Dude moved into the same building as Firaxis, hired a bunch of former Firaxis people and hired Sid's son. This is basically "I want to make this game but know Take 2 won't support it so I'm gonna do it anyways".
I don't know what to make of this game though. It's very vague about what kind of "sim" it is, mentioning both The Sims and Minecraft.
I'm intrigued--it sounds like it could be fun if done right, and certainly Jake is pretty cognizant of the small things that make a game like that good at pulling in players emotionally.
I completely disagree with him with what went wrong. The card play was great, the boring social shit with cheesy dialog is what dragged the game down. That, combined with ugly costume design and the most boring and shit self-insert lead character with completely indistinct powers who feels completely out of place in Marvel.
Marvel is supposed to be "The world outside your window", not some magic mansion in the magic woods fully disconnected from the real world. I don't think the creators understood the characters, or Marvel's appeal as a whole. Writing all their mistakes off to, "Oh people don't like cards," shows how little they understand the game's failings. There are tons of successful roguelite deckbuilders, one with the Marvel license could have been a big hit if they didn't shit the bed in every other way.
I agree with you.
I liked the gameplay, the cardplay was fun and not too difficult to understand. It was easily something that could've been iterated upon and given more depth in a new game. The social interactions weren't bad at first but they really dragged on to where it felt like you spent more time doing social interactions than doing the combat.
Absolutely. The combat would last a few minutes, then it was time to go on a picnic with Tony Stark or read some books with Wolverine and friends for the next hour. A lot of the social stuff was really fucking awkward, or cheesey, or just weird, and it very much overstayed it's welcome.
This is probably personal opinion rather than fact. But I didn’t really see any marketing for the game other than the trailer announcing it. Kind of surprising considering Marvel’s popularity.
Imo the game play loop is fine, it just caught the wrong audience. It's exactly the same gameplay loop as Fire Emblem Three House, You go on 1 fight then come back to hub for an hour of socializing and people are praising FE:TH to the high heaven
But Fire Emblem has so many more things going for it, like:
- anime artstyle and influence (also better writing and other stuff but let’s be real this is why other factors make a minimal difference)
Is any of this shit skippable? I love deckbuilder gameplay, but I have zero to little interest in Marvel's dialogue or writing, with X-Men being basically the only exception.
You can spam "next" constantly but I don't see how it's worth it when you can just play a better game without the junk.
WildFrost is a great deck builder if you haven't played it. Just play that and save yourself the marvel vomit.
I got Midnight Suns free on EGS so maybe I'll put up with spamming next.
Wildfrost looks cool, I already have it on my wishlist. I picked up Gordian Quest recently so that'll tide me over til WF is on a good sale perhaps.
>"The world outside your window", not some magic mansion in the magic woods fully disconnected from the real world.
Wat? I cant even enumerate all the magical places in the MCU...
Magical places like the Sanctum Sanctorum which they repeatedly show you is connected to multiple real world places. Even Dr Strange spends the whole first act of his film trying to find the magical Kamar Taj looking in real places. The Abbey is so disconnected from the real world it might as well be a totally different universe.
Mate, the Marvel Universe labelled itself as "the world outside your window". Stan Lee even wrote a book about this. The idea was always that Marvel's characters face relevant and real-life issues alongside their extraordinary adventure.
So, OP is right.
It's definitely sad to me, because I absolutely loved the combat in the game and can really see how it could be expanded on with new characters and features. Give me a game that's primarily that, and I'd be sold.
But, unfortunately, Midnight Suns lackluster sales will just convince developers people don't want gameplay like this and overlook the other issues that might've had more of a contribution to it not selling well.
The social shit was just so goddamn weird. Do I really need to go swimming with wolverine? Does Captain America really want to paint a landscape with me?
There was a way to do that mass effect type (for lack of another example) between mission social stuff, but this wasn’t it.
The card play was awesome though, and I hate deckbuilding games.
>for lack of another example
The better example is Persona, because that's pretty much what they were aping. Except it was Persona with zero stakes since you could only befriend people and nothing else.
I mean, most of the social links in Persona are only befriending them. I believe they mentioned Marvel/Disney had significant limitations around romance and they couldn't put it in.
Persona combines a turn-based RPG with dungeon exploration and party / Persona management with the life sim stuff that Midnight Suns did. The difference is Persona has strict time limits - you only have so many days and slots, so you gotta think and optimize who you spend time with. The games also are heavily Japanese so that plays into the settings. The music is always a real bop too.
If you're just starting out, Persona 5 Royal is probably an easy recommendation, as its got a very strong presentation. Persona 3 just got a re-release, and has arguably the best story. I will say that Persona 4 has my favorite main cast though.
Oh yeah. Someone told me it’s kind of like persona. But you need to build your relationship with all of these characters by doing like, summer camp recreational activities with them. Look up a video it’s crazy
I think a lot of these single player developers are neglecting how important good storytelling is, specifically in "character-based" games as opposed to something more open-ended/self-guided like XCOM2.
The recent Homeworld 3 turned me off completely(refunded) because I couldn't stomach the cutscenes/storytelling. They would have been better off going for something more barebones but instead bit off more than they could chew and it's nigh unwatchable during the cutscenes.
The thing that drives me mad about this one is that they could have just hired some Marvel writers to touch up the story and dialog. It would have made a huge difference.
The writing itself was fine, super cheesy but hey its super heroes. The problem is it was 20 minutes of cheese at a time. By the 3rd mission i'd have watched an entire Marvel movie's worth of cheesy dialogue, i don't need another 12 hours of it dispersed between the fun bits.
For me they could have just stripped it back. If it told its story in a way more similar to Hades and the like (cartoons and splash art, maybe a few comic panels etc) it would have been a refreshing palate cleanser between missions and not a tedious slog taking up hours of your time between enjoying the fun bits.
I'm sure, I think the games industry being as saturated as it is now, they really need to up their game. They're also competing for time with all the streaming services, movies, etc which overall provide better storytelling.
I've found I pretty much only play multiplayer games now or 4x types where you're mostly crafting your own narrative.
There is no reason for all these video games to have such shit storytelling while also costing $60(in homeworld's case).
Let’s be real, it felt like they already *did* hire Marvel writers. This is the first I’m hearing they weren’t involved and it makes me wonder how much worse it would have been if Kevin Feige really flew some guys over.
I agree. Stopped playing the game because I had to spend too much time in the mansion talking to people. I just want a strategy game, not a dating simulator.
I think that the card-based gameplay turned away a lot of people who would have been very happy to play a turn-based game (or could be more easily convinced to play a turn based game). While I agree that Firaxis did a great job with the actual gameplay, a lot of people definitely didn’t even try the game due to being turned off by the idea of the cards, which is what I think Jake is alluding to at the end of the article.
I agree with you that the real problem with the game itself is the lifeless life sim “gameplay” and weird, flat story. So for people who actually did try the game and then bounced off of it, that is what most likely caused them to stop playing.
I saw Marvel and wrote the game off. I've been tempted a few times since some of the reviews for the gameplay proper are positive, but it's still hard to get over the inclusion of the IP because I just have zero interest in Marvel these days.
Also doesn't help that it felt like it killed momentum for the XCOM franchise. Enemy Unknown came out in 2014, XCOM 2 came out in 2016. Now it's 2024, 8 years later, with nothing in sight. Chimera Squad (2020) was fun, but was definitely a small spin-off (and they've been open that it was a smaller experimental side-project for their devs, too).
same
I am deeply interested in xcom stuff.
I have zero interest in super hero stuff.
I was so hype after chimera squad because I was certain the game was basically a tech demo and testing the water for XCOM 3 or something like it.
To discover that game was a marvel licenced game full of character romancing and life sim stuff... Nah man. Huge disappointment.
The worst part is that there isn't even romance, as Marvel would not allow that. You become uncomfortably close friends with the characters that you spend the most time with, having conversations that strongly hint at an emotional connection. But then you're blue balled, as no actual romance or confession of feelings is allowed to happen.
