Card-Based Marvel's Midnight Suns - Marvel universe card-based tactical RPG from Firaxis

[Galdred]

This game is kinda stillborn isn't it?
It got huge PR campaign before release but now noone is talking about it and it peaked at only 15.500,00 players.

The funny thing is all the people saying Firaxis had to do it/was smart to do it because it's the big bucks, meanwhile it sold WAY less than XCOM 2 in the same timeframe. Just another timely reminder that suits and their "fan" bootlickers know nothing.

It sold way less, and they need to give a high percentage of it to Disney.

 

[lycanwarrior]

This game is kinda stillborn isn't it?
It got huge PR campaign before release but now noone is talking about it and it peaked at only 15.500,00 players.

I dunno, the marketing seemed rather subdued IMO. Similar to EA's Need for Speed Unbound.

Both titles also suffered from fans having low/skeptical expectations for them.

 

[Hobknobling]

This game is kinda stillborn isn't it?
It got huge PR campaign before release but now noone is talking about it and it peaked at only 15.500,00 players.

I dunno, the marketing seemed rather subdued IMO. Similar to EA's Need for Speed Unbound.

Both titles also suffered from fans having low/skeptical expectations for them.

The overlap for modern Marvel fans and strategy game enjoyers must be quite small. I have no idea what they were thinking.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

As we don't know what kind of deal they had, there's no way to judge whether this was a financial flop for firaxis. If Disney was paying them to make it rather than licensing the IP — something not uncommon for companies as big as Disney — this might have been quite profitable for firaxis, and Disney is stuck with the turd.

 

[Galdred]

This game is kinda stillborn isn't it?
It got huge PR campaign before release but now noone is talking about it and it peaked at only 15.500,00 players.

I dunno, the marketing seemed rather subdued IMO. Similar to EA's Need for Speed Unbound.

Both titles also suffered from fans having low/skeptical expectations for them.

The overlap for modern Marvel fans and strategy game enjoyers must be quite small. I have no idea what they were thinking.

it is possible that they count more on console, where Marvel games seem to thrive better (after all, ultimate alliance 3 was a Switch exclusive iirc).

As we don't know what kind of deal they had, there's no way to judge whether this was a financial flop for firaxis. If Disney was paying them to make it rather than licensing the IP — something not uncommon for companies as big as Disney — this might have been quite profitable for firaxis, and Disney is stuck with the turd.

Good point. They could have a deal similar to a publisher/developer one.

 

[J1M]

I'm actually playing it (I love comics, they are huge part of my childhood) and combat is good, fluid and become fun after you get new characters and abilities for them. Battles are the best part of the game imo and it's a shame they got burried under this games needless system bloat. Game really captures comic book feel right and it shows that in combat even more. Spideys taunts, Blades edginess, Stranges both magical and surgical stuff kind of things done well. Getting a comic book cover with your team after every combat is cherry on top. But some covers are borderline in uncanny valley.

Dunno why they used card system at all, cards are just some basic ability pool to choose from. They probably wanted to eliminate "to hit" RNG altogether but I'm not conviced this was the way.

Game got a huge hub for between battle stuff, researching, base building, bonding with heroes and such. It got nice secrets for exploring but also got braindead grinding stuff like petting the dog, bantering with other heroes in most cringe ways. This part becomes friendship sim really fast with pointless talking and gifting and hanging out with heroes. Who doesn't want to go to picnic with Blade! (he doesn't...) Needless timesink.
Most cutscenes are just boring at best and there are a lot of them. Kojima will be jealous.
There is a light side, dark side dialogue choosing stuff, resulting in different skills and gears for Hunter (MC) but still not an RPG.
Upgrading cards is kinda nice, every hero got their own gimmick about cards and that adds a nice replayability, since party size only limited to 3 (BOOOOOOOOOOOOO)

Technically this is one of the worst games I played. Looks like an PS3 era game and plays like it. Graphics style is beyond bad. I played better looking, much older Eurojank games. There are stutters and bugs everywhere. Combats look and sounds good with every hero being unique. As I said they captured the comic book feel right and that shows most in combat. Captain Marvels and Ironmans screen clearing stuff are powerful and you feel them while Dr.Strange is mostly support with card upgrades and heroic points. Our MC, Hunter, can go any way you want, tank, support or damage. Light is better for support Dark is better for damage, wow big suprise there!

Basically Troubleshooter and Knights Tale are better games, just play them instead of this one if you are not into comic book stuff.

Some have reported that the 2K launcher in the background is the source of many performance problems.

 

[Abu Antar]

^Not only for this game. Their launcher tanks performance for more of their games.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Some have reported that the 2K launcher in the background is the source of many performance problems.

