Topic: 🍁 PUSH SQUARE GAME CLUB 🍁 | November | The Plucky Squire ⚔️

sorry can't save the world today, gonna be busy running around the woods picking mushrooms.
Why?
I don't know.

@CaptD
yes exactly that! Have put about 5 hours in so far and I reckon maybe an hour of that is the actual combat part. Think I will have to abandon the trophy hunt on this one and just go for completing the game. 60-90 hours is probably too much for me!

Hi gang. Played around ten hours, unfortunately I have since got distracted by Helldivers 1 and PSVR2 so progress has been very slow.
Quite enjoy it though and I actually like the numerous cutscenes etc,, in order to break up one similar fight after another (at the moment at least)
I dropped the difficulty down to Story mode as I didn't fancy playing a 15 minute fight and then to lose at the end, cowardly perhaps but I'm here for the card playing (I'm a newbie) and the characters.

I will say though that they missed a trick and didn't include action banners such as "Pow" and "Whack", just like they used to do in the 60s Batman tv show.

Around 15 hours in but think I've only done 3 (maybe 4?) main story missions as I mainly select side quest stuff to keep characters over levelled for the game.
Again I am enjoying it but for me there is just too much to find, read, talk to, busy work.

@CaptD
Guess we're different in that regard as I would happily play multiple missions back to back without the talky stuff in between if I had the option to.
You have any favourite characters yet? Personally am loving Captain Marvel especially when she goes binary!

Do enjoy the character animations during battle, in particular the heroic combo cards.

@sorteddan Yeah I like Captain Marvel as well but Blade is good as well. I really don't know much about the Marvel universe, I even got Captain Marvel confused with Captain America before I booted up the game and I knew nothing of Captain Marvel until now. I do know Bruce Banner (don't make him angry) and Blade (also a good idea to not make him angry) and everyone knows Spidey. I guess this is why I like the cutscenes because it is all (mostly) new to me.

And yeah the combo animations etc.. are great.

Throwing all caution to the wind, I decided to start Marvel’s Midnight Suns whilst simultaneously still playing my way through Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. I’m really enjoying Spider-Man 2 (I’m about 50% through) but I was interested to play another deck builder card game after the success of Inscryption. So if I go into Marvel overdose and start bumbling one liners like "If You're Nothing Without The Suit, Then You Shouldn't Have It” or "I Can Do This All Day” or "That's My Secret — I'm Always Angry”… well then please ban my account and call the mental asylum.

I’m early in Midnight Suns — just an hour or so, but enjoying it so far. They really didn’t market this game very well. It looks like it’s going to be a fully fleshed out sim / RPG with relationships, storylines, exploration, and collectibles. The card game part so far is rather simple. It plays more like a turn-based RPG where the actions during combat just happen to be randomized as cards instead of fixed in a menu. I guess time will tell if the deck-building aspect get more strategic like Inscryption. I assume it will. And if so, it’s looking to be a fantastic hybrid game which borrows from so many genres.

Playing side-by-side with Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 does expose the voice acting, dialogue, and general writing as fairly mid-tier in comparison to Sony first party. Midnight Suns really doubles down on the MCU style of quippy humor and somewhat corny writing for these characters, rather than making it heavier and more dramatic like Insomniac’s games. Which is fine, by the way. It almost feels like the kind of game that I had wished Square-Enix’s Avengers game would have been. That game was just a total failed opportunity. It’s too bad the MCU has fizzled and become shunned over the last couple years, because I imagine Midnight Suns would have really been more successful if it would have come out a couple years earlier before the MCU and Metaverse oversaturation point. Because there’s really some early charm here with the character interactions and how cool of an idea it is to have this Meta story where all these heroes are hanging out and interacting together. It’s a fanboy’s dream. So it’s too bad it got mislabeled as a card game, which is so much more of a niche genre. Despite liking Marvel, I had not considered the game until I enjoyed another card game which opened my eyes to the possibility of maybe liking it, whereas so far, the card game aspects don’t feel very overbearing.

Anyways, that’s a lot of early impressions on a game I’m barely out of the tutorial for. I suspect I’ll have a lot more to say as the days go by.

Well I have recently completed another couple of story missions and have been suitably impressed with the cinematic spectacle of both and how the plot is progressing.

I've solely been selecting the light option when available and only using light ability cards in battle and got the balance up to almost 100 now. Wondering if either of you are playing more balanced or even going dark?

I've become increasingly attached to Nico as part of my team as her unpredictable magic stuff can really be fun to use, especially Witchfire - that's currently my favorite.

@Th3solution
Yeah I agree with your point that it might have been more successful if it had released a couple of years earlier, before many of us succumbed to superhero fatigue.
And the deck building does start to play more of a part as you go on, more in deciding how you want the composition to be for each character. But I don't think you can go too far wrong as some facilities you can build later allow you to create new cards so even if you get rid of the ones you need you can always get them back (don't quote me on that).

@sorteddan Picking only the light options hey?! I sense someone who is going to go for the platinum. 😂
In all fairness the light options seem to me to be usually the correct (or civil) response....so far at least.

@CaptD
No I'm actually not thinking of doing that! Though I may persuade myself otherwise later. I'm just trying to get all the perk unlocks for the light side as quick as I can.

Actually really enjoying it now, after another longer sesh today think I'm around 30 hours in, on game day 26 and am about to go searching for the third power word so I can explore more of the abbey.

So I've been making steady (slow) progress with this. Completed Act 1, the New York stages and now maybe halfway through the next set.