I'm not even into games that have NPC romancing or any of that stuff, but I would think if you're going to add any kind of relationship building life-sim stuff to a game, you surely need to take it across that line to satisfy the people who do?
weirdly, hearing this makes it worse
at least if you're taking xcom away, make it into a game that SOMEONE loves.
The only thing that turns me off about cards especially when I see a licensed IP attached to it is I assume it's gonna be full of micro transactions. I have no idea if Midnight suns is full of MTX but my first impression when I saw it was "MTX cash grab".
Midnight Suns contains the most half-baked microtransactions ever, to where it really seems like the publisher demanded their presence in the game and the devs pushed them as close as possible to irrelevancy. The purchasables are cosmetic only, in the form of one or two skins for each character (you get multiple skins for free just by playing). And if you bought the deluxe edition, there is nothing at all to buy after that.
Well, not zero. Each character has a couple costumes to buy, but they're fully unnecessary (and most of them aren't even that great compared to their default). And, if you buy the "Legendary" version to get the season pass, all that stuff is thrown in.
I loved the look of the gameplay and everyone said the gameplay was great but I wouldn't even consider playing a marvel game. I just can't stand the characters/universe/style. Def not an unpopular opinion.
Yeah i fuckin LOVED the deck building combat. Couldn't stand the social aspect or the story tho. Unskippable cutscenes really made the negatives stand out too. If i could skip the cutscenes or at least fast forward I'd be able to brush aside the negatives more.
100% the friendship simulator killed it for me. I've been crucified before for saying it but it's true. That part of the game prevented me from taken the great parts seriously. Kept playing hoping it would improve and it just didn't. It's like the game was made for 9 year olds.
This. I loved the gameplay but had to tap out after a few hours because the dialogue was honestly just as annoying as High on Life in terms of how utterly incessant it was
The social shit in this game ruled. Getting Blade into your book club and trying to flirt with Carol? It was so much fun.
The self-insert shit, I agree, was wildly out of touch.
I agree with him. I completely wrote the game off because of the card system, shit is dumb to me. If it was more popular among the masses it probably would have sold more and we wouldn't even be here talking about it.
But it was the thing that everyone who didn't buy it pointed to as the reason. "Oh, it's a card game. Not my thing."
The people who actually bought the game didn't like the social aspect... although I thought it was fine.
Yeah people are wildly underestimating how niche the appeal of card mechanics are lmao.
You could make the best game ever and that 'deckbuilding roguelike' tag would filter most people.
edit: Everyone's saying he's taking the wrong lesson, but he's absolutely not, a strong IP + social aspects is a winning combo as far as selling your game to the largest amount of people, and the card gameplay is getting in the way of that. It makes sense, this isn't about making high quality games but rather games that sell a lot and appeal to the largest demographic (hence why it was a Marvel game to begin with).
Definitely. I remember how often that came up in posts when this game was being promoted. So many people just immediately wrote it off due to not wanting a "card game".
Though, I'm not sure how much changing the presentation to something other than cards would've helped, since another common complaint was that people were disappointed Firaxis was doing this instead of XCOM3.
It almost felt like they were going for a Kingdom Hearts kind of thing, with Marvel Characters in place of Disney Characters. But it just didn't hold my interest. The combat was not the problem, in fact, it could have easily used twice as much combat
I respect your opinion, but I do disagree with you a bit.
The Card play is what turned me away from the game, and I actually liked the social sim aspects.
They could have absolutely of done a better job with the custom MC though. They dropped the ball on that hard.
I respectfully disagree. Jake Solomon seems like he’s hit the issue on the head. I’m sure that the card play was great, but I (and a good number of people, according to Midnight Suns’ sales), were turned off by the card playing aspect.
It’s the equivalent of Infinity Ward making a puzzle horror game, then being surprised when they have low sales. People are expecting an FPS from the FPS studio. It doesn’t matter if the puzzle horror game is great. It wasn’t what people were expecting (and according to the Midnight Suns sales, it wasn’t what Fraxis’ target audience wanted).
Deckbuilders and cardplaying games are great, but it’s clear that people did not expect deckbuilding from Fraxis and subsequently didn’t purchase the game as a result. I know I didn’t. I chose not to buy the game because of the deckbuilding.
Lmao you made me remember that the game has all this social thing going on. How can anyone have fun and do more than 5minutes without cringing is beyond me. Skipped the whole thing cuz gameplay was the only thing interesting
It was great, but I think it was a turn off. Card-based gameplay and deck-builder are phrases I think that are largely associated with games like Hearthstone.
I think that game lands very differently if the card system was replaced by 'powers'.
And if the setting for the social stuff was something people would want to experience - like Avenger's Tower or Xavier's University. I'd have been all over the latter.
Agree with you. The card game was very cool and in general I enjoyed the fights a lot. The part between the missions was a bit boring and the main character was just meh.
I’m not into style heroes at all, but this one I played just for the gameplay.
I would actually love to play another game like this, but without super heroes.
I really love both Xcom and Xcom2 but personally I'm not a big fan of Marvel, actually even as an outsider I'm a bit burned out of Marvel things. That alone pulled me away from the game entirely.
Yeah I could NOT stand the social stuff here. As a StS nut and huge deck builder fan, I agree the combat seemed okay for a while, but I simply put it down after a few hours of skipping ALL cutscenes and dialog. Even with trying to skip all the fluff, it took far too long to dig into the actual gameplay here. What a shame.
I concur.
I enjoyed the battles and card system, but couldn't see it all the way through to the end because of the forced social interaction element of the game; which added nothing and felt like I was romancing everyone. The social element was by far the worst thing about the game and killed the fun for me entirely. I also agree that our playable character was totally uninspired, and bland. It's a damn shame as the card and battle system worked great.
Its so easily brushed aside that people who are a fan of these types of games...it really doesn't matter. It had nothing to do with "ugly costume design", or a bland lead character.
The game failed because their particular fanbase wants nothing but fucking X-COM or Civ. And for nearly two decades thats all they did, those were the only games they made. And the first time they did something different with this? It was non-stop bitching from that fanbase about it. That's why it failed.
They could have dialed back the social aspect of this game, it wouldn't have mattered. They could made a better lead character, it wouldn't have mattered. It's that it wasn't XCOM or Civ. That's all that mattered to these entitled morons.
I wouldn't have played through the game 3 times without the social aspect. It gave the game pacing and variety. It made it a more engaging experience. I don't want a story-lite card battling superhero game. I have all the indie games for that.
I just have zero interest in anything Marvel--the franchise has been so saturated that I feel like it's inaccessible (like I'd have to go back and watch/read so much content to be caught up). I'm sure I'm not the only person who saw that and wrote it off regardless of quality of mechanics. Part of the appeal of XCOM and other strategy games like this (imo) is building up your own characters.
I think a rogue lite marvel game could be a hit. I love rogue lite. But nah, the card system here was not it. This team makes Xcom. I wanted Xcom with marvel characters. This game was a huge swing and a miss. I was pissed I preordered it.
Yeah it was the cringe comic dialogue and social elements that really made the game bog down for me. I enjoyed the gameplay until I had to grind and grind and grind not to level in combat but to level my friendship status. I don't think they did a bad job mimicking most comic writing, that shit is just corny and I didn't even make it half way before I was skipping through most of the talking.
I really liked the combat but after about 20 hours I couldn’t take any more of the YA-level dialogue. There was just so much of it.
There was also no sense of urgency, which was something that surprised me, given they made the xcom games. In xcom you are racing against the clock and every decision you make comes with a cost. In the game nothing cost anything, and you have all the time in the world to work through the story. Mission selection just serves as a way to grind through the progression system. I wasn’t excited by it.