Yeah, disabling it was the first thing I did. Made the start up faster but game has still serious technical problems and bugs.

 

[GhostCow]

I'm extremely tempted to buy this to tide me over until Fire Emblem Engage comes out on Friday. It's on sale right now for $40 and the version with the season pass is on sale for $66 (normally $99). Is either version worth it at that price? I'm a pretty big fan of Magik and that's one of the things that makes me want to play. She doesn't get to be in many games. Also how woke is this game?

 

[Cyberarmy]

Also how woke is this game?

Woke is there even if its a little bit but not in your face like todays standarts. Also got some nice bro moments in techo man cave with nerds of the team while Blade/Wolverine ups the testosterone levels to space.

Magik is really cool both ability and dialogue wise. Her portals are amazing and she's the edgelord she supposed to be.

Not worth the full price imho and not sold about season pass/DLCs. They've got pretty predatory monitezation in game (selling skins for money...) and I think DLC will add even more out of combat stuff that already game got loads of.

 

[Zeriel]

Firaxis DLC have always been lightweight. I think the only one that was worth the price for XCOM was the full expansion in XCOM 1. Other than that... sure it's fine if the games are really good and you like them to overspend, but I absolutely would not be one to do it blind for a game like this. But hey, maybe you really love it.

 

[GhostCow]

I had a feeling the season pass probably wouldn't be worth it. That's really been my experience with every game I can think of. You end up paying what an expansion would have cost back in the day for not even a quarter of the content of an expansion. Sounds like the base game might be worth getting while it's on sale though. There are already mods for the game so I really don't give a shit about skins. I'll download my own.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I don't really want to praise this game much but I'm having fun and game suprised me a bit.
Story is typical "evil demoness trying to end the world" but it is done well and got nice twists in it. They are comic book twists but still better than most nowadays plots. Hunters personality and time skip handled well enough.
Enemy variety is kinda lacking but there is always something new about the map, obejctives, villains and powers so things don't go boring fast (I'm looking at you Daemonhunters...) Also missions being really short helps a lot. Game has a nice amount of hero roster and all of them is useful. It is mostly down to your tastes when picking your team for the mission. There are lots of abilities and you can upgrade and mod them to greater effect.
My main party is mostly Hunter, Magik and Blade. Hunter for support, tanking and placing explosive, Magik for relocating enemies and gather them near explosives and Blade is there for mostly single target damage. Dr.Strange, Ironman and Spiderman is also a really fun trio.
Don't really like the amount of time I spend talking on the main hub but I like exploring the place. They did the ye'olde Salem mood good.

 

[Geisler]

The combat in this game is good, and it only gets better as the game goes on as more cards and other mechanics get introduced. I put 50+ hours into it for this reason.

The huge letdown is the fucking weaboo-JRPG trash-tier social "roleplaying" aspect after each mission, and the complete lack of a meaningful strategic layer akin to the XCOM games.

My PC is too performant to complain about any of the performance issues, but i have seen some shader compilation stutter in the beginning when eg. the heroes used a new spell.

I think a lot of Codex fags might like it for the combat alone, but not at this price.

 

[GhostCow]

I picked up the base version for $35 on green man gaming. No regrets. I'm not very far into the game yet, but at the price I paid it will be hard to disappoint me. It's been fun so far.

 

[GhostCow]

I'm about 30 hours in now. This game is definitely a lot of fun. My only real complaint so far is that I absolutely despise Captain Marvel. I now understand why her comics have never been popular. They basically wrote a smug shit talking man like Iron Man with no feminine traits at all and put a female skin with an ugly butch dyke haircut over it. I don't think anyone likes characters like this. Magik is definitely best girl by far. Nico is ok too though.

 

[J1M]

I'm extremely tempted to buy this to tide me over until Fire Emblem Engage comes out on Friday. It's on sale right now for $40 and the version with the season pass is on sale for $66 (normally $99). Is either version worth it at that price? I'm a pretty big fan of Magik and that's one of the things that makes me want to play. She doesn't get to be in many games. Also how woke is this game?

Probably worth doing. I like the Abbey exploring parts and combat more than the team interactions.

Magik has a defined combat niche related to her portals moving enemies.

 

[deuxhero]

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023...ns-fails-to-make-sales-impact-in-first-month/

1: Make game nobody asked for
2: Include extremely lackluster character creation that doesn't even let you play as a girl to avoid insulting a crazy super minority
3: ???
4: Profit.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Everybodies friendly merc Deadpool is arriving soon. While having new enemy types is good I don't really like Deadpool that much and I don't think he is a good addition to the game. There are many other mystical characters in Midnight Sons rooster, dunno why they included "LoL So Random" guy. And the next DLC is Venom?!? FFS...

