Midnight Suns

Pages

A place to discuss the Firaxis game Midnight Suns. Please use spoiler tags for things that could be considered spoilers.

Thanks, bear.

Played the intro tutorial, and character creation this morning. Runs well, fun dialog, lots of characters. Will get into the meat of it later today/tonight as kids allow.

Honestly didn't watch much previews or anything. Firaxis plus Marvel, I was getting this no matter what. But didn't realize it was card based. Nice to find in the tutorial that you could use environmental attacks with leftover points though. Hopefully there will be enough things in maps to use so that you aren't always stuck with only 3 actions.

So??? First impressions?

It’s basically a turn based tactical card battler, with 2d positioning. It’s more puzzle like than I expected, I’ve seen comparisons to Into the Breach. Layered on that appears to be a BioWare style relationship system that gives you perks for combat, crafting, and a big Marvel style story with lots of quips. I’m barely an hour into it, mind you, but so far I dig it.

It's had surprisingly good reviews so I preordered it. Looking forward to giving it a go tonight

I was getting more and more skeptical as the game neared release and people started describing it as more Three Houses than XCOM but in the end, my love of what the XCOM team does won out over my lack of any feelings towards Marvel and I picked this up. Played through the first boss (miniboss?) battle last night.

Spoiler:

Venom

So far, really enjoying the combat and haven't spent a ton of time in the non-combat portion of the game. Had a few characters level up last night just before I quit and have no idea what that means. The dialog is very quippy and despite my best efforts to be a serious gamer who doesn't laugh at bad jokes, I did at least smirk at some of them.

Anyone playing this on console?

Too many big recent releases I'm digging into to add more to my plate just yet, but I'm really stoked for this and will likely grab it late this month or early January

Balthezor wrote:

Anyone playing this on console?

PS5, yes

Kind of wish I had picked it up on Switch or PS5. You could at least pause with sleep mode then.

Over on PC I'm stuck when I need to stop in the middle of any scene. Really annoying just today after lunch, kids got into something and I had to walk away. Missed that first boss intro.

ESC or mouse just offer you a skip. Alt-tab keeps game running but muted. Really weird a single player game in 2022 that you can't pause.

I’m trying very hard not to buy this right now. My plate is full with Persona 5 Royal, GOW Ragnarok, and Marvel Snap.

But this seems totally my jam. I was watching a twitch streamer, CohhCarnage, stream the early parts of the game. The character he created looked hilarious. He had this huge mane of voluminous hair, a trimmed beard, and looked like a cheesy cover model for a romance novel. It was cracking me up. I could go for some superhero melodrama and funny tactical combat

I can’t tell if that pic is working because I’m on my phone but here is the direct link https://imgur.io/a/bjopkez

IMAGE(https://imgur.io/a/bjopkez)

Image tag is broken. On mobile I have to long press, open image in new tab, and then copy that URL instead of the one you posted to make the tag work.

But the link works.

I'm still very keen on this after reading through some reviews, but I think I'm going to give it a few weeks before hopping in.

My experience with Chimera Squad was severely soured by bugs and performance issues during launch. I don't want a repeat of that here.

Toddland wrote:
Balthezor wrote:

Anyone playing this on console?

PS5, yes

How is it? Only played XCOM and 2 on PC. But would like to sit back and relax now that I'm old.

Balthezor wrote:
Toddland wrote:
Balthezor wrote:

Anyone playing this on console?

PS5, yes

How is it? Only played XCOM and 2 on PC. But would like to sit back and relax now that I'm old.

I’m also wondering how this plays with a controller. My back would much rather I play on my tv than my pc.

Also which version did people buy? The legendary edition is $30 more on console but comes with a bunch of skins and the season pass. The season pass on its own is $50.

Yeah I couldn't talk myself into the extras even though it was all 15% off at GMG.

I thought it was just free skins for the same price as game plus pass, though. Didn't realize there was more discount. Too late now

I went with the legendary edition on Xbox. On cyber Monday Target had $25 xbox cards for $20 each. I bought a bunch and had $150 in my account, so I figured why not. I don’t think there is anything else coming out this year I want.

I went with standard. Don't care about skins or extra characters who will come out after I've finished the game.

billt721 wrote:

I went with standard. Don't care about skins or extra characters who will come out after I've finished the game.

