I was about to make a thread on Marvel's Midnight Suns but I found this one existed so I figured best to stick with it.
It's a very good game.
Yes, I was surprised, too. So first up, my impression was that it was a pretty simple and cash-in card style game, more flash than substance. That's straight up wrong - the strategic elements are pretty deep and whilst simple in set up, have a lot of complex interactions. There are no random elements to a fight barring the drawing of cards. If a card says you do X damage to an opponent, you do. So each battle is kind of like a hyper-complex game of Sudoku where you try to find a solution by working out sequences of card plays that will work out. And there's a LOT of interaction between different card effects. If you're one of those people who feels compelled to play every game on the hardest difficulty this game will work for you as each new difficulty level unlocks and and you're able to put it up. The randomization is done once and then set, so if you restart a battle you get the same card draws in the same sequence. I've had more than a few fights where I've played nine or ten times trying to ever refine my sequence until I have a solution. I put it onto Ultimate 3 difficulty first chance I got and the final battle I genuinely didn't think I would beat it and ended up with two sides of A4 notes until I finally figured out tactics that worked. Satisfaction with this game if you like a challenge is IMMENSE. Of course, you can just keep playing along on more standard difficulties.
There's tremendous variety in the gameplay. So essentially for every mission (almost) you pick three heroes from your roster. Each hero has cards specific to them and you can have eight of them in your deck at once (but as many as you like in total). Cards are Common, Rare, Epic or Legendary and you acquire them in various ways as the story goes on, though mostly through battle. If you get multiple cards of the same type you can combine them into an upgraded version. Sometimes that's just more damage but usually it's something more interesting like a Stun effect or a restoring Heroism (a points pool that you use to play heroic cards which goes up and down in a battle according to your choices) or whatever. On top of that, cards can be modified with bonus effects. That might be healing when you redraw them, expanded area of effect, curing status effects... There's like a hundred different ones. So you're always improving and refining your deck even when you've got Legendary cards and more or less settled on how you want a hero's deck.
Even right at the end I was discovering new tactics and tricks. For example, there are a couple of cards out there which temporarily take your character out of the game. I saw these only as a means to protect a vulnerable character from damage - an edge case. Only at the end did I notice that if an enemy is taunted and that character can't be targeted, then they don't act rather than choose someone else. Immediately I was able to then switch my deck around a little to get a card which taunts large numbers of enemies. Bingo - taunt multiple enemies, vanish for a turn, the other heroes can use it as an opportunity to get in some damage while the pressure is off.
Everyone is familiar with that point in tactical games where you've figured out the best plays and the rest of the game starts to become a bit of an exercise in repeating them until you beat the game. That never happened in this. Got close a little sometimes but the way the game keeps upping the challenge and swapping things around, you're forced to be adaptable right up until the end. As I mentioned, the final battle on hardest difficulty was a terrific fight. Lots of curveballs, good and bad, that you really have to be inventive to get past.
Okay - so I could write a huge amount about the tactical play in this game. Literally pages. It is very, very well thought out and balanced. And WAY more interesting than I thought it would be from the trailer or initial learning fights.
But the story side of the game is actually huge. Running around the Abbey and its grounds which is where the non-mission side of things is set, feels a lot like Dragon Age: Origins. Lots of caves, secret locations, collectables, herbs to gather for making items you can take into battle. There is an INSANE amount of dialogue with the other Marvel characters. Yes, there's a little of the standard repeated phrases you get in all RPGs. But less so. And as you improve friendships with the Avengers and the Midnight Suns, more and more conversation is revealed. (Levelling up your friendships is a big part of the game). And it's usually pretty entertaining. Lot of actual, genuine laugh-out-loud moments. It adapts as well. If you take your character down a darker magical path you get comments that reflect that. Particularly from Dr. Strange. Uncommonly for an RPG, when your character makes a joke, it's usually funny. Except for Captain America's cheesy one-liners but I think that's deliberate. He has a very "grandpa" sense of humour. In fact, all of the characters are very distinguishable. That's a trap that bad comics writers fall into in making everyone sound the same. But I would say for about 90% of the dialogue if you blanked the names out and just gave me the pure text, I could probably tell you who was saying it. That's a sign of good writing.
In terms of the characters, there's obviously some MCU mixed in there - mainly in terms of accents and vocal style. E.g. Tony Stark sounds very much like Robert Downey Jr. But for the writing, they lean more towards their comicbook versions. For some, like Tony Stark, that's not as obvious because the MCU and comic version have many of the same story beats and characteristics. But for Wolverine or Wanda it's more noticeable. Anyway, if you are even a modest Marvel comics fan, I think this might be the best Marvel game ever. It has an amount of dialogue and character interactions which is staggering. Even after I've beaten it (you can play on) there are still bits of interaction with the heroes that I haven't reached.
One thing that caught me off-guard is that all of the heroes are integrated into the story. For example, I find the character of Nico annoying both as a person (super-perky goth girl but very believable) and I didn't like her powerful-but-random play style. So I pretty much neglected her until I suddenly found I needed her to complete a mission and ended up with a real challenge on my hands. After that, I made sure to keep all my heroes levelled up and with a decent deck at the ready. Ghost Rider is another one that I initially found had a difficult play style so neglected. It wasn't until near the final battle that it really clicked how to get the most out of him. Now I actually really enjoy using him though he remains something of a glass canon. His Penance Stare (a legendary ability) is devastating and he also has a card that increases in damage every time he takes damage himself.
And it has no cap! So IF you can keep walking the tightrope of taking damage and healing up, he eventually ends up with enough damage on it that he can take down even super-tough opponents in a one-shot. Easier said than done, though.
Oh, the whole debate in this thread about Robbie Reyes. Well, Blaze is also in this game, just fwiw. And spoiler / not really spoiler - he's an ass.
All of the heroes play in meaningfully distinct ways. There's some overlap. For example, both Blade and Wolverine are good at taking down high volume, low-quality opposition. If I'm going into a battle where I expect to face a lot of mooks, they're both go-to picks for me. But Wolverine has several abilities that let him get back up and heal up when damaged. Whilst Blade's secondary line up is more of a second tier of damage dealing. When I put Blade in a team paired with some good defensive characters like Captain America they play well off each other. But in the final battle (for reasons) I couldn't pair him with his traditional partners and keeping him alive was a nightmare. Wolverine in contrast, I could keep in the fight.
So this has turned into a very long post. As you can tell, I am deeply impressed with this game in so many ways. Partly as a little bit of a Marvel comics fan but also as someone who loves puzzles and strategy. I haven't even touched on the story, really. You have an original character created for the game, the resurrected child of Lillith. Voice, face, sex all customizable. In terms of playstyle you can opt for a balance of Light and Dark abilities or focus on one or the other. In general Light abilities tend to be more about team play and endurance. Dark tend to be more damage focused / individual. Having been "dead" for around 300 years, you have some catching up to do and your levelling up is a reflection of your health and powers coming back to you after your resurrection. I like some of the humour that stems naturally from your backstory. For example, you being puzzled why everyone is always so nervous around Dr. Banner.
Anyway,
strong recommendation from me. Especially if like me you up the difficulty each chance you get. Vastly better than it looks. There is DLC and the DLC is pretty good. But it is a very complete game without that. A whole tonne of love went into this by people who genuinely cared about what they were making.