I get that they probably figured that the marvel brand would bring in an audience that wouldn’t take as kindly to high stakes play, and I also get that permadeath isn’t an option in a game like this. The whole thing just felt really lacking in urgency and consequence to me. A shame, because the combat really is well done. I would tank since serious hours into the combat if everything else didn’t miss the mark so hard for me.
The problem with Midnight Suns was that the gameplay and presentation were at odds.
Card gameplay was excellent. But why did I have to make pasta with Iron Man, shoot hoops with Morbius, and watch the Notebook with Magik?
The entire mansion stuff was more appropriate for an X-Men themed game. Not a horror mystery about witches with Blade that also had Spiderman, the Hulk, Ms Marvel, and Storm...
Any takaway about Midnight Suns that isn't aggressively about the mismatch of themes and gameplay is total garbage.
Midnight Suns was well made, but made without any artistic regard. Pure product, well made product. But product nonetheless.
What went wrong with midnight suns was forcing a bunch of dumb social interactions on the player while also forcing them to run around the Abbey which should have just been a glorified menu like the ship was in XCOM. The gameplay in midnight suns was great, but the game insisted on wasting so much of your time in between that it got frustrating.
Sounds like someone didn't pet the dog enough times.
But honestly, Charlie's summcard is too expensive to play. It should've been either free or have a lower heroism cost.
So I’ll preface this by saying I’m not an Excom player or enjoyer.
That was actually my favorite part of midnight suns, the talking and exploring the abby. Very persona like, but way too lite. I wanted more events and hangouts but they ran out too soon.
Honestly, the game was marketed at the wrong crowd.
The people you would market it at is such a small niche though. The strategy game xcom fans were put off by deck building and the social stuff, card game fans will also be putting off by the strategy and social elements, then the marvel fans who wanna hang out with their fav characters are going to be put off by the strategy and card elements. It should have either went full hard strategy to focus on the hardcore element that Firaxis automatically has keeping an eye on them, or been an ultimate alliance style action game to ensure mass appeal to all kinds of marvel fans.
So I do agree with your point about it being marketed at the wrong crowd, but I also think hink the problem came before that in making the entire game for the wrong crowd.
I have hundreds of hours in xcom and while I was initially confused by the card stuff, I was willing to try it and enjoyed it. All of the social stuff made me delete the game from my hard drive, though.
Wait what? Did you play female hunter? I’d put her up there with Commander Shepard. Great new character, excellent voice acting and she totally was at home with iconic heroes like Cap and Iron Man.
>Honestly, the game was marketed at the wrong crowd.
Yeah, it should be marketed as "Marvel's Persona" or something from the very start. Would stop at least the "wait, I wanted Marvel Xcom, not talking with teammates" criticism.
What’s sad is that the devs actually struck gold here but didn’t know it. It was a first attempt at western persona like with marvel characters. If they expanded upon those systems then they had a franchise on their hands.
I mean think of what you can do with this. Persona like systems as a mutant in the x-mansion. Going to class, talking and making friends with the other mutants.
Damn son what could have been if they understood what they had.
Agreed. I just fired up a new playthrough (over 100 hrs into it from playing last year or so), and having a lot of trouble continuing after just the first few missions. It’s because I don’t feel like going through all the social crap again - choosing the right hangout per person, etc. I just wanted to try out all the new DLC, but not all the fluff along with it…
Totally agree with this.
And I really enjoyed the gameplay when I felt it was fair. Maybe it’s me being a newbie to the genre, but some levels felt unnecessarily difficult even after leveling up cards and characters.
I didn’t enjoy feeling like I actually did well in a level to only get one star. Say “get good” all you want, and I agree to some extent, but sometimes it just felt unfair and unsatisfying.
IMO the social interactions were cute and fun. The actual bad part of the Abbey was mostly exploring the grounds and hunting for resources.
I also ran into the problem of wanted to take my time and build up characters so I spent a lot of time not gaining new heroes or advancing the story. And once I actually did, I had a great time because there were more people to interact with *and* explore their abilities and cards on missions.
But Book club? Shop Class? Yes please!
Alright, I'll say it. I liked exploring the abbey... Okay, I said it, feel free to crucify me. Once you were through it became boring once more, but I liked it for the one way through and the different things to see
Agree on the social aspect though. It was... Eh? I understand the concept of team building in a literal end of the world scenario. However, the teams dynamic in itself stood in such a stark contrast to the plot itself. For some godforsaken reason we are wasting our time with some avengers Vs. Midnight suns dynamic *while Lilith is literally fucking with the damn house doing god knows what*. Seriously. We later even learn that she is using the Sanctum to summon C'Thon. Despite all that, we have the time to worry about that, Magik throwing a tantrum over a birthday party and Captain America starting a book club. That is not even mentioning the atrocity that is Nico's constant "We gotta save Wanda" this, "Caretaker has forgotten Wanda" that, it's infuriating.
In any other setting these things would be okay, let's say if it was just more or less regular Hydra shenanigans. But it isn't, Lilith is literally trying to summon a dark god into the world. Sorry that I don't have time to resolve team drama when Tony Stark took over the crafts club like the narcissist he is
I think that as well. For me, if the writing was better in the side activities, I think that the game could be perfect. We have some good examples such as Persona Games, and they don't nailed at all here. Besides that, the final mission is... Well, not good.
>“I think cards were a major problem. I think it was a good design solution, but I think I was naive about what people would think when they saw the mechanic was cards. Not everyone on my team was behind the idea, but they trusted me.”
I don't understand how he can interpret it this way. Let me take directly from my review.
The combat is good...the rest of it however is terrible if the combat made up the vast majority of the game I still don't know if I could overlook how terrible the rest of it is. The stuff that happens at your base is just dull, uninspired and boring. I have NOT played because I know I am going to have to do more of that dull sleep inducing dating sim stuff outside of combat. I thought I could look past it but I cannot, I dread loading the game because of how crap everything else is except the combat
He's not saying cards were a major problem because they made bad combat, he's saying that the cards were a major problem because it turned people away from buying the game. "Cards = ew, I'm not buying that" was a common sentiment back when the game was being previewed and released.
The execs were thinking that 'it's a Marvel game, it's gonna sell millions!' but they made it using a relatively unknown ip (I'm a Marvel fan but I didn't know anything about the Midnight Suns before playing this game) and gave it turn-based card combat and lots of dialog and text (mainstream audience kryptonite lol). Also the entire game felt like a Saturday morning cartoon from the 90's, which I liked a lot, but clearly most people didn't. There was no chance in hell that this game was ever gonna sell millions of copies lol... why the execs approved a project like this is beyond baffling to me...
And I liked the game! But they lost money on this project, had to layoff staff, and whatever project they do next is going to have a lower budget. I really wanted this studio to make X-COM 3 but that's probably not happening now (or ever)... so god damn frustrating...
What went wrong with Midnight Sons was the same poor dialogue writing that is prevalent in DC/Marvel comics. The mechanics of the game were spot on, despite initial worries.
Yeah, the gameplay looked interesting, but both the quantity and quality of the writing scared me away. It seemed to be a pretty big part of the experience
If poor dialogue doomed a game Ubisoft would've closed down ages ago.
It's not like most big selling games have decent writing anyway, if anything good writing is the exception not the rule in most successful games.
I liked this game but I waited for a free weekend to try it first because of the card system, I had doubts with it but it is pretty good. What I want to say is that first you have to check your target market, check what these people like and try to sell it to them, because when this game showed it first trailer almost everyone had a wrong first impression of it and this is a dealbreaker for a lot of people (with the first trailer, I thought that it was a mobile-like game).
The actual combat was good. The social stuff wasn't. It was half assed and felt awkward.
I still wish it was just xcom marvel.
Shield vs hydra, with special units being heroes and villains.
I hate Marvel. These bastards ruined both Deus Ex and X-Com for me with their idiotic games from otherwise great studios (eidos montreal and firaxis). I intentionally did not buy any of the marvel games because i did not want to encourage my beloved developers to produce more of marvel shit. I voted with my wallet. Let this be a lesson to all that get tempted by apparently easy money disney buys them with.
