the other heroes.
This story is a top 10 videogame storyline for me. The way they were able to balance all of the different personalities and interactions precisely how I would expect them to. The core of the plot lies in how well these two totally different teams in every sense of the word, have to team up because they have mutual friends in danger.
But by the end of the game, they all get along really well and consider each other family. A certain sense of trust built in between one another. Partially because of the battling together. Also because there are clubs and groups you can join in and go to meetings for. Shop Class, Book Club, and The Emo Kids.
I really enjoy even the simplest dialogue interaction because of the love put into each and every line in this game. Even the side quests managed to be as interesting as the main story. As we progress through the days, along with exploration of the Abbey grounds. All of these can end up helping you in battle, growing your friendship with these characters is a main point of the game, which gets you into some deep conversations with the characters, that get really deep into their backstories, and depending on how you react, it could really help, or really hurt your relationship with them.
The Gameplay
Usually I am not a fan of turn based games like this. The Midnight Suns does it really well. From the cards they have available for each character, the abilities they allow you to have outside of the basic cards are fun as well. The card decks are also customizable if you find yourself needing to balance your team better.
Some heroes are heavy damage, others are mainly area of effect powers, I really enjoyed balancing my team as the mission needed. They also allow you to spend energy to throw items from around the map at the enemy, you could also shove the enemies into other enemies to do small amounts of damage.
Other than the battle gameplay, you can also run around the abbey grounds at night to explore, you gain blessings from different gods and learn about a team of former Midnight Suns that had died. This part was more interesting for me, as I enjoy exploring and learning stuff about the world the game is set in.
The final thing I want to point out is all the customization is really well made as well. Really well-designed costumes with references to known other parts of the heroes, and the character creation of hunter has so many different ways you can create essentially any face you could want to.
Sample of the gameplay in Midnight Suns
The Bad
I’ve been praising this game a lot, but to be completely fair I need to admit some of the stuff that annoyed me about this game. Like every other game, this game isn’t perfect. The main story drags on a bit, and sometimes it makes you divert from the story for a mission. Which wouldn’t be a problem but when the offshoot missions get repetitive is when it gets bad. As is unlocking cards with characters that you don’t use as much, since the game relies heavily on using a character a lot throughout the game as opposed to using everyone equally.
It felt essentially impossible to unlock all the cards for all characters in one playthrough. Could have been how I played or my choices, but my friendship levels and cards were high for some characters and low for others. It gets better the closer you get to the end. I also did not like the ending much, I really do not like how Hunter was sucked back into the Darkhold. The logic is sound; I just really don’t feel like that’s a good ending to their story.
The Post Credit Scene
Post Credit scene with Doctor Doom
I got super hyped with the possibilities of the post credit scene. It ends with Doctor Doom finding the Darkhold in the rubble of the final fight. As a comic book fan, that spells trouble, Doom is already powerful. With the power of the Darkhold, he will be insanely powerful. It also gives me hope that Hunter’s story isn’t over yet.
There has to be a better ending for them than just to be sucked into some book, but the future sequel possibilities are high. For the fact that there are so many courses they can go it excites me a lot as a huge fan of Doom and this first game.
In conclusion, I love this game, it’s a solid 8/10 for me. Solid character interactions, fun plot, good cliffhangers between days. I want to give it credit for keeping my attention and excitement to play. Even with it being a way of gameplay I usually never enjoy. If you like Marvel at all or any of these heroes, it’s worth picking up and playing through. Maybe even more than once for the light and dark alignments.
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