There are plenty of great features in Marvel’s Midnight Suns. The game’s mix of tactical combat and deck-building is unique and works very well together. While the game is a lot of fun, there are certain obvious ways the game could have been better.
Game development is a complicated and difficult process, so it makes sense that a big game like Midnight Sunsmight feel like it’s missing some features. There is even a possibility that some of these issues get fixed later on in the game’s life through updates or DLC. That being said, in its current form, the game missed some big opportunities to make itself better and more successful.
10/10 Midnight Suns Missed A Chance At A Better Gameplay Trailer
Midnight Suns is a very fun game with some exciting combat. Some of the best bits of gameplay come from watching a perfectly planned sequence of moves come together and defeat a large swath of enemies at once. Unfortunately, Midnight Suns missed the opportunity to show off this great combat in the trailers for the game.
Many of the trailers focus on the game’s story, with even gameplay trailers leaning heavily on footage from cutscenes. What little is shown of the combat in the game is mostly a single character attacking a single enemy, making the combat look less exciting than it really is. Trailers are the best opportunity to excite players about a game, but Midnight Suns wasted that opportunity.
9/10 Not Including Moon Knight Was A Missed Opportunity
Moon Knight is a member of the Midnight Suns in the comics, the team on which the game is based. Including him on the team seems like an easy choice, and would also give players a chance to use one of Marvel’s most entertaining characters.
Unfortunately, the game missed the opportunity to include more interesting characters in an attempt to cram in popular faces from the MCU. Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man have all been in plenty of Marvel games already. Midnight Suns should have been a chance for Moon Knight and other obscure characters to shine.
8/10 Deeper Relationships Would Have Made Conversations More Engaging
The characters in Midnight Suns all have a long comic book history and plenty of personality traits from which the game could draw. It is unfortunate that many conversations with the characters feel more like basic trivia about their pasts.
Allowing players to develop deeper relationships with the cast of characters could have created some interesting conversations. Instead, players are largely stuck reacting to stories from comics, like choosing which side they would have hypothetically taken in Marvel’s Civil War II. This makes talking sections of the game feel slower than they should and misses the chance to flesh the characters out more.
7/10 More Midnight Suns Members Should Have Been In The DLC
The Midnight Suns roster in the comics is full of interesting characters. Characters like The Hood, Iron Fist, and Man-Thing would all have interesting abilities in combat and don’t often get the chance to star in video games.
Instead of including these characters in the season pass, half of the DLC characters have already been in many games. In fact, both Deadpool and Venom have been playable characters in their own games before. When a game comes out that is supposed to focus on an obscure team from the comics, it’s disappointing to see developers wasting the opportunity to showcase new characters.
6/10 Comic Book Covers Should Have Been From Real Books
After each mission in Midnight Suns, players receive a fake comic book cover featuring the team from the mission. The covers aren’t illustrated, but just the same few poses from in-game models against a mono-colored backdrop.
The covers are very unexciting to look at, and they start to be an annoyance that players have to skip past after each mission. This feels like a missed opportunity because there are plenty of real comic book covers drawn by incredible artists the game could have used instead. Each mission has a lead hero, so it would be easy for the game to have rewarded players with a real cover featuring that character.
5/10 Character Combos Feel Unfinished
Most attacks that heroes use in Midnight Suns are solo affairs. However, players can also draw combo cards that have two of the heroes on the team combine forces for a powerful attack. Players likely expect these attacks to be flashy and fun to watch, but they are mostly ugly and look unfinished.
When players start a combo attack, the background environment disappears. The two heroes involved in the attack just beat up the enemy on top of a colorful background with motion lines. The attacks also don’t feature the heroes together, but switch off between one character hitting the enemy and another doing it on a different colored background. What should be the most visually exciting attacks end up looking worse than most.
4/10 Embracing A Darker Tone Would Set The Game Apart
Many Marvel properties have found themselves in a bit of a rut tonally. Even games that aren’t connected to the MCU try to emulate the same light-hearted tone that the movies have, afraid to risk straying from the popular formula. Midnight Suns compromises some of its more emotional moments by relying too much on the type of quips players might expect from the films.
One big emotional moment in the game is when Bruce Banner betrays the Avengers. Tony Stark takes this very hard and blames himself for not being a better friend. However, the next time players run into Tony, he’s back to his jokey self. It detracts from the impact of the game’s story and wastes the opportunity for a more impactful narrative.
3/10 More Meaningful Choices Would Justify The Length Of RPG Segments
Midnight Suns is a mixture of tactical combat and RPG elements. While not on a mission, players can interact with their teammates and develop relationships with them. While it’s nice that the game gives players a dialogue tree to flesh out their own character, the choices players make don’t feel very impactful.
When having a conversation, the most impact choices have are on a player’s relationship with the character or their alignment to dark or light. This essentially makes conversations about saying what the character wants to hear to gain points and unlock upgrades. There is no penalty for the player contradicting themselves and saying different things to different characters, so the conversations end up feeling shallow.
2/10 Multiplayer Could Offer Challenging Combat Opportunities
The tactical combat of Midnight Suns is a lot of fun and can be very challenging, especially on higher difficulty levels. However, it seems like a missed opportunity that players don’t get to test their skills against one another.
The miniatures game Marvel Crisis Protocol proved just how fun squad-based superhero combat could be. It has a lot of similar mechanics to Midnight Suns, and a multiplayer mode would likely capture a lot of the same positive elements. Multiplayer would also allow the game to continue being popular after players finish the main campaign.
Building a well-crafted deck is an important part of Midnight Suns. It’s important that both individual characters have a good deck, and that they work well with the other characters they team up with. That’s why it feels like a missed opportunity not to include a full deck-builder menu.
Instead of choosing three heroes for a team and creating a deck with all three of their cards, players are forced to only build decks for each independent hero. This means switching back and forth between menus to see how a deck looks in its entirety. Players also can’t save certain builds of a deck, so if they want an optimized experience when switching between teams, they’ll have to manually switch their decks around each time.