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Marvel's Midnight Suns (Firaxis)

Mr Crispy

Might as well start the thread for this seeing as ~~boards could be dead at any moment~~ the first gameplay reveal is in a couple of days' time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz8Vw5tOf5M

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a new tactical RPG set in the darker side of the Marvel Universe, putting you face-to-face against demonic forces of the underworld as you team up with and live among the Midnight Suns, Earth's last line of defense.

So it's not the XCOM Marvel game some of us were hoping for. In fact project lead Jake Solomon (designer of XCOM Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2) says, "There are zero mechanics shared between XCOM and the Midnight Suns." That obviously excludes permadeath too, although that's to be expected. Another potential disappointment for some will be the fact that you don't play as an established Marvel hero, but rather a character created especially for the game. The story itself is somewhat based on a real Marvel arc (Midnight Sons) that first appeared in Ghost Rider, although the presence of Cap, Ironman, and Wolverine seems kinda shoehorned in to appease more mainstream fans.

Anyway, I'll reserve judgement for now. The first gameplay trailer is supposed to be on Wednesday (September 1st). Watch this space.

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Shiminay

Yea therein lies the rub. I'd have broken my own rules and pre-ordered this if it was a proper turn-based game, especially one from Firaxis, now I'll almost certainly not give it another look. Shame.

Mr Crispy

Delayed again, with only a "later this fiscal year" as ETA.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/marvels-midnight-suns-has-been-delayed-with-no-new-date-issued/

EoinMcLovin

https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1568330851347472384?t=S27WjswTaLh-O5WMf1pBQg&s=19

_____

Mr Crispy

They also announced there'll be a series of animated shorts that will act as a prequel to the game's story. The first will be released on Halloween, on Marvel's YouTube channel.

Mr Crispy

Completely forgot about this until the launch trailer popped up;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHMbNo4-n8

Kiith

Actually getting some pretty good reviews. XCom mixed with a dating sim apparently 🤣

Zero-Cool

Some saying it's a 50/50 game, combat side is great, forming relationships with characters not so much. I'm mad to try it but might wait for sale.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119943498#Comment_119943498

I was totally against dating sim elements until I played Persona 3. When done well in games they can be excellent.

Zero-Cool

Reading up on this today, i really want to try it. Just saw the season pass is 50 quid for a bunch of skins and 4 dlc characters. That seems mental paying that much for what sounds like a small portion of the game.

Anyway, this is topping my Christmas list at the moment, anyone here get it?

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119951158#Comment_119951158

Not yet, but I think it'll be the game I gift to myself to play over the Christmas period. A colleague has been enjoying it, and we have similar taste in games. If I hate it, I'll blame her!

Penn

Played about 2 hours so far. It's certainly a game of two halves. The actual card combat is very well done. I tried Xcom 2 a bunch but it always got to the point of hugely frustrating me. This seems a lot more forgiving, but also a bit deeper and varied. Looking forward to getting further into it.

The other half of the game I'm a bit mixed on. I don't mind it so far, but a lot of it does seem like pointless busywork. It's not very well written or performed (the voice for Tony Stark is atrocious), but it seems easy enough to plow through so far anyway.

Penn

Another few hours into it last night. I find myself skipping through most of the dialogue when talking to people outside of actual cutscenes, just scanning the subtitles for relevant words and then jumping to the next line. It's all just pretty vacuous and bland, and just amounts to busywork.

There are also too many upgrade systems, materials, items, restrictions etc. It feels like every time I return from a mission or research certain projects there's a new mechanic being introduced, which usually just results in taking more of your resources for little gain.

But the combat still works really well. Characters are varied with unique abilities which can really affect your choice on who to take on missions. It also doesn't have that Xcom thing where if one of your best soldiers dies on a mission they're gone forever. If Iron Man gets knocked out, he'll be injured for a few days then back to normal. It means doing poorly in a mission isn't as frustrating. It does do the thing of a mission objective forcing you to focus on one enemy/objective while it just throws more and more goons or even high-level enemies at you because you're not thinning the herd, but it's usually manageable. It also hasn't done the Xcom thing I hated where you're trying to do small missions for supplies/resources while the game keeps screaming at you that you have to do main missions because the aliens took control of another region.

I did like Xcom overall, but the frustrations eventually outweighed the fun. The side stuff in this game is annoying and distracting, but it's also easy enough to skip through.

Zero-Cool

That busy body abbey stuff is such a red flag for me but I'm still finding it intriguing. Plus, at 65 euro, it's tempting to try it over some of the 75 and 80 euro titles out lately.

As for Xcom 2, i rarely play games on easy but so glad i read a tip about playing that on easy (rookie?). Game was an absolute blast to play, still tough but minus the frustrations with strict moves/timers. Fully recommend trying Xcom 2 on easy for those who haven't yet.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119962994#Comment_119962994

Yeah that's what I should have done. Though one of my biggest annoyances with the game were the missions where you have to save civilians. Every turn, one of the civilians would be killed. Even at the start, when half the civilans who are about 6 full moves away from you start being killed, never mind the fact you have to fight enemies to get there, plus usually one of the civilians was a giant shape-shifting alien... yet the guy on the radio had the sheer unmitigated gall to give out to me for failing to save them....

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119963505#Comment_119963505

You just have to accept that you can't save everyone. Usually have plenty of time to more than reach the quota required to save them and I never failed any of these missions in my playthrough. Even if you don't hit the quota you can finish the mission with a minor penalty. There's worse that can happen than having a Civvie die, like having a crysalid kill one.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119963697#Comment_119963697

Oh I didn't mind the civilians dying in and of itself. What bothered me was being screamed at for not saving them when the game gives absolutely zero chance at saving most of them to begin with. If the max you can move is 20 spaces and after your first turn a civilian 250 spaces away is killed and the radio man says you failed to save them, maybe that's on whoever chose the landing spot.... eh, radio man? Maybe blame them?