I think the new characters come with more story and news missions. I hope you can jump straight to it. If it’s just integrated in the main game and I would have to replay it, I’ll never touch it

I'm buying it eventually. Too much fun right now with Darktide, Verminitide 2, Deserts of Kharak, and yes, WoW Dragonflight.

This game has a surprising dearth of options. There isn’t even an option to turn off subtitles

Steam trouble shooting posts and issues like subtitles makes me think this is a wait for patch. Pity as I really wanted to get it.

Kinda depends on what sort of issues bother you. I'm on a mid-range system (Ryzen 5 5600X, AMD 6800) and have had no issues other than the same hitching-when-entering-a-new-area that I see on pretty much every Unreal engine game I play. I also turn on subtitles on absolutely everything, so if anything that one works out in my favor.

A surprising number of complaints on Steam are of the 'this isn't XCOM' variety, which yeah. They made no secret about that.

The one that worries me is saves not loading as game hitching is not one I can easily track by forum posts.

Oh, eek. I've only played the two hours last night so haven't had to load a save yet. How does something like that get past QA?

Too early to tell how common that issue is but for now I will wait and see. I am sure I will buy it at some point but not just yet.

Well loving the game so far (PC). Actually laughed a few times - very well written. And the battles are a lot of fun. There's definitely a bit of strategy that can be applied to make the rounds go smoother. There are some bits of X-COM in the combat, but it is its own thing.

The game, so far, is fully playable but could use a little TLC. Here's some things I've run in to on the PC:

- fps drops (this is on a 3070 ti). This doesn't impact the combat at all. It's mostly with the cut-sequences or when you get to move around on your own. It's noticeable but not a showstopper.

- Mouth movements are a bit off from the actual dialogue - like a second behind. It's annoying but the next issue kinda helps.

- Unable to turn off subtitles. The audio seems clear so don't need to have these on and they are distraction. But reading the subtitles is preventing me from noticing the mouth movements are off so I guess a trade off right now.

- Some long load times. I do have this running off your standard SATA drive. I imagine if I put it on the SSD it'll be better but one of the loads took like 3 minutes. I did notice though after I made the following change the load times were not as bad.

The game uses the 2K launcher, which from what I'm reading can cause performance issues. To run the game without the launcher do the following:

1. Go to Steam Library
2. Right-Click Midnight Suns
3. Select Properties
4. Navigate to General Tab
5. In Launch Options section add the .exe launcher path, with quotes around it, and add the %command% tag after.

Example:

"D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Marvel's Midnight Suns\MidnightSuns\Binaries\Win64\MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe" %command%

^ Note that's my install directory for Steam, Most people probably have it installed on C: and in the Program Files directory. So, modify the path as needed.

I don't suppose there's a way to disable 2k launcher for Epic?

Not sure it was worth saving $10 to not be on Steam now. Hm...

The game works really well with the dual sense controller. I haven't tried the PC version so I can't compare it, but I can get to everything I need relatively easy on the console. I'm not far enough in the game to form much of an opinion, but I'm enjoying it all so far.

I put in a few hours last night on Series x. The combat seems cool and does control well with a controller. I think it’s a good sign the combat is enjoyable even during the tutorial fights. I’m really looking forward to developing my characters and getting more cards and options in battles.

There is a lot of customization. A lot of it is just aesthetic but I really like that stuff. You can buy and choose different outfits for each character to wear both in battle and at the Abbey. There are a lot of customizations of your room in the Abbey. I was a little concerned because the character creator was limited, but even more options for that open up after you get to the Abbey. I’m assuming there will be more customization options for battle and character builds but I haven’t got that far yet,

So far my concerns or dislikes are relatively minor. As I said above, I would really like to be able to turn off subtitles. I would also like to be able to increase font size. From the couch, card descriptions aren’t the easiest to read. Even if the font was just 25% bigger it would be a huge improvement. The character moves too fast when walking around in third person in the Abbey. I feel like the character is a little out of control. It’s not an huge deal because there is nothing that requires precision but it feels off. Again, another problem that could fixed with some increased options or a slider.

I’m also not sure about the writing. A lot of the dialogue is real quippy and it’s hit or miss. I’m not familiar with Marvel outside of the MCU and video games, so this may be true to the characters, but I didn’t expect Dr. Strange to be riffing like he’s Tony Stark.

Looks like my kind of game. I won't be picking it up anytime soon. I think god of war 2018 was the last game I bought at launch and I'm currently playing it right now. The game might be free or super cheap by the time I get around to playing it.

Pages