Marvel's Midnight Suns

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a card-based tactical RPG from Firaxis, the studio behind XCOM 2, and it is considerably stranger and more interesting than its marketing ever made it look. You play as the Hunter, a customizable original character resurrected to fight Lilith, a demonic Marvel villain who has corrupted Hydra and several of the universe's heavier hitters. The strategic layer is built around a card system where each hero contributes a small deck of abilities, and you draw from a combined hand each turn. Positioning, environmental knockbacks, and chained ability combos replace the grid-based cover mechanics Firaxis fans might expect. It rewards forward planning and punishes button-mashing harder than almost any superhero game on the market. The cast is broader than you might expect. Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Magik, Ghost Rider, Wolverine, Captain America, Blade, Nico Minoru, Scarlet Witch, and others all rotate through your roster. Each has a distinct card set with genuine mechanical identity. Wolverine plays like an attrition brawler; Magik teleports enemies into kill zones; Nico's cards are partially randomized and reward risk tolerance. Building synergy between three-hero squads is the real puzzle, and it stays fresh well past the midpoint of the campaign. The RPG upgrade paths for each hero add another layer, letting you reshape base cards into more powerful variants through research and friendship progression. Yes, friendship progression. This is where Midnight Suns gets divisive. Outside of combat, the Abbey acts as a social hub where you hang out with Spider-Man, watch movies with Captain Marvel, and level up relationships that unlock passive bonuses and story content. Some players bounced hard off this. If you came wanting pure tactics and nothing else, the social simulation sequences can feel like a detour. But the writing is sharper than expected, the character banter is often genuinely funny, and the relationship mechanics do feed directly into combat power. The Hunter's story arc lands better than most original-character insertions in licensed games. It is not filler in the way that, say, a fetch-quest side zone is filler. It is slow, but it is doing something. What does not work as cleanly: the early hours are paced too cautiously, rationing hero unlocks in a way that delays the good roster experimentation. A few challenge missions lean on card-draw RNG in ways that feel unfair rather than strategic. The Abbey exploration between missions can drag if you are the type who just wants the next fight. And the PC performance at launch had rough patches, though patches have smoothed the experience considerably since release. For tactics players who want something with more RPG connective tissue, and for Marvel fans who want mechanics with more depth than a brawler, Midnight Suns sits in a narrow but rewarding sweet spot. The card system has genuine build variety, the writing respects the source material without being reverent to the point of boredom, and the combat scenarios are consistently creative. It is not trying to be XCOM with capes. It is trying to be its own thing, and mostly it succeeds.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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