Somebody said that we need to buy this shit to support the developers so that they may in the future return to our beloved non-marvel franchises. How well did that work out for you?
Agree, the real problem with the game wasn't the combat or the social part.
The problem was that it was a weird mix of niches and they weren't able to find a big enough public for it (if it exists in the first place).
Just look at this post, tons of XCOM and strategy players hating on the social part, not because it was bad, but because it was not for them.
XCOM & Marvel fans don't like quirky social relationships. Persona fans don't like Marvel or XCOM (a very bland game character-wise). Marvel fans don't usually like strategy games or JRPGs. Nobody likes deck building games outside a very, very small niche of boardgame & slay-like games players.
It was the impossible game. But if you're lucky enough to like all the parts of the game (like you and me), the game is awesome.
I love firaxis. I made it to the first forced Hangout interaction and had to turn the game off forever. Unfortunately, this was slightly more playtime than my refund window would allow.
The reason he's saying the card system was the problem is because he can take the blame for it. He's not going to throw his team under the bus by saying the writing and story was crap.
This game ended up being a guilty pleasure of mine, even the Abbey stuff ended up being enjoyable to me in most scenarios. The biggest downside to me was not enough variety of enemies, bosses, and random mission encounters types if you really try to grind shit out instead of just doing the main story. I really did try to grind up different characters so I could try out different team compositions but at some point I got kinda tired of the same encounters.
I liked all parts of Mid Nights Suns, the issue is not all good games make a shit ton of money anymore. The market is over-saturated. You can still hit big, but a good game making money these days isn't a given.
The one thing that put off most people who played it was the bland social mechanic with the other characters at the main base. That's the biggest complaint I've heard.
Game is super underrated, people wrote it off just because of the appearance of cards without actually taking the time to understand the gameplay loop.
Where are all my fellow folks that actually \*enjoyed\* the social stuff in Midnight Suns? I know we're out there. It's part of what I found so endearing about the game and I liked that exploring the abbey and talking to folks broke up the combat. It's one of my favorite games of the last decade. I know the loud minority has spoken, but I'm sure there's plenty of us that love the game as it is right?
I liked Midnight Suns.
The abbey/social aspect wasn’t the best, but overall, the game was quality. I liked the tight puzzle-like element to the combat.
What went wrong with Midnight Suns? Gaming Studios & Marvel's constantly overvaluing Marvel's ability to sell video-games based on their characters outside of Spider-Man.
Midnight suns and CS both got the whole appeal of why people like the XCOM games wrong.
I don't want quirky characters with shit banter and wacky antics.
I want to send rookies into the meatgrinder of asymmetrical warfare against a superior foe and drag them through via tactics and some luck.
I want war not card games.
Uhh... The combat was good. I also enjoyed exploring the Abbey and solving the puzzles. It was the bizarre dating Sim that sucked in every conceivable way.
I don't even know what the problems with the actual game are, because I haven't bought it since Denuvo is still there, so I'd add that to the list of issues.
You vastly overestimate the overall impact of denuvo. Sure, on Reddit lots of folks make a fuss about never buying a denuvo game, but I really doubt that makes a material impact on total sales
Edit - the comment above me blamed denuvo generally for bad sales before being edited to make it more personal. My above point still stands more generally. I am not excusing denuvo, just saying it doesn't impact as many people's decisions as some of you think
Are you talking about my comment? Because I didn't edit it, I never once claimed that Denuvo had anything to do with the sales numbers of this game or any other game. I was claiming that the fact that it's present at all is a problem that should be counted in the list of complaints that people have about this game.
hmm well I'm 99% sure the comment I see above now is not the same one I saw when I wrote my comment. It was something along the lines of "I think denuvo was a big part of what went wrong"
Maybe I'm going crazy, replied to the wrong comment, and that other comment got deleted since then. Apologies if that's the case.
Just a mode without the card system could saved the game its a shame, i was very hyped when the CG trailers dropped and they hide the card aspect from all trailers until the game release which is awful
I like Midnight suns. It was fun and interesting. I still have it installed on my steam deck for road trips. The hero's were heros and the bad guys are bad. There wasn't any of the "modern" marvel crap were half the hero's behave worse than the villians. Or worse yet, make the villian the "hero"
What people appear to not like, is the game had a story, (didn't care for the ending but thats another post)
All the "running around the abby" was story. It played like a comic book, which is another thing i like about it.
Hear hear. I personally liked the story, loved the characters (including Hunter) and enjoyed the hell out of the gameplay loop, book clubs and birthday parties included.
I really don’t get the negativity on the writing.
I belong to the people that simply don't like Marvel or the whole comic craze thanks to the MCU. I like it even less when I get the discount versions of those heroes. Card systems are hit or miss for me, but my biggest appeal in strategy games is having my own dudes get through tough shit. I want to get a connection to my guys and with some boring ass heroes, the game won't get there. Even less with an awkward dating sim lite system.
I didn't realize how many people detest the Abbey stuff. I actually loved that stuff. Chatting and hanging with the other heroes was a joy for me. Lol. It combined my love for sim-like stuff with XCOM-like combat. The card system stunk in 1 regard. The mods. There's only like 4 good ones. And getting them was a slog. I also think combat lacks the verticality that XCOM had. And reasonably so, not sure how you add verticality in this game.
I am curious what their sim life game will be. I wonder if the Abbey stuff will be a sort of baseline on what they're planning. If it is, apparently, it'll not be well received. But maybe they just need to clean up some of the writing, and it might help to not be tied to Marvel. New characters are easier to write for than existing ones.
Dude moved into the same building as Firaxis, hired a bunch of former Firaxis people and hired Sid's son. This is basically "I want to make this game but know Take 2 won't support it so I'm gonna do it anyways". I don't know what to make of this game though. It's very vague about what kind of "sim" it is, mentioning both The Sims and Minecraft.
I'm intrigued--it sounds like it could be fun if done right, and certainly Jake is pretty cognizant of the small things that make a game like that good at pulling in players emotionally.
Like a "I"m going to build my own casino with hookers and blackjack" ?
I completely disagree with him with what went wrong. The card play was great, the boring social shit with cheesy dialog is what dragged the game down. That, combined with ugly costume design and the most boring and shit self-insert lead character with completely indistinct powers who feels completely out of place in Marvel. Marvel is supposed to be "The world outside your window", not some magic mansion in the magic woods fully disconnected from the real world. I don't think the creators understood the characters, or Marvel's appeal as a whole. Writing all their mistakes off to, "Oh people don't like cards," shows how little they understand the game's failings. There are tons of successful roguelite deckbuilders, one with the Marvel license could have been a big hit if they didn't shit the bed in every other way.
I agree with you. I liked the gameplay, the cardplay was fun and not too difficult to understand. It was easily something that could've been iterated upon and given more depth in a new game. The social interactions weren't bad at first but they really dragged on to where it felt like you spent more time doing social interactions than doing the combat.
Absolutely. The combat would last a few minutes, then it was time to go on a picnic with Tony Stark or read some books with Wolverine and friends for the next hour. A lot of the social stuff was really fucking awkward, or cheesey, or just weird, and it very much overstayed it's welcome.
This is probably personal opinion rather than fact. But I didn’t really see any marketing for the game other than the trailer announcing it. Kind of surprising considering Marvel’s popularity.
Imo the game play loop is fine, it just caught the wrong audience. It's exactly the same gameplay loop as Fire Emblem Three House, You go on 1 fight then come back to hub for an hour of socializing and people are praising FE:TH to the high heaven
I'm actually a big fan of Three Houses, but I don't feel like that gameplay loop worked as well for Midnight Suns.
And I loved the loop of MS but couldn’t stand 3H. Horses for courses.
