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

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Strange is OVERWHELMINGLY considered sitting comfortably in the top three of the strongest characters in the roster and easily the best "buffer"/support in the game.

 

[Lemming42]

Breezed through the game with Hunter and Captain Marvel as the main team, with either Blade or Storm in the third slot. That was enough to let me play a load of the generic missions without having to play as characters I didn't want, sometimes picking Captain America missions if nothing else was available. Dunno if that team is considered S-tier but the game was pretty straightforward with them, with Blade being probably the weakest link. Didn't really have any trouble on the main quest missions that force you to use certain characters, though I sort of sucked as Spider-Man at first.

I really want to replay it to play with the other characters but christ the friendship sim stuff sucks. There's a mod on Nexus to mulitply your XP gains so you can just sweep straight through all the non-combat stuff, might be worth a look.

 

[Grunker]

better designed/more fun/etc.

We were discussing character power, not quality of design.

Blade being probably the weakest link.

Blade is a weaker Morpheus unfortunately, but he can still do bleed nukes. I killed the final Dracula fight on Ultimate with him which is easily the hardest fight in the game. I think Blade is the best evidence of how few characters are actually weak enough that it matters: yeah, he's not top 3, but you can still beat the game with him no problem.

 

[Herumor]

I ended up getting this as a gift from a friend during the latest Steam sale since he saw in my library the old Marvel Ultimate Alliance games and thought I would like this too.

I have to say, I didn't expect to like the card-based, turn-based gameplay at all with this sort of thing. It's got a nice flow to it, but I still think it's odd to have the very hard hitters of the Marvel comics join up in this team up and then fight various lower level mooks and not just wipe the board with them. I get why obviously, it just feels odd.

The story is servicable, nothing special, but holy fuck going about he Abbey is killing me. At first I thought there'd more to exploration, but nope, and the fact that you do it so mundanely, on foot, just feels at odds with the way of the place. Again, I understand why - otherwise people would be skipping content left and right and then complaining that they missed it, but I still would have liked to have the option to move in different ways. Which sort of leads into my complaint for the main character: I really dislike the set of abilities that the Hunter can get. I dislike being strictly relegated to magic melee attacks, I really want more freedom in that regard, let us spec our player character the way we want it.

Shame about Firaxis just abandoning the game, it needs tuning up for some performance issues and definitely needs more content outside of the vampire DLCs and general missions.

 

[Galdred]

I ended up getting this as a gift from a friend during the latest Steam sale since he saw in my library the old Marvel Ultimate Alliance games and thought I would like this too.

I have to say, I didn't expect to like the card-based, turn-based gameplay at all with this sort of thing. It's got a nice flow to it, but I still think it's odd to have the very hard hitters of the Marvel comics join up in this team up and then fight various lower level mooks and not just wipe the board with them. I get why obviously, it just feels odd.

The story is servicable, nothing special, but holy fuck going about he Abbey is killing me. At first I thought there'd more to exploration, but nope, and the fact that you do it so mundanely, on foot, just feels at odds with the way of the place. Again, I understand why - otherwise people would be skipping content left and right and then complaining that they missed it, but I still would have liked to have the option to move in different ways. Which sort of leads into my complaint for the main character: I really dislike the set of abilities that the Hunter can get. I dislike being strictly relegated to magic melee attacks, I really want more freedom in that regard, let us spec our player character the way we want it.

Shame about Firaxis just abandoning the game, it needs tuning up for some performance issues and definitely needs more content outside of the vampire DLCs and general missions.

Now that you mention it, I remember that battling rank and file mooks 95% of the time was a thematic issue in the game. They do make your heroes feel weaker than in the comics indeed. Maybe if the game had more vilains to battle, and they didn't require you to 3v1 them, the feel would be closer from the comics. In a way, it reminds me of Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters, which is also great mechanically, but in which your Grey Knights can suffer greatly against a moderate amount of Nurgle cultists. But at least, in Chaos Gate, it is in line with the tabletop miniature game!

 

[abija]

Shame about Firaxis just abandoning the game, it needs tuning up for some performance issues and definitely needs more content outside of the vampire DLCs and general missions.

Could have at least upped the level cap on Transia missions.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Shame about Firaxis just abandoning the game, it needs tuning up for some performance issues and definitely needs more content outside of the vampire DLCs and general missions.

