Excellent turn-based strategy game with cards combined with a surprisingly involving social adventure aspect made by Firaxis, the developer behind recent X-Coms and Civilizations. One aspect without the other, and the game wouldn't work as well. As it is, there's a very satisfying gameplay loop. There's also an exploration aspect around your abbey headquarters, in nature, as a bonus that I liked, but that can be ignored most of the time.

My first impressions weren't great, I thought the graphics were a bit lacking for a AAA game, while still decent, but they did grow on me as time went by, especially the character models. Combat animations were brief and spectactular. Graphics in the battle fields were very good.

I'm not usually a fan of strategy games with card decks or so-called card battlers, but this one won me over. It becomes quite fun once you get the hang of it. There's depth and variety while also keeping things relatively simple. I particularly loved the knockback attacks. The field of battle is limited in size, this is not X-Com, but I thought the size was appropriate: not too big or too small. Every playable hero plays different and there didn't seem to be any clunkers. In fact, I was surprised how much I played every single hero, even though I had my favorites.

The social adventure aspect, where you build up relationships, is wonderful and obviously inspired by the Persona games. There are clubs to attend, hangouts with individual heroes, an electronic social network, and you see heroes talking to each other, training, lounging, etc, in your headquarters. It's mostly talking with a few choices here and there, but it's very well written and interesting, especially if you're a Marvel fan. It's the superhero game where it feels like I learned the most about the characters, perhaps not in term of histories, but in terms of personalities and what makes them tick.

You play as your own new character created for the game, the Hunter, male or female with customization options, and it was rather well done. He was cool, had a great voice (don't know for female), and I liked playing him. I also liked the story, not as much as the friendly character interactions, although the store page unfortunately spoils a few big things if you pay attention. The voices were mostly very good and well chosen. Highlights were Nico Minoru (played by the Runaways tv show actress), Blade (played by movie Spawn) and Captain Marvel, but your preferences will vary.

I can't go into everything, but there's a lot I could have written about, such as the text-based hero ops, levelling your card deck for each hero, decorating your room, buying clothes, creating battle items, buying gifts to offer and, of course, exploring around the grounds. They make for interesting distractions, make the game richer, and you can mostly ignore the stuff you like the least.

What I disliked was the lack of enemy variety and super-villains. For the first 30 hours or so, I mostly fought Hydra goons (think modern Nazis) and I got sick and tired of them. Then you get another set of enemies that are more interesting. Super-villains are few and far between, although they're well designed and fun to fight. Another thing I disliked were the constant enemy reinforcements appearing almost every turn. They quickly grew tiresome. I get it was probably done to keep the challenge up and to surprise, but I could have done without it or at least not as often. Last thing are the super-hero costumes, beyond your own, locked behind a pay wall with real money. They're cosmetic, there's only two extras for each hero, but in older games they would have been unlocks. As it is, for each hero except yourself, you get one initial costume (with a choice of unlockable colours) and the Midnight Sun costume near the end.

Despite my few gripes, I definitely recommend Marvel's Midnight Suns. The sum is greater than its mighty marvellous parts. *****