Over the years, plenty of Marvel video games have allowed players to control their favorite heroes in action-packed battles, providing a taste of what it would be like to fly in one of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suits or wield Captain America’s super soldier strength. Marvel’s Midnight Suns is taking a unique approach. While iconic characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man are present, their stories take a backseat to the Hunter, an original, customizable character whose powers may be the key to defeating Lilith, the Mother of Demons.
Letting fans essentially create and shape their own hero is novel enough for a Marvel game, but Midnight Suns takes things further with a fresh turn-based battle system that combines tactics, deckbuilding, and RPG elements, plus enough socialization and team-building options to put some modern life simulation games to shame. That all sounds like a lot for any game to try and pull off, but after spending about 20 hours with Marvel’s Midnight Suns so far, it really seems to fulfill its promises. In fact, I feel like I have merely scratched the surface of this massive game packed to the brim with secrets to unlock, characters to befriend, and references to understand — especially for fans of the comics.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ Hunter Is a Hero Like No Other
Midnight Suns‘ opens with the resurrection of the villainous Lilith, Mother of Demons by Hydra’s Doctor Faustus. To combat the threat she poses, Doctor Strange seeks out the Hunter, Lilith’s child who died sealing her away three centuries earlier. The Hunter awakens to see how much has changed about the Abbey they once called home. While Caretaker (Lilith’s estranged sister and the woman who raised the Hunter) is still around alongside Charlie the hellhound (who is a very, very good girl), new inhabitants roam the halls calling themselves the Midnight Suns. On top of that the Avengers are also around, the Abbey now has Wi-Fi, and no one seems to want to talk about whatever happened to Agatha Harkness.
Players don’t have to wait too long to learn about Agatha’s fate, but that’s just one of the many mysteries to uncover while exploring the Abbey and getting to know the heroes living within it. The Abbey is vast and full of secrets and collectibles to uncover, with more of the grounds opening up as the game goes on. This is where players will be spending most of their time as they train, unlock new abilities, spend time with different heroes, and more.
What makes the Hunter so interesting is how much freedom the game gives players in shaping them. Creating the Hunter is about more than just picking their face, hair, and outfits; through their interactions with other characters and by selecting which abilities to bring in battle, players get to decide who their Hunter is. While Midnight Suns has received plenty of comparisons to Fire Emblem thanks to its tactical battles and social mechanics, its dialogue options and the way they shape the character are more reminiscent of Mass Effect.
The Hunter has the potential to dive deeper into their Light or Dark sides, unlocking different powers on each path. The options here give the game plenty of replayability, and they make the game more immersive, with the player’s choices having real gameplay consequences. Just about everything the player does — from spending time with the EMO KIDS, helping Peter Parker with a moral dilemma, and even petting the hellhound — has some impact on combat, incentivizing players to explore and talk to everyone.
Midnight’s Suns’ Combat Is Exciting and Unique
Then, of course, there’s Midnight Suns‘ unique approach to turn-based tactical battles, which has players building a deck of eight cards for each hero and using various attacks, skills, and heroics to take on various enemies and major bosses. Each hero comes with their own specialties, with the starter decks providing a good idea of how they operate. From there, players can unlock and upgrade cards, shaping the decks to suit their playstyle.
Combat is about more than just hero abilities, though; it’s just as important to pay attention to the battlefield itself and use the environment and even other enemies to your advantage. Few things feel quite as satisfying as using knockback to push a foe into one of their allies or using an explosive container to take out a group of enemies huddled in one place. Different heroes also interact with the environment in unique ways. For example, while Captain America might hurl an object at his foe, Magik will instead create a portal underneath the same object and have it drop on their head instead.
All of these systems may make the combat system sound bloated or overly complex, but it’s all incredibly fun and engaging in practice. While it may take time to learn how each aspect of battles works, the system is simple enough to pick up, with plenty of challenges and additional difficulty levels that offer greater rewards to keep players on their toes as they get better.
Midnight Suns Is the Most Comic-Centric Marvel Game Yet
Though many of the heroes on the game’s roster will be instantly recognizable even to those with only a passing familiarity with Marvel, this is likely the first interaction most casual fans will have with this particular team. Though the game’s story is original, it does take plenty of inspiration from the Midnight Sons comics of the ’90s, which brought together heroes like Blade, Ghost Rider, and Morbius to tell stories centered on the supernatural side of the Marvel universe. The team has reappeared many times over the years with various lineups, but it’s never been a household name in the vein of the Avengers, X-Men, or even the Guardians of the Galaxy.
This in itself makes Marvel’s Midnight Suns a fresh, unique experience. Recent Marvel games have largely focused on teams, heroes, and villains that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will recognize, but while the Avengers do factor into the story, the mystical side of the world is at the core here. Midnight Suns digs deep into the franchise’s massive roster of characters, and it’s great to see lesser-known characters like Nico Minoru and the Sister Sara incarnation of Caretaker given such prominent roles alongside some of the most famous characters ever created.
The game also features plenty of other references to its heroes’ massive histories and legacies, both obvious and subtle. Completing missions also presents players with a comic book cover featuring the heroes that fought in the battle, which players can customize if they choose. It almost makes it feel like players are creating and shaping their own series, with each mission serving as an issue in their run. All-in-all, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a celebration of the franchise that honors its legacy with nods to canon that diehard fans will appreciate and accomplishes this without leaving behind more casual fans.
