Marvel's Midnight Suns is Marvel's new foray into the tactical RPG genre with a deck-building, turn-based twist that will have players going through an adventure with some old favorites and new faces of the Marvel Comics universe. Developed by Firaxis Games in collaboration with Marvel, this game combines high-flying punching, kicking, and superpowers with the later mechanics found in the most recent X-COM games. Players will follow characters from the Avengers, X-Men, Runaways, and Midnight Sons.
In Midnight Suns, players must stop the evil Lilith and her demonic entourage from enacting her evil plan to fulfill an old and deadly prophecy. As befitting of the strategy genre, there are many stats and abilities which players must balance in order to optimize their team and take down their enemies with deadly swiftness. But sometimes, marveling can cause missteps and mishaps if the player does not play their cards right.
7 Ignoring the Abbey
The abbey in Midnight Suns acts as the player's home away from home, and is crammed full of stuff to do. Ignoring the grounds can both do a major disservice to engaging with the full content of the game, and may leave the character roster criminally unexplored.
The abbey has a multitude of optional objectives that the player can complete. It is rife with secrets, hidden areas, and discoverable objectives from chests to lore. It also provides sparring activities between heroes, as well as a sort of friendship simulator that helps unlock further power ups. To top it all off, there are animals to pet: Charlie, the dog, who can guide people to collectibles around the abbey map; and Ebony, the cat, who can provide level ups when they feel like it — classic cat-titude.
6 Requirements Unmet
Once players find themselves with a bit of free time outside the campaign missions, jumping into the next battle would be a misstep. There are many resources to uncover and steps players can take, preemptively, to make future battles easier to handle.
One such step is the forge, run by the genius playboy philanthropist Tony Stark, and his equally mystical and self-confident colleague, Stephen Strange. The forge is a great place for players to level up and unlock upgrades for their heroes. However, this can become a grind unless players look at upgrade requirements. Requirements are objectives a player has to meet in order to unlock a certain upgrade, such as playing four missions with Spider-Man and using his web-slinging antics to take down goons.
5 Friends Without Benefits
Talking is a major staple of the Midnight Suns game. Heavy interaction is encouraged between the player protagonist, Hunter, and the rest of the Marvel menagerie that they come into contact with.
The friendship level is a stat that players will not want to miss as they are tied to the procurement of costumes and the associated, powerful abilities that they come with. Players may fail to raise their friendship level high enough by inviting heroes to inappropriate havens (conversation locations), providing them with unwanted gifts (magic for the science users, and vice-versa) or even answering their questions incorrectly. If they build friendships inadequately, this can lead to a character's stunted growth.
4 A Coin Of Two Sides
On the notion of answering character questions, many of them come in the form of light and dark. This system plays similarly to Dungeons & Dragons's alignments or other games karma systems. Midnight Suns uses the classic Dark and Light, rather than Chaotic, Neutral, and Lawful. However, it primarily works in the same way. Hunter, the protagonist, can flit between either side of the spectrum. But, the superheroes they interact with may find it more comfortable if the player answers according to their own alignment. For example, Spider-Man is on the side of light, whereas Nico Minoru weapons, like her Staff Of One, have darker tendencies.
Answering questions incorrectly may be detrimental to the hero's friendship levels. This makes it harder to complete their individual plot lines and accessing the stronger arsenal locked behind their friendship status with Hunter.
When answering dark and light question, there is also a neutral alignment option. When in doubt, players should be like Switzerland and try to play middle field.
3 Accidents At Work
As it is synonymous with their stature, superheroes are super by name and by nature. Yet, treating them like they are impervious to all incoming damage could backfire on the player. When characters sustain enough damage, negative status effects can apply, forcing them to be benched when needed most. These negative debuffs or injuries, as they are called, can severely effect the usefulness of characters.
For example, Captain Marvel's photon beam fires in a straight line, capitalizing on her movement on the battlefield. The potency of her moves are about taking advantage of grouping. As such, an injury could reduce her movement, so an injured Captain Marvel lacks the punch she usually packs.
If players ignore the wellbeing of their roster, it could come back to bite them in missions, and could potentially stop the unlocking of upgrades in the forge. Eventually, players may be able to unlock some options in the abbey to heal the heroes of their afflictions. However, it's best to take preventative measures in most cases.
2 Spending Keys Recklessly
Around the grounds of the abbey, players will often find chests and keys to said chests. Keys can be spent on any chest; however, being blasé with them is counterproductive even though it may be intuitive. Keys are a scared resource and spending them on common chests can be a waste. The rewards earned from these may not be worth what it took to get in the first place.
Plus, later in the game, players will finally have access to some helpful abilities that can open the more common chests more easily. Players may find that they wish by the end of the game to have saved their keys for the far rarer, and far more rewarding, arcane chests.
1 Hover To Help
In combat, the gung ho guns blazing approach will not do a player no good. First and foremost, Midnight Suns is a strategy game, and there are a lot of moving parts to combat. However, they are easy to acclimatize to if a person takes their time. For example, each hero has a role as per classic RPG tropes: there is the tank, the healer, the DPS, and supporters, among many more.
Each one is impactful in their own way if used properly, and may be susceptible to damage too. This is where hovering is important, as players should take time before making decisions. When a player hovers over an enemy, they can see details on that enemy's features. For example, they'll know if melee attacks inflict electrical damage to the close quarters attacker; or if not all three cards are played in a round, then it can trigger a frenzy mode and put the healer in harm's way.
Hovering also allows the player to detect who that enemy is targeting and plays can be made accordingly to deal with the enemy or avoid the attacks altogether. You know what they say: knowledge is power, and super strength doesn't hurt either!
Marvel Midnight Suns is out now on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X and PC.