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

In the end I bought the game as soon as it got its 30% discount and gave it a chance. Here's a lazy copy-paste of a comment I wrote elsewhere:
_____________________________________

I finally got to the final mission, which marks the end of my first playthrough.

I can more or less confirm all the partial impressions so far, but to summarize:

- Combat is great. Fun, simple but with decent depth, visually pleasing.
- Heroes offer a massive variety in playstyle, to a degree not even XCOM classes could approach.

BUT

- maps/missions are too few in variety and the same goes for the enemy types, which lead to a strong sense of repetition fairly quickly, even by XCOM standards. War of the Chosen was far more diversified.
- The Abbey exploration is mildly enjoyable
- "Social liking" with heroes is a fucking chore and dialogues are seldom interesting or amusing to witness.
- writing is bland as hell and occasionally even a bit cringey. In all fairness the same was true for the XCOM franchise, but at least everything related to narrative there had the courtesy to sideline itself most of the time, while here it pretends to take front and center.
- as already pointed, the resources system had the bad aftertaste of something aimed to the mobile/free to play market and not organic to the game.
- the level up/progression system feels almost completely vestigial. Everyone keeps bumping up their stats bit by bit and so do enemies, which in the end it makes it stat bloat for the sake of it that doesn't really add much to the game. This and the "gatcha"-inspired system to open containers to unlock new cards leave the bad impression to be a Skinner's box for the sake of it.
- I'm still not convinced making it a card game rather than a cooldown based system like its [pseudo]predecessors was so fundamental to its core mechanics nor crucial to avoid having "RNG elements in combat" , but... Oh well, you don't even pay any attention to it after a while.

Some parts of the game feel like a jewel, but at time they also feel like the proverbial diamond in the rough as they are drowned in unnecessary subsystems and pacing issues.


Is it fun? Abso-fucking-lutely. Well, most of the times, especially in combat.
Is it an improvement over the studio's previous output? No, it definitely isn't.

The action adventure/dating sim angle is not as lean and enjoyable as the base building/management in War of the Chosen and what's worse, I can see becoming even more grating on repetition after a first playthrough.

That said, it DOES have part of its design that feel like they would add a lot to their future titles. The knockback system is a blast to play around with, for instance, and IF XCOM 3 is something that exist and Firaxis is actively developing at the moment, I hope it will find its way in it.
Same goes for the occasional chance to make use of environmental props to attack the enemy.

______________

For the record I don't think a bunch of minor "hero DLC" are going to address the problems with variety/repetition.
The game is in dire need of a "big expansion" in pure Firaxis style to have any life expectancy that will go past the first playthrough. And given the abysmal sales, I doubt it will ever get one.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Offensively shit-tier production values is par for the course with nufiraxis. It's amazing how much you can get away with while demanding AAA+ price at the same time when you are one of the media darlings.

Which makes quite telling that in terms of 4X and turn-based tactical games they are pretty much at the peak of the production value in the industry, I guess?

 

[ADL]

Game's already on sale for $25 on Gamebillet. At this rate I'll pick up the definitive edition for $15-$20 in a couple months assuming it doesn't show up in a Humble Choice before.

 

[J1M]

Offensively shit-tier production values is par for the course with nufiraxis. It's amazing how much you can get away with while demanding AAA+ price at the same time when you are one of the media darlings.

Which makes quite telling that in terms of 4X and turn-based tactical games they are pretty much at the peak of the production value in the industry, I guess?

They put all of the money into 10,000 character customization options, each of which look worse than the default outfits.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Offensively shit-tier production values is par for the course with nufiraxis. It's amazing how much you can get away with while demanding AAA+ price at the same time when you are one of the media darlings.

Which makes quite telling that in terms of 4X and turn-based tactical games they are pretty much at the peak of the production value in the industry, I guess?

What does it tell you, exactly? Modern 4x and tactical games either run on shoestring budget or are tripping over themselves to look exactly like nu-civ/nu-xcom, because that is literally all that people know. Often both. Whenever a game tries to do its own thing and some actual talent gets involved, it blows this crap out of the water. Most art, music, faction intros, overall ambience and style from something like ES2 makes nuciv look like a joke.

 

[lycanwarrior]

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023...ns-fails-to-make-sales-impact-in-first-month/

1: Make game nobody asked for
2: Include extremely lackluster character creation that doesn't even let you play as a girl to avoid insulting a crazy super minority
3: ???
4: Profit.

I don't have an issue with them trying something a bit risky. Especially these days where every AAA game is either an "action RPG", remake, etc.