“Marvel’s Midnight Suns” is a strategy and tactical roleplaying game set in the universe of Marvel superheroes. Players bring together a group of both favorite and obscure heroes as well as a new, customizable “Hunter” to take on a supernatural force that threatens to destroy the world. Despite the promising premise, “Midnight Suns” vastly underdelivers, feeling more like a battery-eating mobile game than a full-price AAA experience. 

The core gameplay isn’t terrible. Each mission has three heroes from the roster battle with an enemy team in a small area in turn-based combat. All actions are tied to cards that are acquired throughout the game that can be upgraded or deconstructed to craft more powerful attacks. The process of putting the bad guys right where you want them to unleash a move that takes out several at once can be extremely gratifying. The same can be said of using certain environmental attacks, though the arenas of combat are surprisingly flat and unchangeable compared to other games in this genre, such as “XCOM.” It doesn’t help when certain enemies and bosses have annoyingly large health bars or the game throws endless waves of baddies as a “challenge.” The gameplay gets tedious. 

The story is bland but passable; it’s just an excuse to bring a fun team together, but falls apart because of the experience. To the developers’ credit, they got some good voice talent, some of whom have played these characters in other properties. But the dialogue is plagued by poor reading of terrible jokes and sub-subpar animation. One character consistently had a glitch in her left eyebrow in every single cutscene, without exception. The visuals pale in comparison to other games released on the same consoles for the same premium next-gen price. 

The only aspect of the game that really separates it from being a mobile game (which I’m convinced it was until some executive decided it could make more money on consoles) is the explorable homebase area based on the forests of Massachusetts. You’re supposed to explore it to unlock secrets and solve mysteries, but it doesn’t take long to realize that the exploration of that space is entirely unrelated to the rest of the game, except for the few attack cards you might pick up along the way. Your movement feels limited and sparse, as if the whole thing were a last-minute addition. And, like everything else, it feels cheap. 

“Marvel’s Midnight Suns” is an underwhelming cash grab that could have been great. (I didn’t even mention the microtransactions.) An overall disappointing game.