Instead of 12, where half of them are basically impossible to save anyway, just have 6-8 where they start being killed once you get to a certain point.

But anyway, that was more emblematic of some of my issues with the game (triggering unseen enemy groups while trying to flank even though flanking is absolutely what you're supposed to do, random reinforcement drops of high-level enemies right after you've expended your grenades etc on other enemies thinking that was the end). Like I said, I enjoyed the game, but it always got to the point of being too frustrating and annoying me. Maybe should have went for easy mode, but at this stage I doubt I'll ever go back to it.

Penn

Looks like my game might be borked. Spiderman is required for the next mission, but I sent him on a Hero Op (where you send a hero on a mission in the background for resources). However, every time I try to acknowledge completion of the hero op, the game crashes, meaning Spiderman is unavailable for the next story mission.

Tried doing a few side missions with other heroes and then trying to complete the hero op with Spiderman the next day, but still keeps crashing.

Zero-Cool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119980805#Comment_119980805

Looks like a patch is releasing next week to fix the crashing bug. Someone on reddit found a work around, not sure if it applies to your situation?

https://www.reddit.com/r/midnightsuns/comments/zc0yeo/game_breaking_ps5_bug_hero_ops/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://twitter.com/midnightsuns/status/1601387553961218050?t=I0P_bKOXw7vxruu_w4YZRw&s=19

Penn

Yeah I read that alright. Tried hammering X a few times but always crashes. It's fine, I can keep doing side missions for a while until it's patched.

Penn

Big 5.7gb patch on PS5. Supposedly fixes the bug I got.

Zero-Cool

Confirmation that Santa is indeed getting me this for Christmas so looking forward to giving it a lash.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119992998#Comment_119992998

My bug is resolved, so back into this now. The time I spent doing side missions while waiting for the bug to be patched has also levelled me up quite nicely.

There's definitely a fun and enjoyable game in here. Just be prepared to hammer O to skip through dialogue. The majority is just fluff that doesn't matter, and then they'll ask a question and you have to choose your response, but you can just read the question then and pick your answer. It's a necessary evil for levelling up the heroes and gaining buffs, but once you get into a rhythm in terms of the day/night cycle, you can get through it all quick enough until those days where something important happens.

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119597529#Comment_119597529

I only got around to watching these now. They're not bad! Five episodes in total.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdROhbPZyeE

Penn

Just rolled credits.

Overall, I really enjoyed the gameplay. Very addictive, never too challenging (on normal) but still requires a lot of thought and planning as some later stages can lead you to be overwhelmed quite quickly. I never lost a fight (at least not that I remember, unless I lost one very early), but I also stayed well on top of upgrading cards and having decent strategies for all heroes, as well as making sure to plan for non-card damage (environment attacks, move knockbacks). Though some early fights did lead to some heroes being wounded and out of action for a few days. That lessened as time went on especially with new ways to quicken their healing.

I've talked about the other side of the game (the friendship-building side) enough and my opinion didn't change by the end, so I'll leave it alone. The only thing I'd add is that there are a few too many systems implemented into the game that don't need to be there. Crafting recipes, special cards, some sort of advanced training thing that I never bothered with. It all just added nothing.

All in all though, I think it's a decent game. Not great, but not bad. Certainly in to 7 or 8 out of 10 range.

Zero-Cool

I haven't had much time for gaming over Christmas but gave this a quick go and really liking it. I was worried about the combat but it feels great and actually strategic. I also like the cringey chats straight out of a comic book but it's early days yet.

Zero-Cool

Alright, my male hunter had been bugging me. He walked with a bit of an ass wiggle, he ran funny and the collar just looked off. I restarted the game as a female hunter and it clicked. It was like as if this was meant to be a female main character all along and they had to then add in a male choice along the way. She looks, moves and talks much more convincing than the male counterpart.

Anyway, I'm loving this. Combat is sublime and it's incredibly difficult to describe why. This isn't just a mobile 'pick a card with highest attack score' system. It's incredibly balanced to keep each fight interesting and the moves just look awesome. Having a blast figuring out each battle. I was really worried it would be missing that xcom magic but the devs have managed to make a new system to fit superheroes and make it just as interesting.

Captain Marvel is a beast!

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077285#Comment_120077285

I went with the female Hunter just because in most of the trailers it seemed like it was the default option and she's on the box cover art. Never had any real problems with her performance anyway so seems like the best choice.

chrislad

I was enjoying this, and then I got a bug that made it crash ever time I went to sleep - so I deleted it until it's patched. Playing on the Steam Deck - it was enjoyable, but it's not optimised for it yet. Devs are planning to so I'll return then.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078968#Comment_120078968

That sucks. I had a bug where I couldn't do the next main story mission because I needed Spiderman, but I'd sent him on a Hero mission and game crashed any time I tried to redeem/complete it. But at least I was able to keep playing and doing side missions for resources, levelling up etc. Crashing every time you try to sleep, that's just horrendous. Hopefully it'll get patched soon enough for you

Penn

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1622707723480563721?s=20&t=5eOIb11oC6anxxXtEVZVXw

It's strange. Before launch I would have bet on it doing well commercially just because it's a Marvel game, but being mid-tier in terms of ratings. Seems to have done the opposite where most people weren't interested in it pre-launch but those who played it really enjoyed it for the most part. I definitely wouldn't mind Firaxis getting another bite at the apple on it with a sequel, where they could get a better balance between the Marvel-mates side of things and the actual card combat side, expanded/different roster of heroes etc.