Could have at least upped the level cap on Transia missions.

Not that it would change much?
The leveling system feels almost completely redundant. It's literally just number inflation for the sake of it.
You level up and gain some stats and HP, the enemy ALSO levels up and gain some stats and HP and everything stays pretty much the same.

You could remove the entire subsystem from the game, have everyone at level 1 (or more specifically without a level to begin with) and literally nothing would change in the way it plays.

 

[J1M]

better designed/more fun/etc.

We were discussing character power, not quality of design.

Blade being probably the weakest link.

Blade is a weaker Morpheus unfortunately, but he can still do bleed nukes. I killed the final Dracula fight on Ultimate with him which is easily the hardest fight in the game. I think Blade is the best evidence of how few characters are actually weak enough that it matters: yeah, he's not top 3, but you can still beat the game with him no problem.

My point is that if I make a difficulty where all enemies have 1000x more HP, suddenly the best characters are those that can knock enemies out of the arena and doing double damage compared to another character means nothing.

If the hardest difficulty is where heroes die in one hit, the strongest cards are those that give additional actions, or stealth, etc.

 

[Grunker]

My point is that if I make a difficulty where all enemies have 1000x more HP, suddenly the best characters are those that can knock enemies out of the arena double damage compared to another character means nothing.

Man you really have no idea how this game works. GL managing Ultimate by “knocking enemies out of the arena” and killing Dracula, brutes or bosses without strong damage modifiers. Yes, Strange certainly bangs like a motherfucker in those instances, but even if you run him (I didn’t), I suggest you find a way to do a lot of damage. You also can’t use him during the game’s hardest fight. Since I shyed away from Strange altogether as I didn’t find Vapors fun, that’s exactly the strategy I used - bleed nukes, buffed Wild Strikes, or Big Venom Turns. Or I just used Magik, since she deals enormous amounts of damage straight out of the box. I avoided Storm booms since they seemed too busted, but she’s the perfect example of how dealing more damage is EXACTLY the way you become a stronger character on Ultimate. Those 1000x more HP aren’t that impressive when Storm one-shots your ass.

You could easily use other strong strategies though, such as Captain tanking with Best Defense and Dig In or just general purpose tactics like big Ghost Rider ults.

One strategy I’d definitely NOT recommend on Ultimate is relying on knocking on enemies out of the arena. You need ways to do Big Numbers - so “double damage compared to another character” means a lot on Ultimate. It’s why those damage coefficients I talked about earlier get important on Ultimate, and why Wild Strike is so good. People claiming Ultimate has HP bloat simply don’t know how to scale damage.

Regardless, your point doesn’t apply to this game - the strongest characters such as strange, Storm and Morbius are the strongest across all difficulties. You just get pressured into figuring it out more on Ultimate since that’s where their relative strengths actually matter.

 

[abija]

Not that it would change much?

Well you keep leveling so at least it would keep it interesting...

 

[J1M]

My point is that if I make a difficulty where all enemies have 1000x more HP, suddenly the best characters are those that can knock enemies out of the arena double damage compared to another character means nothing.

Man you really have no idea how this game works. GL managing Ultimate by “knocking enemies out of the arena” and killing Dracula, brutes or bosses without strong damage modifiers. Yes, Strange certainly bangs like a motherfucker in those instances, but even if you run him (I didn’t), I suggest you find a way to do a lot of damage. You also can’t use him during the game’s hardest fight. Since I shyed away from Strange altogether as I didn’t find Vapors fun, that’s exactly the strategy I used - bleed nukes, buffed Wild Strikes, or Big Venom Turns. Or I just used Magik, since she deals enormous amounts of damage straight out of the box. I avoided Storm booms since they seemed too busted, but she’s the perfect example of how dealing more damage is EXACTLY the way you become a stronger character on Ultimate. Those 1000x more HP aren’t that impressive when Storm one-shots your ass.

You could easily use other strong strategies though, such as Captain tanking with Best Defense and Dig In or just general purpose tactics like big Ghost Rider ults.

