Marvel’s Midnight Suns review: brilliant turn-based card combat

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is constructed on a hell of a promise. Take the studio that rebooted XCOM to gorgeous outcomes, merge it with a card-battle system impressed by titles resembling Slay the Spire and Inscryption, then add within the Marvel superheroes which have outlined the final 15 years of popular culture. And whereas these pillars every stand effectively sufficient on their very own, Firaxis Video games makes use of them to help a title that’s wholly distinctive, stuffed with persona, and steeped in intelligent programs.

The very first thing to clear up is that this turn-based technique sport is just not, the truth is, XCOM. You don’t micromanage positioning, you don’t face fixed roster turnover, and also you don’t maintain your breath driving the skinny line of capturing percentages. Overwatch isn’t a factor and sound tactical maneuvering doesn’t exist. As an alternative, all the trade-offs, rigidity, and gnashing of enamel are framed round a hand of playing cards.

Inside this method, there’s a duality between tight restriction and wild artistic independence. You’re restricted to 3 characters each battle, chosen from a roster that begins considerably small however blossoms over the course of the 60-hour marketing campaign. Icons resembling Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Wolverine, and lots of extra are absolutely controllable. Every hero brings a deck of eight playing cards that symbolize their numerous, generally iconic talents. In every spherical of battle, your hand is randomly drawn from this mixed pool of 24 character playing cards, offering a way of uncertainty concerning the turn-to-turn fight choices at your disposal.

Picture: Firaxis Video games/2K

The person character decks are the lifeblood of Midnight Suns. They’re the way you interface with the battlefield, sure, but in addition the way you exert artistic company over the tactical expertise. New playing cards are regularly earned, and the fixed drip of recent talents proves to be a agency motivator for embracing deck-building. By setting up every deck all through the course of your marketing campaign, you may re-create the Huge Personalities of the Marvel universe: Spider Man constricts foes along with his bind assaults whereas Blade inflicts giant quantities of bleed injury, to call a pair. However you’re additionally given sufficient leeway in your builds to fill out sure niches in your three-person squads. As I delved deeper into the deck-building, pure pairs or groupings of heroes emerged, and I started to lean on them: Captain America can tank hits in binary kind whereas Ghost Rider inflicts large quantities of injury.

Early within the sport, every thing feels mundane and small. You play three playing cards each flip, kill just a few grunts, and possibly take out a much bigger foe with some prolonged effort. In actual fact, I used to be considerably unimpressed with the early hours of Midnight Suns. The cardboard system felt competent but measured. It carried out easily, however the limitations of solely flat environments with solely minor emphasis on positioning left me wanting extra. I used to be skeptical {that a} card battle framework might mix with Firaxis turn-based battlefields. My opinion drastically modified as the cardboard pool grew and I used to be capable of string collectively six- and seven-card performs in a single flip. The primary time I dealt a number of hundred injury from a single assault was exhilarating. That flip after I was on demise’s door however was capable of flip it round by triggering life-steal and tossing out a number of large combo assaults to totally heal — that was intoxicating.

Picture: Firaxis Video games/2K

Whereas the exhilaration of the cardboard system is recurrently bolstered, this contrasts with the uninteresting overarching narrative. The pitch: A demon named Lilith groups up with the perennial evil group Hydra to threaten the world. On the opposing aspect, the Midnight Suns are a bunch of younger misfits led by a veteran hero merely named Caretaker. The story has apparent parallels to Professor Xavier and the X-Males, and this undercuts the novelty it generally earns elsewhere. However whereas the plot itself could also be slipshod, the give attention to the private tales of the heroes holed up within the abbey, the sport’s hub, creates a spark and propels issues ahead.

On the outset, you create an authentic character named The Hunter, a lukewarm avatar for dialogue decisions and behavioral choices all through Midnight Suns’ run time. In the end, The Hunter’s backstory and plot arc are mere distractions (it’s tough to craft an evocative hero via easy cutscenes, and Firaxis falls brief on this regard) however the character performs an vital half within the charming social interactions that unfold within the Midnight Suns’ headquarters.

Picture: Firaxis Video games/2K

This free-form Persona 5-esque relationship-building brings The Hunter to life. You possibly can take part in Blade’s e book membership, work on Ghost Rider’s hellride in a store group, and even play video video games with numerous allies. Relationships are graded with a friendship score, and interesting in these actions will earn expertise and unlock new advantages. It’s inconceivable to dedicate time to all the abbey-goers, so it turns into a troublesome choice concerning who to cozy up and commerce struggle tales with. Fostering sturdy relationships with characters is very incentivized, because it’s a supply of unlocking new passive talents in addition to playing cards. After spending many hours discussing books, fishing, and strolling the grounds with Blade, I constructed a ridiculous deck synergizing bleed and therapeutic with a big space of impact. These developments incentivize character growth and exploration, fueling interactions on the abbey.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a sport stuffed with wealthy texture. The voice appearing is excellent and the abbey’s relationship-building is the proper chill interlude to the tactically subtle card play. The 2 codecs are fantastically intertwined via the accrual of further playing cards and skills, and there’s a real sense of satisfaction in deepening each battlefield prowess and social role-playing connections. Midnight Suns is just not XCOM — however that’s in the end its best energy. It’s one thing fully distinct and completely distinctive.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns will likely be launched on Dec. 2 on PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X. The sport was reviewed on PC utilizing a pre-release obtain code supplied by 2K. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You could find further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.