I've started playing Midnight Suns and after a few hours in I feel like I've reached a point where I can talk about it. Because I've hit a point where either I'm going to keep going, or I'm going to nope out.
TL:DR for people who don't want to know anything else: I am going to keep going! I think it has a nice riff on XCOM style combat and Mass Effect character interactions that I'm enjoying more than enough to overlook its quirks and shortcomings.
Going to start there: the graphics are OK, but nowhere near what you might expect from a modern, AAA title. They get the job done but it's fairly apparent that this is Firaxis' first time using the Mass Effect method of animating characters. Faces mouth words but they aren't mirroring the text, and the physical animations of characters is stiff. It looks awkward sometimes and while I find that more amusing than anything else, I acknowledge that it might put some people off.
The voice acting for the main character is uneven, too. For the Marvel characters, I think it's quite good! But for my Hunter (I chose a female voice) during the story moments, delivery is often flat. This is a legit drawback for me, because it's clear they hired professionals. Who decided that 'vaguely uninterested most of the time' was a good take?
But seriously, look at that cast list! That is a dream list. The 90's Wolverine, the actress who played Nico on Runaways, the actor from the last (excellent) Spider-Man game, Michael Jai White as BLADE!! They killed it.
Which leads to: hey, these other actors? They're pretty dang good! Some of them are pretty safe choices-the person playing Iron Man is doing a Robert Downy Jr riff and I can't blame them. I don't think we're ready for a novel take on the character. (I mean, I am but...) Still, I've been enjoying what I've heard so far.
Before I get into the other positives, there's one last quirk about Midnight Suns and it's this: they wrote the dialog interactions to the player and not to the character.
What I mean by this is: the others in Midnight Suns will refer to events/people in their world as if the Hunter knows who they are. There's no way that the Hunter can know this-they've been asleep for 300 years. But the player absolutely knows that Dr. Doom reference!
Yes, they do some lampshading for this trick but it's all a bit silly. What I will say is that for me, it wasn't a problem because talking to the player loops you into the game. Talking to the character creates a barrier. I understood what was going on, so I wasn't bothered but it is something I noticed. I can see where it might mess with someone else, though.
Removing that awkward note from the writing, I am enjoying the writing of the characters. It's snappy and works for the game it's trying to be. They also incorporate a very modern touch into the interactions by giving the characters their own online messaging board, so you can see them chat with each other, not just you.
I like the Abbey location and I am enjoying exploring it. There's a lot to find and the game often does this cool thing where they don't tell you when you've found something interesting until after the fact. "Oh, I see you've discovered the standing stones"-I did? Oh! Well let's check that out again. I also appreciate how each location is utilized to advance different things. Yes, this is clearly borrowed from XCOM but if it works, it works.
The meat of Marvel Suns is about the combat though so let's get to it.
There is, for me, a really interesting puzzle being presented in every combat I've been involved with. This comes in three parts: basic cards, heroic cards, and environmental actions.
First: How can I maximize my available options via basic cards to increase my heroism, so I can use my heroic cards? I have two redraws-how should I use them? What basic action is going to open the door for a character's heroic action?
Because the available actions-even heroic ones- are determined by the randomness of a 'card deck' of actions, there's always something to consider. (The option to customize your deck is available and increases as the game goes along.)
Heroic cards have been, up to this point, powerful and feel good to execute. But they did something else with heroic points!
Heroic points allow you to use the environment. This is the secret that I don't think people are mentioning about the combat. And by secret, I mean the game teaches you this in the very first tutorial. Nobody mentions this and I don't know why: It makes things so much more dynamic!
Say you have 4 heroic points but no cards in your deck that use those points? Well, you could just throw a crate at someone!
Which gives the player a lot more options and something to do when their hand isn't quite shaping up. Plus, it offers interesting combat actions visually-getting to see Captain Marvel leap off an object and come thundering down on an enemy is a lot cooler than just watching her punch someone out.
I've become more interested and invested in how this works, the more I play it and that's really cool.
I'm looking forward to finishing it-and trying it again.
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