One strategy I’d definitely NOT recommend on Ultimate is relying on knocking on enemies out of the arena. You need ways to do Big Numbers - so “double damage compared to another character” means a lot on Ultimate. It’s why those damage coefficients I talked about earlier get important on Ultimate, and why Wild Strike is so good. People claiming Ultimate has HP bloat simply don’t know how to scale damage.

Regardless, your point doesn’t apply to this game - the strongest characters such as strange, Storm and Morbius are the strongest across all difficulties. You just get pressured into figuring it out more on Ultimate since that’s where their relative strengths actually matter.

You sound confused. As if you aren't capable of discussing hypotheticals. Or think I am another poster.

I played this game before the DLC was released and I never advocated for Dr. Strange because I didn't use him much.

I found it more enjoyable to use environmental attacks and cards that interacted with the action economy.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I played this game at release and loved it. Haven't played the DLC except for all or part of Deadpool. Kind of curious about seeing the DLC or doing another spin, but the thought of dealing with those Marvel chatbots again makes me want to cut my wrists.

 

[Galdred]

I played this game at release and loved it. Haven't played the DLC except for all or part of Deadpool. Kind of curious about seeing the DLC or doing another spin, but the thought of dealing with those Marvel chatbots again makes me want to cut my wrists.

There were quite a few mods that cut the downtime activity when I played it(including increasing friendship gains a lot, and removing the abbey plant collecting part), last spring, so there should be some making that manageable, even though you'd still have to skip through the character dialogues.

 

[jackofshadows]

You hopeless fucks sound as this game is actually worth getting into aren't you? Despite all the potential cringecarnival.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

You hopeless fucks sound as this game is actually worth getting into aren't you? Despite all the potential cringecarnival.

It's a game with some genuinely good parts... And some puzzlingly bad ones, too.

 

[Lacrymas]

You hopeless fucks sound as this game is actually worth getting into aren't you?

It's because it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You can always skip dialogues if you find them unbearably cringe. What the game actually suffers from is trying to be three things at once. There is this internal tension created by someone who knew what they were doing and knew what they wanted to do in the first place vs someone who wanted it to have microtransactions up the butt and designing the other part of the game with that in mind. The collect-a-thon and friendship simulator are fundamentally disconnected from the combat in a very strange way. To the point that I don't know what they were going for even if I look at it in the most cynical way possible.

 

[Grunker]

You hopeless fucks sound as this game is actually worth getting into aren't you

probably the most interesting turn-based combat the last couple of years

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

As a clarification I should probably add that the last pages make it sound like the only bad things about the game are extra- combat and so easily ignorable, but to be honest the game has another CRIPPLING issue even when it comes to its best part (and I already pointed it pages ago):
it lacks in enemy and map variety. No matter how good the core systems used in the combat can be, there's only so many times you can go through the same handful of enemies before growing fucking tired with it and feeling the urge to wrap it up.
And this for me was an issue that I was perceiving even more strongly when I made an attempt to playing the game again recently. "I can't do it, it feels too much like the same thing I already did over and over".

 

[Grunker]

As a clarification I should probably add that the last pages make it sound like the only bad things about the game are extra- combat and so easily ignorable, but to be honest the game has another CRIPPLING issue even when it comes to its best part (and I already pointed it pages ago):
it lacks in enemy and map variety. No matter how good the core systems used in the combat can be, there's only so many times you can go through the same handful of enemies before growing fucking tired with it and feeling the urge to wrap it up.
And this for me was an issue that I was perceiving even more strongly when I made an attempt to playing the game again recently. "I can't do it, it feels too much like the same thing I already did over and over".

I don't agree. I mean, I agree with the overall sentiment, but I don't agree that it's *CRIPPLING*, since that would mean it ruined the combat. The mission variety is as big as most new nuXCOM's and a bit more varied than the original nuXCOM, and while that's not exactly impressive, I think it's enough that's it nowhere near crippling. More like it's the biggest problem with the otherwise great core gameplay, I'd say.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I don't agree. I mean, I agree with the overall sentiment, but I don't agree that it's *CRIPPLING*, since that would mean it ruined the combat.

I mean, it DID for me, in the sense that it vastly diminished the amount of time I wanted to spend engaging with the combat.

the mission variety is as big as most new nuXCOM's and a bit more varied than the original nuXCOM,

I absolutely disagree.
XCOM 2 with the War of the Chosen expansion included, in particular, runs circles around this game in terms of variety offered.

