Marvel's Midnight Suns Gameplay - New Turn-Based RPG/TCG
Jun. 9, 2022Marvel’s Midnight Suns Gameplay – New Turn-Based RPG/TCG
Marvel’s Midnight Suns Gameplay a new Tactical RPG/TCG – A few days ago, we had the opportunity to visit Firaxis Games’ Baltimore, MD headquarters to go hands-on with the story-driven tactical RPG, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, published by 2K Games. Firaxis, is very well-known for Sid Meier’s Civilization games and of course, XCOM, which are two of my favorite all time video game franchises!
Before we went hands-on, Jake Solomon, the Creative Director on Midnight Suns, gave us a one-hour presentation and briefly explained that while the developers who are working on the game are some of the same ones who worked on XCOM, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is its own game and that it is definitely not XCOM. This is very important to know being that it was never intended to be a Marvel XCOM-type game, but rather its own unique tactical card-based combat game that is very story-driven.
In this Marvel’s Midnight Suns preview: Gameplay and Hands-On Impressions, we will dive into the story behind Marvel’s Midnight “Sons,” (now “Suns”), the card/deck-building combat, “The Hunter” (the main character), and plenty more of the 60+hour tactical RPG!
As Jake Solomon pointed out to those of us who attended the hands-on preview, this is the first time in a Marvel game where the main character will be a custom original character called, “The Hunter.” Choosing gender, race and more, you’ll have the ability to make your own version of The Hunter.
With your Hunter, you will eventually square off against Lilith, the leader of the demonic forces in order to prevent her from reviving her evil master, Chthon. Lilith is raised by Hydra after 300 years of what was supposed to be an eternal slumber. She is very influential, cunning and deceiving and she has even manipulated the very finest of the Marvel superheroes. And as you may have already guessed, the game takes place in none other than New York.
The game is inspired by a deep-cut fan-favorite comic from the 90s – The Rise of the Midnight Sons, though this is not a 1:1 retelling of the original story. For example, “Sons” became “Suns” in order to become more of a modern game and story, which includes characters such as Magik and Nico Minoru, among others who you will learn much more about as the game goes on.
Lilith is the Mother of Demon’s (and your mom) whose dark influence corrupts and strengthens those to follow her will. This is quite interesting, because as you have now seen in the newly released trailer, both Venom and The Hulk himself have become corrupted, along with the Scarlet Witch. The Hunter is also Lilith’s only child. Without going into any spoilers here, your version of The Hunter will discover more of his/her past, present and future as the game goes on.
In our 4-hour playthrough, we spent a solid half of our time watching cutscene after cutscene, seeing the development of the heroes, their relationships, and the important decisions you’ll have to make with the majority of the dialogues in the game. You can also skip through the dialogue if you’d like, but you will likely want to pay close attention, as you will be rewarded for the responses you choose in the game.
We did however choose to skip through some of ours as we progressed through our playthrough, especially if it was not a part of the main story.There is tons of dialogue, especially in The Abbey, which is the main hub and safe haven in the game. Marvel fans will love seeing the Marvel heroes come together (12 total, plus The Hunter) from their different factions/organizations and how they can either butt heads or work together, based on the choices you make in your conversations with them.
This is clearly a Marvel game through-and-through, but the story is compelling enough for anyone who is interested in plenty of cutscenes, twists and turns, and for those who are into the supernatural. If however, you are not into very story heavy games, Midnight Suns may not be your cup of tea.
There is a daily cycle in The Abbey. You’ll wake up every morning, engage with different Heroes and develop relationships with them, enabling you to perform more special abilities with each hero that you decide to hang out with. You’ll then prepare for battle – choosing the 8 cards per hero you want to have in the fight, the special items you want to use, the perks you can acquire to give you a bonus at the beginning of the battle and more. The Forge is a place in The Abbey where Dr. Strange and Tony Stark craft upgrades for the Hunter and team as a whole.
You’ll have main missions to choose from and side quest missions. The side quests are important, finding materials you’ll want to acquire in order to upgrade your deck, get new suits and more. I found this to be quite interesting, that not only will the game focus heavily on the story and combat, but also The Abbey, where you can explore to find currency, discover secret items, and progress character development and relationships (no dating/intimate relationships though), along with mini events that you can do with your hero friends (more on that later).
