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Midnight Suns is a Role Playing Game set in the Marvel universe, featuring turn based combat and deckbuilding mechanics. The quickest way to describe the game is a combination of Xcom, Slay the Spire, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
Hydra have resurrected Lilith, a demon with godlike powers, and now the Avengers must team up with the Midnight Suns, and Lilith’s child, known as the Hunter, to save the world.

Combat

• During each mission you’ll choose a team of 3 heroes from your roster which includes Hunter (your main character, whose appearance can be customised in a detailed character creator), Blade, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, Iron Man, Magik (New Mutants), Niko (Runaways), Spiderman and Wolverine.
• Each hero has their own deck of 8 cards which allow them to attack, defend, and perform special abilities which are unique to their skills, for example Captain America can use his shield to protect allies, Spiderman’s agility lets him hit multiple enemies, and Magik can use portals to move enemies around.
• You’re usually limited to playing 3 cards per turn, however if you use attacks which have the “quick” modifier to finish an enemy on low health, you’ll earn a bonus action. Powerful special ability cards cost heroism to play, which is built up by playing normal cards that have no cost, so the order you play cards is important.
• There are a couple of mechanics which reduce the impact of random draw. If you don’t want the cards in your hand, you can redraw 2 cards on every turn, while unplayed cards are kept in hand instead of being discarded at the end of each turn, which gives the player more control over planning your next turn.
• During each mission you’ll be significantly outnumbered by Hydra soldiers or demonic enemies, and you’ll have to deal with multiple waves of reinforcements which can spawn endlessly until you complete the mission objective.
• Some weak enemies will die from any hit, making attacks which can hit multiple enemies, or knock them into each other, quite valuable. More powerful enemies have large health bars and can inflict various negative status effects on your heroes. Shield bearers can stop you targeting mission objectives, and snipers are especially dangerous because not only do they deal high damage, they can also cloak which makes them difficult to hit.
• You’ll also need to defeat powerful super villains such as Venom, Sabretooth, and Crossbones. You’ll face them in unique boss fights on story missions, and they can also ambush you as reinforcements during optional missions which you perform to gather various crafting resources.
• At first I thought that being limited to 3 heroes per mission might result in some characters being ignored, but there are lots of missions so there’s plenty of chance to rotate your lineup. And bringing different heroes on each mission helps to offset the repetitiveness of the mission objectives. While most missions require you to defeat all enemies, occasionally you’ll need to capture an enemy, disable a bomb or vehicle, or collect loot.
• There’s no Xcom style permadeath. If your heroes lose all health during battle, you’ll be unable to play their cards unless you revive them, which can be done a limited number of times per mission depending on difficulty level.
• After starting a campaign on normal difficulty, higher difficulties are unlocked after you’ve completed a few missions. I increased the difficulty by 1 level soon after it became available. Each mission also has an easy/medium/hard difficulty rating. As an experienced deckbuilder player, I found most missions to be nicely balanced, although hard missions on heroic difficulty can be tough, especially if a supervillian joins the fight.

Abbey

• Between missions you’ll spend time at the Abbey which is your Xcom style base of operations. There are lots of activities to perform here, and I think my game time was probably split almost equally between combat and the Abbey.
• Talk to other characters to advance the story. Many of your dialogue choices have light or dark morality points, which allows you to shape Hunter’s personality. Your choices can also affect your friendship level with each hero, and increasing this can unlock passive abilities and powerful legendary cards.
• Craft new cards and upgrade them to more powerful versions.
• Give heroes combat training to gain XP and get a passive bonus on the next mission.
• Send heroes on text only side quests to help other Marvel characters and gain special card rewards.
• Research new technology and improve facilities around the Abbey.
• Heal heroes who picked up injuries after being knocked out during a mission, to prevent wound cards being added to their deck.
• Customise character appearance with different outfits and colour schemes. This includes costumes worn in combat, and civilian clothes worn while relaxing at the Abbey.
• Explore Abbey grounds to find secrets relating to Hunter’s past.

Story

• Story is excellent and features lots of interesting characters. Dialogue is very well written, and there are many detailed sub plots which provides opportunity for every hero to feel like an important part of the team.
• Its fun to see these heroes interacting with each other while off duty, whether they’re arguing about the best way to handle an upcoming mission, or taking part in various social clubs.
• Voice acting is excellent. The cast includes lots of experienced video game actors, and Niko is voiced by the same actress who played the character in the Runaways TV show.
• Significantly better than anything Marvel have done in film or TV since Endgame.

Technical

• It took me 70 hours to complete the story, which also includes a lot of optional missions and secret hunting.
• The game is very unstable, but thankfully there’s an easy fix. I strongly recommend disabling the 2K launcher, and instructions to do this can be found on the forum. Before I did this I had 8 crashes in 8 hours, but since then I’ve only had 3 more crashes.
• I didn’t have any problems with framerate or stuttering.

Monetisation

• While most cosmetic items can be unlocked for free using in game resources, each hero has some premium outfits that can only be bought with real money microtransactions. Their inclusion in a full priced game which also has a season pass is just pure greed.

Recommendation

Midnight Suns is a fantastic game, which has enjoyable tactical combat, and an excellent story featuring many of my favourite Marvel characters. This is one of the best RPGs I’ve played, and is definitely a must play if you’re a fan of Marvel or turn based combat. However, I recommend buying on sale because of the crashes and excessive monetisation practices.