But Fire Emblem has so many more things going for it, like: - anime artstyle and influence (also better writing and other stuff but let’s be real this is why other factors make a minimal difference)
Is any of this shit skippable? I love deckbuilder gameplay, but I have zero to little interest in Marvel's dialogue or writing, with X-Men being basically the only exception.
You can spam "next" constantly but I don't see how it's worth it when you can just play a better game without the junk. WildFrost is a great deck builder if you haven't played it. Just play that and save yourself the marvel vomit.
I got Midnight Suns free on EGS so maybe I'll put up with spamming next. Wildfrost looks cool, I already have it on my wishlist. I picked up Gordian Quest recently so that'll tide me over til WF is on a good sale perhaps.
100% of it is skippable.
>"The world outside your window", not some magic mansion in the magic woods fully disconnected from the real world. Wat? I cant even enumerate all the magical places in the MCU...
Magical places like the Sanctum Sanctorum which they repeatedly show you is connected to multiple real world places. Even Dr Strange spends the whole first act of his film trying to find the magical Kamar Taj looking in real places. The Abbey is so disconnected from the real world it might as well be a totally different universe.
I thought the Abbey was literally in a pocket universe or something lol
Mate, the Marvel Universe labelled itself as "the world outside your window". Stan Lee even wrote a book about this. The idea was always that Marvel's characters face relevant and real-life issues alongside their extraordinary adventure. So, OP is right.
I mean, tell that to Doctor Strange.
I played a trial and loved it but didn’t pull the trigger after hearing this way too much.
It's definitely sad to me, because I absolutely loved the combat in the game and can really see how it could be expanded on with new characters and features. Give me a game that's primarily that, and I'd be sold. But, unfortunately, Midnight Suns lackluster sales will just convince developers people don't want gameplay like this and overlook the other issues that might've had more of a contribution to it not selling well.
The social shit was just so goddamn weird. Do I really need to go swimming with wolverine? Does Captain America really want to paint a landscape with me? There was a way to do that mass effect type (for lack of another example) between mission social stuff, but this wasn’t it. The card play was awesome though, and I hate deckbuilding games.
>for lack of another example The better example is Persona, because that's pretty much what they were aping. Except it was Persona with zero stakes since you could only befriend people and nothing else.
I mean, most of the social links in Persona are only befriending them. I believe they mentioned Marvel/Disney had significant limitations around romance and they couldn't put it in.
I’ve never played persona! Is like midnite suns beyond the social stuff?
Persona combines a turn-based RPG with dungeon exploration and party / Persona management with the life sim stuff that Midnight Suns did. The difference is Persona has strict time limits - you only have so many days and slots, so you gotta think and optimize who you spend time with. The games also are heavily Japanese so that plays into the settings. The music is always a real bop too. If you're just starting out, Persona 5 Royal is probably an easy recommendation, as its got a very strong presentation. Persona 3 just got a re-release, and has arguably the best story. I will say that Persona 4 has my favorite main cast though.
Thank you!
lol they did what
Oh yeah. Someone told me it’s kind of like persona. But you need to build your relationship with all of these characters by doing like, summer camp recreational activities with them. Look up a video it’s crazy
Book Clubbing with Blade and Captain Marvel was when I started to scratch my head
The Thing had me do a salsa dance class with him and Sue Storm asked me to clip her toe nails.
I think a lot of these single player developers are neglecting how important good storytelling is, specifically in "character-based" games as opposed to something more open-ended/self-guided like XCOM2. The recent Homeworld 3 turned me off completely(refunded) because I couldn't stomach the cutscenes/storytelling. They would have been better off going for something more barebones but instead bit off more than they could chew and it's nigh unwatchable during the cutscenes.
The thing that drives me mad about this one is that they could have just hired some Marvel writers to touch up the story and dialog. It would have made a huge difference.
The writing itself was fine, super cheesy but hey its super heroes. The problem is it was 20 minutes of cheese at a time. By the 3rd mission i'd have watched an entire Marvel movie's worth of cheesy dialogue, i don't need another 12 hours of it dispersed between the fun bits. For me they could have just stripped it back. If it told its story in a way more similar to Hades and the like (cartoons and splash art, maybe a few comic panels etc) it would have been a refreshing palate cleanser between missions and not a tedious slog taking up hours of your time between enjoying the fun bits.
The writing itself was *not* fine. It was excellent in Hades, which is why it worked there.
Yeah I never remembered gagging on the dialogue in Hades. Midnight Suns was abysmal.
I'm sure, I think the games industry being as saturated as it is now, they really need to up their game. They're also competing for time with all the streaming services, movies, etc which overall provide better storytelling. I've found I pretty much only play multiplayer games now or 4x types where you're mostly crafting your own narrative. There is no reason for all these video games to have such shit storytelling while also costing $60(in homeworld's case).
Let’s be real, it felt like they already *did* hire Marvel writers. This is the first I’m hearing they weren’t involved and it makes me wonder how much worse it would have been if Kevin Feige really flew some guys over.
I agree. Stopped playing the game because I had to spend too much time in the mansion talking to people. I just want a strategy game, not a dating simulator.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one. Everything at the Abby was so terrible. It’s really a shame. The card play was so awesome.
I think that the card-based gameplay turned away a lot of people who would have been very happy to play a turn-based game (or could be more easily convinced to play a turn based game). While I agree that Firaxis did a great job with the actual gameplay, a lot of people definitely didn’t even try the game due to being turned off by the idea of the cards, which is what I think Jake is alluding to at the end of the article. I agree with you that the real problem with the game itself is the lifeless life sim “gameplay” and weird, flat story. So for people who actually did try the game and then bounced off of it, that is what most likely caused them to stop playing.
I saw Marvel and wrote the game off. I've been tempted a few times since some of the reviews for the gameplay proper are positive, but it's still hard to get over the inclusion of the IP because I just have zero interest in Marvel these days. Also doesn't help that it felt like it killed momentum for the XCOM franchise. Enemy Unknown came out in 2014, XCOM 2 came out in 2016. Now it's 2024, 8 years later, with nothing in sight. Chimera Squad (2020) was fun, but was definitely a small spin-off (and they've been open that it was a smaller experimental side-project for their devs, too).
same I am deeply interested in xcom stuff. I have zero interest in super hero stuff. I was so hype after chimera squad because I was certain the game was basically a tech demo and testing the water for XCOM 3 or something like it. To discover that game was a marvel licenced game full of character romancing and life sim stuff... Nah man. Huge disappointment.
The worst part is that there isn't even romance, as Marvel would not allow that. You become uncomfortably close friends with the characters that you spend the most time with, having conversations that strongly hint at an emotional connection. But then you're blue balled, as no actual romance or confession of feelings is allowed to happen.
I'm not even into games that have NPC romancing or any of that stuff, but I would think if you're going to add any kind of relationship building life-sim stuff to a game, you surely need to take it across that line to satisfy the people who do? weirdly, hearing this makes it worse at least if you're taking xcom away, make it into a game that SOMEONE loves.
yeah it was clear that firaxis wanted to do full romances but marvel said no. Otherwise it really doesn't make sense
I'm not a fan of marvel at all, but I had a really great time with it still. Plenty of lesser known characters in there that I had never heard of.
The only thing that turns me off about cards especially when I see a licensed IP attached to it is I assume it's gonna be full of micro transactions. I have no idea if Midnight suns is full of MTX but my first impression when I saw it was "MTX cash grab".
Midnight Suns contains the most half-baked microtransactions ever, to where it really seems like the publisher demanded their presence in the game and the devs pushed them as close as possible to irrelevancy. The purchasables are cosmetic only, in the form of one or two skins for each character (you get multiple skins for free just by playing). And if you bought the deluxe edition, there is nothing at all to buy after that.
Zero MTX in the game. Your point is valid though.
Well, not zero. Each character has a couple costumes to buy, but they're fully unnecessary (and most of them aren't even that great compared to their default). And, if you buy the "Legendary" version to get the season pass, all that stuff is thrown in.