Jake made it very clear in the presentation that combat is the heart of the game. It is also quite clear that the card combat-based system shares basically none of the combat mechanics from XCOM, and again, they never intended this to be an XCOM game in the first place. The enemies in Midnight Suns are supernatural, fantasy-like demons whereas XCOM games are more about soldiers taking on a superior alien force. Let us dive into the cards and combat mechanics, making Midnight Suns truly its own unique game.
Your abilities are presented to the player as cards. There are 3 types of cards in Midnight Suns: Attacks, Skills (heal, buffs, and more), and Heroic cards – high damage and special abilities.
For starters, in Marvel’s Midnight Suns gameplay each hero is first assigned 8 cards. While in combat, these cards can be swapped out as you acquire new ability cards in the game, or in Iron Man’s case, you can use the redraw option to add a perk (knockback in our case) to upgrade his attack card. For each turn in combat, you will get 3 card plays, 1-2 moves (moving a hero to a key spot on the battlefield), 2 redraws (getting rid of a card you don’t like for another random card), and any special items that you may have acquired in the Abbey. You will also notice to the far right of your screen, a HEROISM counter, which is incredibly important to take notice of.
For each attack card you play (not Skill or Heroic cards), you’ll be allotted 1 Heroic point, which can potentially add up to a total of 10 points. Some cards can only be used if you have a certain number of Heroic points, which are easy to notice on the cards, and the fact that you can use Heroic points to use rocks, boxes or whatever is highlighted in the battlefield to cause extra damage to your enemy.
Your basic attack moves can simply do damage to an enemy, yet once upgraded can also have bonuses like a knockback effect, dealing extra damage when an opponent is knocked into a wall, an enemy, or even one of your heroic pals during combat. There are some bonuses on the attack cards that say the word, “QUICK” on it. If you KO an enemy with the QUICK attack card, you’ll immediately get the card right back, which allows you to use the card again in combat, either on the same turn or another turn.
Every hero has distinct cards that give each hero their own unique attacks and abilities, which made us want to check out the various abilities with many of the heroes in the game. From Blade’s simple quick attacks with his sword or guns, to Captain Marvel’s Photon Blast, pulverizing every enemy in her path, to Dr. Strange having some cool Skill card buffs, for example, adding a +7 attack to the heroes around him, everything seems original and unique.
The key strategy is to know when to use your Attack cards or Skill Cards, to strike or to use your Buffs first and then to gradually build up your Heroic points, giving you even better cards as you go on in the fight. Or, you can use your Heroic points up quicker, which depends on the amount of damage you want to do or special ability you want to do at any given time, so long as the card you want to use shows up in your deck.
Let’s talk a little more about the Environment and Positioning. Heroism can also be used to take advantage of the environment, dealing damage without using a Card Play, which is huge considering you get only 3 card plays per turn. This at times caused us to use my Heroic points up fast.
We would use The Hunter’s whip to take a rock and smash it at an enemy for a quicker KO. This took up one Heroic point. The more Heroic points you need to use for environmental objects, the more damage you will do. One particular mission had us taking down a helicopter. You had to literally attack it before it took off, so you had to strategize what enemies to take out and which enemies to ignore. There were 2 specific enemies that had buff cards behind them, meaning that once they were KO’d, we was given buff cards to either delay the helicopter from leaving or to use the other buff card to deal significant damage to it, both cards counting as 1 card play.
As for the difficulty of Marvel Midnight Suns gameplay, we were given the “Story” and “Normal” setting, but there were 6 more difficulty settings in the game. Going with the Normal difficulty, we found the game to not be too challenging, although we had a hero downed a time or two, especially when we encountered the Venom – the final boss battle in the demo. We can only imagine how difficult it would have been to choose the other difficulty levels, so this game will clearly appeal to the hardcore gamers out there, both in the challenge and the tactical combat.
One specific complaint we have is when in combat, just when you think you’re about to defeat a the last enemy, reinforcements will keep coming out until you complete the mission, so you will want to complete the mission objective as quick as you can and then wipe out the remaining enemies, because it felt like there would have been an unlimited amount of reinforcements, which was a tad annoying at times.