 

[Herumor]

Anyway, I just finished the game and the whole post-credits teaser of Doom stepping in to take up the Darkhold is just... underwhelming? Why not move from that shit? Also, Doom as a threat, after dealing Chthon bullshit the entire game, would be laughable. Chthon was a reality warping, universe destroying threat and Doom can't measure up to that shit. Sure, we didn't fight Chthon head on - you can't do that and win - we fought his proxies, but all the same I think it might have been a mistake to use Chthon for the first game and then tease players with a glimpse of Doom. But it's not like there's gonna be a second Midnight Suns game so I'm just worrying silly about potential disappointment for a game that will never be.

Also, the last suit, Super? It's hideous.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Anyway, I just finished the game and the whole post-credits teaser of Doom stepping in to take up the Darkhold is just... underwhelming? Why not move from that shit? Also, Doom as a threat, after dealing Chthon bullshit the entire game, would be laughable. Chthon was a reality warping, universe destroying threat and Doom can't measure up to that shit. Sure, we didn't fight Chthon head on - you can't do that and win - we fought his proxies, but all the same I think it might have been a mistake to use Chthon for the first game and then tease players with a glimpse of Doom. But it's not like there's gonna be a second Midnight Suns game so I'm just worrying silly about potential disappointment for a game that will never be.

Also, the last suit, Super? It's hideous.

Doom is, canonically, one of the biggest threats in all of Marvel and has single-handedly defeated god-like cosmic powers multiple times. You can think that's stupid or whatever, but that's the lore they're working with.

 

[Herumor]

Anyway, I just finished the game and the whole post-credits teaser of Doom stepping in to take up the Darkhold is just... underwhelming? Why not move from that shit? Also, Doom as a threat, after dealing Chthon bullshit the entire game, would be laughable. Chthon was a reality warping, universe destroying threat and Doom can't measure up to that shit. Sure, we didn't fight Chthon head on - you can't do that and win - we fought his proxies, but all the same I think it might have been a mistake to use Chthon for the first game and then tease players with a glimpse of Doom. But it's not like there's gonna be a second Midnight Suns game so I'm just worrying silly about potential disappointment for a game that will never be.

Also, the last suit, Super? It's hideous.

Doom is, canonically, one of the biggest threats in all of Marvel and has single-handedly defeated god-like cosmic powers multiple times. You can think that's stupid or whatever, but that's the lore they're working with.

I have literally just read a comic about Eddie Brock whooping his ass.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Anyway, I just finished the game and the whole post-credits teaser of Doom stepping in to take up the Darkhold is just... underwhelming? Why not move from that shit? Also, Doom as a threat, after dealing Chthon bullshit the entire game, would be laughable. Chthon was a reality warping, universe destroying threat and Doom can't measure up to that shit. Sure, we didn't fight Chthon head on - you can't do that and win - we fought his proxies, but all the same I think it might have been a mistake to use Chthon for the first game and then tease players with a glimpse of Doom. But it's not like there's gonna be a second Midnight Suns game so I'm just worrying silly about potential disappointment for a game that will never be.

Also, the last suit, Super? It's hideous.

Doom is, canonically, one of the biggest threats in all of Marvel and has single-handedly defeated god-like cosmic powers multiple times. You can think that's stupid or whatever, but that's the lore they're working with.

I have literally just read a comic about Eddie Brock whooping his ass.

*Shrug* it’s comics. Squirrel girl beat Galactus. A character’s power-level in any given arc is ultimately whatever the writer decides and the editor agrees upon. Is it dumb that Doom can take on the Beyonder, Mephisto, Dormammu, and Galactus without batting an eye and then gets taken out the next week by Ms. Marvel or whatever other C-list character the writer has a boner for? Yep. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s regularly shown to be able to deal with the biggest bads that Marvel has.

 

[Jaedar]

You hopeless fucks sound as this game is actually worth getting into aren't you? Despite all the potential cringecarnival.

Wait for a big sale. There's no way they're going to make a sequel or more dlc, so there are no devs to support.

You hopeless fucks sound as this game is actually worth getting into aren't you

probably the most interesting turn-based combat the last couple of years

I want this to not be true, but I can't quite think of a clear counterexample.