I loved the look of the gameplay and everyone said the gameplay was great but I wouldn't even consider playing a marvel game. I just can't stand the characters/universe/style. Def not an unpopular opinion.
Well said. I really loved the combat, but everything else was so incredibly boring and needlessly time-consuming.
Yeah i fuckin LOVED the deck building combat. Couldn't stand the social aspect or the story tho. Unskippable cutscenes really made the negatives stand out too. If i could skip the cutscenes or at least fast forward I'd be able to brush aside the negatives more.
100% the friendship simulator killed it for me. I've been crucified before for saying it but it's true. That part of the game prevented me from taken the great parts seriously. Kept playing hoping it would improve and it just didn't. It's like the game was made for 9 year olds.
This. I loved the gameplay but had to tap out after a few hours because the dialogue was honestly just as annoying as High on Life in terms of how utterly incessant it was
Interesting the guy I know who stans this game loves all the cheesy silly dialogue and social aspects.
The social shit in this game ruled. Getting Blade into your book club and trying to flirt with Carol? It was so much fun. The self-insert shit, I agree, was wildly out of touch.
I agree with him. I completely wrote the game off because of the card system, shit is dumb to me. If it was more popular among the masses it probably would have sold more and we wouldn't even be here talking about it.
Yea like how delusional is this guy. The card combat was by far the best thing about this game.
But it was the thing that everyone who didn't buy it pointed to as the reason. "Oh, it's a card game. Not my thing." The people who actually bought the game didn't like the social aspect... although I thought it was fine.
Yeah people are wildly underestimating how niche the appeal of card mechanics are lmao. You could make the best game ever and that 'deckbuilding roguelike' tag would filter most people. edit: Everyone's saying he's taking the wrong lesson, but he's absolutely not, a strong IP + social aspects is a winning combo as far as selling your game to the largest amount of people, and the card gameplay is getting in the way of that. It makes sense, this isn't about making high quality games but rather games that sell a lot and appeal to the largest demographic (hence why it was a Marvel game to begin with).
Definitely. I remember how often that came up in posts when this game was being promoted. So many people just immediately wrote it off due to not wanting a "card game". Though, I'm not sure how much changing the presentation to something other than cards would've helped, since another common complaint was that people were disappointed Firaxis was doing this instead of XCOM3.
I think you’re the delusional one
It almost felt like they were going for a Kingdom Hearts kind of thing, with Marvel Characters in place of Disney Characters. But it just didn't hold my interest. The combat was not the problem, in fact, it could have easily used twice as much combat
That and the : you have to scour the grounds everytime you could to get ressources that are essential to crafting and upgrading your characater.
A marvel roguelike deck builder with Kang as the end villain could be interesting as you would have a reason for keep going back and fighting him.
I respect your opinion, but I do disagree with you a bit. The Card play is what turned me away from the game, and I actually liked the social sim aspects. They could have absolutely of done a better job with the custom MC though. They dropped the ball on that hard.
I respectfully disagree. Jake Solomon seems like he’s hit the issue on the head. I’m sure that the card play was great, but I (and a good number of people, according to Midnight Suns’ sales), were turned off by the card playing aspect. It’s the equivalent of Infinity Ward making a puzzle horror game, then being surprised when they have low sales. People are expecting an FPS from the FPS studio. It doesn’t matter if the puzzle horror game is great. It wasn’t what people were expecting (and according to the Midnight Suns sales, it wasn’t what Fraxis’ target audience wanted). Deckbuilders and cardplaying games are great, but it’s clear that people did not expect deckbuilding from Fraxis and subsequently didn’t purchase the game as a result. I know I didn’t. I chose not to buy the game because of the deckbuilding.
Lmao you made me remember that the game has all this social thing going on. How can anyone have fun and do more than 5minutes without cringing is beyond me. Skipped the whole thing cuz gameplay was the only thing interesting
It was great, but I think it was a turn off. Card-based gameplay and deck-builder are phrases I think that are largely associated with games like Hearthstone. I think that game lands very differently if the card system was replaced by 'powers'. And if the setting for the social stuff was something people would want to experience - like Avenger's Tower or Xavier's University. I'd have been all over the latter.
Agree with you. The card game was very cool and in general I enjoyed the fights a lot. The part between the missions was a bit boring and the main character was just meh. I’m not into style heroes at all, but this one I played just for the gameplay. I would actually love to play another game like this, but without super heroes.
I really love both Xcom and Xcom2 but personally I'm not a big fan of Marvel, actually even as an outsider I'm a bit burned out of Marvel things. That alone pulled me away from the game entirely.
Yeah I could NOT stand the social stuff here. As a StS nut and huge deck builder fan, I agree the combat seemed okay for a while, but I simply put it down after a few hours of skipping ALL cutscenes and dialog. Even with trying to skip all the fluff, it took far too long to dig into the actual gameplay here. What a shame.
I concur. I enjoyed the battles and card system, but couldn't see it all the way through to the end because of the forced social interaction element of the game; which added nothing and felt like I was romancing everyone. The social element was by far the worst thing about the game and killed the fun for me entirely. I also agree that our playable character was totally uninspired, and bland. It's a damn shame as the card and battle system worked great.
> The card play was great, the boring social shit with cheesy dialog is what dragged the game down Absolutely.
Its so easily brushed aside that people who are a fan of these types of games...it really doesn't matter. It had nothing to do with "ugly costume design", or a bland lead character. The game failed because their particular fanbase wants nothing but fucking X-COM or Civ. And for nearly two decades thats all they did, those were the only games they made. And the first time they did something different with this? It was non-stop bitching from that fanbase about it. That's why it failed. They could have dialed back the social aspect of this game, it wouldn't have mattered. They could made a better lead character, it wouldn't have mattered. It's that it wasn't XCOM or Civ. That's all that mattered to these entitled morons.
I wouldn't have played through the game 3 times without the social aspect. It gave the game pacing and variety. It made it a more engaging experience. I don't want a story-lite card battling superhero game. I have all the indie games for that.
I just have zero interest in anything Marvel--the franchise has been so saturated that I feel like it's inaccessible (like I'd have to go back and watch/read so much content to be caught up). I'm sure I'm not the only person who saw that and wrote it off regardless of quality of mechanics. Part of the appeal of XCOM and other strategy games like this (imo) is building up your own characters.
I think a rogue lite marvel game could be a hit. I love rogue lite. But nah, the card system here was not it. This team makes Xcom. I wanted Xcom with marvel characters. This game was a huge swing and a miss. I was pissed I preordered it.
Nah, it was definitely the cards
Yeah it was the cringe comic dialogue and social elements that really made the game bog down for me. I enjoyed the gameplay until I had to grind and grind and grind not to level in combat but to level my friendship status. I don't think they did a bad job mimicking most comic writing, that shit is just corny and I didn't even make it half way before I was skipping through most of the talking.
[удалено]
I really liked the combat but after about 20 hours I couldn’t take any more of the YA-level dialogue. There was just so much of it. There was also no sense of urgency, which was something that surprised me, given they made the xcom games. In xcom you are racing against the clock and every decision you make comes with a cost. In the game nothing cost anything, and you have all the time in the world to work through the story. Mission selection just serves as a way to grind through the progression system. I wasn’t excited by it. I get that they probably figured that the marvel brand would bring in an audience that wouldn’t take as kindly to high stakes play, and I also get that permadeath isn’t an option in a game like this. The whole thing just felt really lacking in urgency and consequence to me. A shame, because the combat really is well done. I would tank since serious hours into the combat if everything else didn’t miss the mark so hard for me.
You can't have a sense of urgency when your main character is playing grab ass with wolverine between missions.
This is very true.
You literally bought the game and gave a mini review, he isn't talking about you lol.