Many have questioned the RNG factor in the game and we must say that after playing the game for 4 hours, it is not as random as one might think. While the cards that show up are indeed random, the heroes you decide to bring with you per mission, (3 Heroes plus you) will start to give you an idea of the playstyle of each character. You can simply see the deck of each character in the menu, and throughout the game, some of these cards can even be upgraded, increasing the damage to them or the buffs, and plenty more. Dr. Strange has a neat Skill card where you can draw back the last 2 attack cards that you used, so this will help in knowing the next 2 immediate cards you will get back in your deck.
Whenever one of my characters was downed, we put the blame solely on ourselves, not the random cards. We took a major sense of responsibility knowing that our skill and learning curve far outweighs the random card drawn in the game.
Getting back to the main custom character, “The Hunter,” has over 40 combat abilities in the game, plus is fully customizable in appearance, giving you more options for clothing specifically during his/her time in The Abbey, as well as The Hunter’s gear when out in the battlefield. As stated before, The Hunter is not random, nor is The Hunter just thrown into the Marvel universe. Rather, he/she has quite the backstory and is Lilith’s only child. We enjoyed how they introduced The Hunter in the game. Believe us when we say that if you are especially a fan of Marvel, you will appreciate their approach here.
The Hunter can be very powerful or play more of a support role, or both. This really depends on how you choose to respond to each hero when talking to them in The Abbey, taking the Light or the Dark Path. Taking the Light Path will give you more unique team-based abilities with one or more heroes while the Dark Path can give you very powerful, damaging abilities. Unfortunately, even with a 4-hour demo, there was not enough time to build up either path, so this will take time to discover what The Hunter is truly capable of doing in combat, along with The Heroes that you decide to build those relationships with.
As for the Heroes, you’ll be able to play as Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Magik, Blade, Nico Minoru, and the newly introduced Heroes, Spiderman and Scarlet Witch. You’ll notice in the trailer that Scarlet Witch will both play the hero and the villain in the game, and that is all we know at this point, which is a good thing. You can personalize the skins of each hero throughout the game, which can make your selected team of 4 look the way you want them to look. The Midnight Suns won’t get stronger throughout the game, as they are already very fierce and powerful to begin with. It’s all in the cards, how you upgrade them, and how each hero can use the environment to their advantage.
Note that the best and most sought after Skins are located in the cash shop of the game, which we were not allowed to show in our video. Many will likely be disappointed at this, and even though they don’t boost stats in anyway, it does take a little something away from the game.
While I have already touched on The Abbey and the relationship aspect, there was enough content in our 4-hour playthrough to delve a little more into this part of the game. We were also told that the “Friendship System” will give you 3-4 key relationships per playthrough, so you will not want to try and spread yourself too thin. Every hero has their likes and dislikes, some even liking your Dark responses, like Magik or Blade, which in turn will strengthen your bonds with them. Yes, we chose the Dark Side.
The Mini Events are interesting. They include sparring, fishing, playing a game, or even watching a movie with a hero and plenty more. However, they were a bit of a let down to me, because we actually wanted to spar with Blade, or actually fish with him. For the sparring, you simply see them together, about to spar, and then it ends, just like that. The point of these events is once again, to improve upon your relationship with them and to acquire new moves, abilities, and beyond. We suppose there is enough content in the game that by actually adding sparring or a fishing mini-game itself would have taken even that much more time to develop the game.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns gameplay is very much a story-based, deck-building tactical RPG set in a fantasy/supernatural world, fighting plenty of demonic creatures. You will have a steep learning curve in the beginning, but with the help of the tutorials, you’ll be well on your way to slaying a corrupted Venom, The Hulk, and plenty more villains in the game, including Lilith.
The combat cards are random, but you will need to think carefully about your every move with each hero, especially as the difficulty increases in the game. If the Firaxis developers had not worked on XCOM, I personally don’t believe you would ever hear about both games in the same breadth.
If you’ve been wanting to play a Marvel game with a really solid story, there’s no doubt that this game is for you. There are enough breaks between combat, where the cutscenes will be a good breather and the story, with its twists and turns, will keep your eyes glued to the screen while at the same time, will it get to be a bit cumbersome with 60+ hours on average? That is up to you to decide.
The real challenge for Firaxis and 2K will be to win over gamers who are not very much into Marvel. I would also say that this truly can be a game for any tactical RPG fan, especially if you appreciate deck-building games.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