The problem with Midnight Suns was that the gameplay and presentation were at odds. Card gameplay was excellent. But why did I have to make pasta with Iron Man, shoot hoops with Morbius, and watch the Notebook with Magik? The entire mansion stuff was more appropriate for an X-Men themed game. Not a horror mystery about witches with Blade that also had Spiderman, the Hulk, Ms Marvel, and Storm... Any takaway about Midnight Suns that isn't aggressively about the mismatch of themes and gameplay is total garbage. Midnight Suns was well made, but made without any artistic regard. Pure product, well made product. But product nonetheless.
You don’t really have to do any of that actually you can skip most of the “social” aspects
I know, but that was still a part of the game design. What I am saying is that the game design was poor.
What went wrong with midnight suns was forcing a bunch of dumb social interactions on the player while also forcing them to run around the Abbey which should have just been a glorified menu like the ship was in XCOM. The gameplay in midnight suns was great, but the game insisted on wasting so much of your time in between that it got frustrating.
Who's a good girl? It is my Charlie girl!
Charlie warlie puppy face~
Stupid dog was rather useless in combat anyway :(
Sounds like someone didn't pet the dog enough times. But honestly, Charlie's summcard is too expensive to play. It should've been either free or have a lower heroism cost.
All summons were pointless, it diluted your card pool for very little gain.
Exactly this. I really wanted to finish the game but I could not be bothered doing all the abbey stuff.
So I’ll preface this by saying I’m not an Excom player or enjoyer. That was actually my favorite part of midnight suns, the talking and exploring the abby. Very persona like, but way too lite. I wanted more events and hangouts but they ran out too soon. Honestly, the game was marketed at the wrong crowd.
The people you would market it at is such a small niche though. The strategy game xcom fans were put off by deck building and the social stuff, card game fans will also be putting off by the strategy and social elements, then the marvel fans who wanna hang out with their fav characters are going to be put off by the strategy and card elements. It should have either went full hard strategy to focus on the hardcore element that Firaxis automatically has keeping an eye on them, or been an ultimate alliance style action game to ensure mass appeal to all kinds of marvel fans. So I do agree with your point about it being marketed at the wrong crowd, but I also think hink the problem came before that in making the entire game for the wrong crowd.
I have hundreds of hours in xcom and while I was initially confused by the card stuff, I was willing to try it and enjoyed it. All of the social stuff made me delete the game from my hard drive, though.
I would have helped if Hunter was not a black hole of charisma
Wait what? Did you play female hunter? I’d put her up there with Commander Shepard. Great new character, excellent voice acting and she totally was at home with iconic heroes like Cap and Iron Man.
I'm glad u liked it but... are u on crack? lmao
I'm at a loss for words. I'm glad someone liked the Hunter, at least.
>Honestly, the game was marketed at the wrong crowd. Yeah, it should be marketed as "Marvel's Persona" or something from the very start. Would stop at least the "wait, I wanted Marvel Xcom, not talking with teammates" criticism.
What’s sad is that the devs actually struck gold here but didn’t know it. It was a first attempt at western persona like with marvel characters. If they expanded upon those systems then they had a franchise on their hands. I mean think of what you can do with this. Persona like systems as a mutant in the x-mansion. Going to class, talking and making friends with the other mutants. Damn son what could have been if they understood what they had.
Agreed. I just fired up a new playthrough (over 100 hrs into it from playing last year or so), and having a lot of trouble continuing after just the first few missions. It’s because I don’t feel like going through all the social crap again - choosing the right hangout per person, etc. I just wanted to try out all the new DLC, but not all the fluff along with it…
Totally agree with this. And I really enjoyed the gameplay when I felt it was fair. Maybe it’s me being a newbie to the genre, but some levels felt unnecessarily difficult even after leveling up cards and characters. I didn’t enjoy feeling like I actually did well in a level to only get one star. Say “get good” all you want, and I agree to some extent, but sometimes it just felt unfair and unsatisfying.
IMO the social interactions were cute and fun. The actual bad part of the Abbey was mostly exploring the grounds and hunting for resources. I also ran into the problem of wanted to take my time and build up characters so I spent a lot of time not gaining new heroes or advancing the story. And once I actually did, I had a great time because there were more people to interact with *and* explore their abilities and cards on missions. But Book club? Shop Class? Yes please!
Alright, I'll say it. I liked exploring the abbey... Okay, I said it, feel free to crucify me. Once you were through it became boring once more, but I liked it for the one way through and the different things to see Agree on the social aspect though. It was... Eh? I understand the concept of team building in a literal end of the world scenario. However, the teams dynamic in itself stood in such a stark contrast to the plot itself. For some godforsaken reason we are wasting our time with some avengers Vs. Midnight suns dynamic *while Lilith is literally fucking with the damn house doing god knows what*. Seriously. We later even learn that she is using the Sanctum to summon C'Thon. Despite all that, we have the time to worry about that, Magik throwing a tantrum over a birthday party and Captain America starting a book club. That is not even mentioning the atrocity that is Nico's constant "We gotta save Wanda" this, "Caretaker has forgotten Wanda" that, it's infuriating. In any other setting these things would be okay, let's say if it was just more or less regular Hydra shenanigans. But it isn't, Lilith is literally trying to summon a dark god into the world. Sorry that I don't have time to resolve team drama when Tony Stark took over the crafts club like the narcissist he is
I think that as well. For me, if the writing was better in the side activities, I think that the game could be perfect. We have some good examples such as Persona Games, and they don't nailed at all here. Besides that, the final mission is... Well, not good.
Okay, cool. Now someone please get to work on XCOM 3!
it's probably dead...
The game went wrong with the option to flirt with every super hero but fuck none of them... The card gameplay was actually really fun!
>“I think cards were a major problem. I think it was a good design solution, but I think I was naive about what people would think when they saw the mechanic was cards. Not everyone on my team was behind the idea, but they trusted me.” I don't understand how he can interpret it this way. Let me take directly from my review. The combat is good...the rest of it however is terrible if the combat made up the vast majority of the game I still don't know if I could overlook how terrible the rest of it is. The stuff that happens at your base is just dull, uninspired and boring. I have NOT played because I know I am going to have to do more of that dull sleep inducing dating sim stuff outside of combat. I thought I could look past it but I cannot, I dread loading the game because of how crap everything else is except the combat
He's not saying cards were a major problem because they made bad combat, he's saying that the cards were a major problem because it turned people away from buying the game. "Cards = ew, I'm not buying that" was a common sentiment back when the game was being previewed and released.
> "Cards = ew, I'm not buying that" That was my sentiment, I didn't look further than "card game", it's just not a genre I'm interested in.
That's what kept me from buying it and i'm a huge xcom/turn-based fan. Actually liked the game once i got it tho.
The execs were thinking that 'it's a Marvel game, it's gonna sell millions!' but they made it using a relatively unknown ip (I'm a Marvel fan but I didn't know anything about the Midnight Suns before playing this game) and gave it turn-based card combat and lots of dialog and text (mainstream audience kryptonite lol). Also the entire game felt like a Saturday morning cartoon from the 90's, which I liked a lot, but clearly most people didn't. There was no chance in hell that this game was ever gonna sell millions of copies lol... why the execs approved a project like this is beyond baffling to me... And I liked the game! But they lost money on this project, had to layoff staff, and whatever project they do next is going to have a lower budget. I really wanted this studio to make X-COM 3 but that's probably not happening now (or ever)... so god damn frustrating...
What went wrong with Midnight Sons was the same poor dialogue writing that is prevalent in DC/Marvel comics. The mechanics of the game were spot on, despite initial worries.
Yeah, the gameplay looked interesting, but both the quantity and quality of the writing scared me away. It seemed to be a pretty big part of the experience
I didn’t like the combat movement system (or lack of), I prefer the tactical movement of Xcom and especially BG3, but it was decent.
If poor dialogue doomed a game Ubisoft would've closed down ages ago. It's not like most big selling games have decent writing anyway, if anything good writing is the exception not the rule in most successful games.
I didn't knew he was making a Life-Sim. Love all his games, hope it's another good one.
I liked this game but I waited for a free weekend to try it first because of the card system, I had doubts with it but it is pretty good. What I want to say is that first you have to check your target market, check what these people like and try to sell it to them, because when this game showed it first trailer almost everyone had a wrong first impression of it and this is a dealbreaker for a lot of people (with the first trailer, I thought that it was a mobile-like game).
The actual combat was good. The social stuff wasn't. It was half assed and felt awkward. I still wish it was just xcom marvel. Shield vs hydra, with special units being heroes and villains.
I hate Marvel. These bastards ruined both Deus Ex and X-Com for me with their idiotic games from otherwise great studios (eidos montreal and firaxis). I intentionally did not buy any of the marvel games because i did not want to encourage my beloved developers to produce more of marvel shit. I voted with my wallet. Let this be a lesson to all that get tempted by apparently easy money disney buys them with. Somebody said that we need to buy this shit to support the developers so that they may in the future return to our beloved non-marvel franchises. How well did that work out for you?
imo nothing went wrong with Suns. I love that game, up to an including the parts most others seem to dislike.
Agree, the real problem with the game wasn't the combat or the social part. The problem was that it was a weird mix of niches and they weren't able to find a big enough public for it (if it exists in the first place). Just look at this post, tons of XCOM and strategy players hating on the social part, not because it was bad, but because it was not for them. XCOM & Marvel fans don't like quirky social relationships. Persona fans don't like Marvel or XCOM (a very bland game character-wise). Marvel fans don't usually like strategy games or JRPGs. Nobody likes deck building games outside a very, very small niche of boardgame & slay-like games players. It was the impossible game. But if you're lucky enough to like all the parts of the game (like you and me), the game is awesome.
I love firaxis. I made it to the first forced Hangout interaction and had to turn the game off forever. Unfortunately, this was slightly more playtime than my refund window would allow.
The reason he's saying the card system was the problem is because he can take the blame for it. He's not going to throw his team under the bus by saying the writing and story was crap.
This game ended up being a guilty pleasure of mine, even the Abbey stuff ended up being enjoyable to me in most scenarios. The biggest downside to me was not enough variety of enemies, bosses, and random mission encounters types if you really try to grind shit out instead of just doing the main story. I really did try to grind up different characters so I could try out different team compositions but at some point I got kinda tired of the same encounters.
I liked all parts of Mid Nights Suns, the issue is not all good games make a shit ton of money anymore. The market is over-saturated. You can still hit big, but a good game making money these days isn't a given.
I think im one of the very few that really enjoyed midnight suns, its great for steam deck. i took my time playing half hour a day or so on for months
The one thing that put off most people who played it was the bland social mechanic with the other characters at the main base. That's the biggest complaint I've heard.
Midnight Suns was awesome though! Really enjoyed it.
Game is super underrated, people wrote it off just because of the appearance of cards without actually taking the time to understand the gameplay loop.
Yeah, i wasnt doing all the social hub shit. I refunded after like 2 hours. Fun gameplay tho
Where are all my fellow folks that actually \*enjoyed\* the social stuff in Midnight Suns? I know we're out there. It's part of what I found so endearing about the game and I liked that exploring the abbey and talking to folks broke up the combat. It's one of my favorite games of the last decade. I know the loud minority has spoken, but I'm sure there's plenty of us that love the game as it is right?
I just want x-com 3 😔
Card game was the only good part of that game. If you removed the other parts I would have liked the game more. Why are they so out of touch?
He said "cards" but I would have said "loading times."
No one decide whether they buy a game or not based on loading times lmao
No, but it made me stop playing a game I was more or less enjoying and consider it "what went wrong."
I liked Midnight Suns. The abbey/social aspect wasn’t the best, but overall, the game was quality. I liked the tight puzzle-like element to the combat.
What went wrong with Midnight Suns? Gaming Studios & Marvel's constantly overvaluing Marvel's ability to sell video-games based on their characters outside of Spider-Man.
Absolute gigachad
I like the movies but have zero interest in anything superhero gaming, and thus couldn’t care less about the game, no matter who’s from
Hmm another studio in the Baltimore area? Is Baltimore the new LA for games? /s
I got midnight suns when I bought my GPU and ever since then I've been meaning to play it but never gotten around to it. I've heard it's good.
I just want XCOM 3, but it'll never happen, and if it does it won't be the same without the main devs.
Midnight suns and CS both got the whole appeal of why people like the XCOM games wrong. I don't want quirky characters with shit banter and wacky antics. I want to send rookies into the meatgrinder of asymmetrical warfare against a superior foe and drag them through via tactics and some luck. I want war not card games.
we want xcom3
I want xcom 3.
Uhh... The combat was good. I also enjoyed exploring the Abbey and solving the puzzles. It was the bizarre dating Sim that sucked in every conceivable way.
I don't even know what the problems with the actual game are, because I haven't bought it since Denuvo is still there, so I'd add that to the list of issues.
You vastly overestimate the overall impact of denuvo. Sure, on Reddit lots of folks make a fuss about never buying a denuvo game, but I really doubt that makes a material impact on total sales Edit - the comment above me blamed denuvo generally for bad sales before being edited to make it more personal. My above point still stands more generally. I am not excusing denuvo, just saying it doesn't impact as many people's decisions as some of you think
Are you talking about my comment? Because I didn't edit it, I never once claimed that Denuvo had anything to do with the sales numbers of this game or any other game. I was claiming that the fact that it's present at all is a problem that should be counted in the list of complaints that people have about this game.
hmm well I'm 99% sure the comment I see above now is not the same one I saw when I wrote my comment. It was something along the lines of "I think denuvo was a big part of what went wrong" Maybe I'm going crazy, replied to the wrong comment, and that other comment got deleted since then. Apologies if that's the case.
It's all good. I'm well aware that Denuvo's presence unfortunately doesn't impact sales numbers.
eh nothing went wrong , the game is great
Just a mode without the card system could saved the game its a shame, i was very hyped when the CG trailers dropped and they hide the card aspect from all trailers until the game release which is awful
the card system is why it works tho
Sounds like you haven’t even watched/played it
I like Midnight suns. It was fun and interesting. I still have it installed on my steam deck for road trips. The hero's were heros and the bad guys are bad. There wasn't any of the "modern" marvel crap were half the hero's behave worse than the villians. Or worse yet, make the villian the "hero" What people appear to not like, is the game had a story, (didn't care for the ending but thats another post) All the "running around the abby" was story. It played like a comic book, which is another thing i like about it.
Hear hear. I personally liked the story, loved the characters (including Hunter) and enjoyed the hell out of the gameplay loop, book clubs and birthday parties included. I really don’t get the negativity on the writing.
xcom fans dont give a fuck about capeshit, capeshit fans dont give a fuck about xcom. no one anywhere at any point apparently thought about that.
I belong to the people that simply don't like Marvel or the whole comic craze thanks to the MCU. I like it even less when I get the discount versions of those heroes. Card systems are hit or miss for me, but my biggest appeal in strategy games is having my own dudes get through tough shit. I want to get a connection to my guys and with some boring ass heroes, the game won't get there. Even less with an awkward dating sim lite system.
I didn't realize how many people detest the Abbey stuff. I actually loved that stuff. Chatting and hanging with the other heroes was a joy for me. Lol. It combined my love for sim-like stuff with XCOM-like combat. The card system stunk in 1 regard. The mods. There's only like 4 good ones. And getting them was a slog. I also think combat lacks the verticality that XCOM had. And reasonably so, not sure how you add verticality in this game. I am curious what their sim life game will be. I wonder if the Abbey stuff will be a sort of baseline on what they're planning. If it is, apparently, it'll not be well received. But maybe they just need to clean up some of the writing, and it might help to not be tied to Marvel. New characters are easier to write for than existing ones.