I've maxed out friendship levels with Captain Marvel and Nico aswell as the team friend level. Have now acquired all of the words of power so can freely explore all of the abbey areas (I think!).

Playing on normal skill level I find it surprising how many times I've barely scraped to victory when all seemed almost lost. Maybe that's an in built mechanic to make it seem more perilous!? I haven't actually failed any mission yet so unsure what happens when you do, whether it puts you back to restart it or just allows you to try again the next day? Saying that I do manage to squeak most of them with one of two star rating.

Still sometimes get bogged down by the amount of conversations it pushes me into having and the amount of text I need to read between missions and still mostly impressed with the cinematic spectacle and experience of the cut scenes and animations. Am gonna try and focus on the story missions and see if I can get somewhere close to finishing over the next week.

I too have completed act 1, just this morning in fact but I have been main lining the story missions. I only have a couple of words of power some of the abbey is still closed to me...I need the Word which breaks the cracked walls I think.
Haven't maxed out any relationships or such like but I did remember to pet the dog for 15 days...daft trophy and it is trophies like that that give trophy hunting a bad name.

Now I just need to find that damn cat.

Just done some more. Scarlet Witch is now is the house. Well in the abbey which is kind of my house anyways.

@CaptD
The break walls spell is the last one. The third is the remove vines and thorns away magic but the plot sends you straight in its direction when it's ready to.

With the demon dog (Charlie Wharley Puppyface) I've got mixed feelings... I like how petting it gives you random crap and I enjoy the blood gate battles where it gets involved but taking it for a walk round the grounds can be really frustrating. Make sure it stays close otherwise it has a really annoying tendency of getting stuck behind a rock or a tree and then staying in place until I go back and find it.

As for the cat I just did a run round the building everyday. If you get close it meows and then appears on the map... And petting it also gives random crap 😼 👍

@sorteddan @CaptD You both have really made some nice progress. I’m ashamed to report that my own pace has been much slower. I have only played an hour or two since my last update. With this month flying by at breakneck speed (seriously, there’s just about a week left until May!) I certainly won’t get anywhere near completing the game by the end of month.

I do think it’s one I’ll stick with though. I like the gameplay loop and the whole relationship and collecting aspects. The pace needed to be ramped up, to be sure, but I’m glad to have a Fire Emblem: Three Houses type of game on PlayStation. At least I think I’ve read that this game is similar in structure, just with a Marvel backdrop and the strategy battle system has the card deck builder coating on it. Maybe someone who has a Switch and played Three Houses can confirm.

Speaking of, I did (finally!) acquire a PlayStation Portal and part of my last few days has been messing around with that, and so it’s taken some of my gaming time. I’ll post more on that personal adventure in a separate appropriate thread, but Midnight Suns looks to be a perfect game for the device.

My only major complaints about the game other than the pacing is still the cheap knock-off feel of the writing and some voice acting. That statement makes it sound a lot worse than it actually is, but I do feel like the narrative and character structure is caught between being a related extension of the MCU and being its own thing. Again, I can’t help but compare it to Insomniac’s Spider-Man and its treatment of the source material, and Sony just did a much better job of straddling that line. Midnight Suns is closer to the Avengers game in that regard where the characters are an uncanny representation of their silver screen counterparts and it can be distracting. I’ll admit that I have no knowledge of the original comic book source material, so that ignorance might be making it come across more MCU ‘copycat’ to me. Perhaps the MCU movies also come across a weird half versions of the comic book characters, in which case this version of them is probably more par-for-the-course of an adaptation. But it’s pretty clear that you’ve got, for example, Tony Stark’s VA doing his best Robert Downey Jr impersonation rather than making the character his own. Whereas Dr Strange and Scarlet Witch seem like a different version of their respective characters, with Spider-Man and Captain Marvel being somewhere in between. In fact, SM/Peter Parker being voiced by Yuri Lowenthal makes it that much more disorienting, ironically.

Ok I think I've played enough now to be able to have an opinion so I'm just gonna come out and say it...

I really don't care what costume the characters are wearing or what colour it is.
Yes controversial I know but that's just how I feel.
The game really seems to want me to care, like most times I open legendary chest i'm rewarded with a couple of legendary palettes. I don't even check who they are for or what they look like. Now if the costumes actually changed anything like buffing stats or specific abilities then I'd be more inclined to check things out but making Ghost Rider wear green ... Meh. Maybe it's just me.

@Th3solution
I kind of know what you mean about the voice acting, especially regarding Iron Man doing an less than impressive impression of Iron Man. I also think whenever Dr Strange pops up I think wait you're not that Cumberbatch bloke. Think I've just been brainwashed by decades of MCU.

Made it to act 3 and completed the first couple of missions today. And @CaptD you were probably right about me going for the plat... I seem to have been going out of my way to tick off the random trophies like defeating a villain with a combo and using 3 legendary moves in one battle etc. Think it's gonna require NG+ for the dark balance though, oh well it's not like I have anything better to do.

Friendly nudge. Any more votes for May, please pop them in by Sunday 👍

Ta!

@Bundersvessel I have a vote but I’m reluctant to give it because I suspect I won’t have the time to play it and I don’t want to sway the result and then not participate. I’m likely going to still be playing Midnight Suns for much of May since I got a late start and have been behind ever since.

Suffice it to say that if I make faster progress than anticipated and time opens up then I may jump in, depending on the game. There’s about 3 games on the list that I’m curious enough to try, and one that is a definite to play from my backlog.

@Bundersvessel How about Raji : An ancient epic? A short game i believe, on Ps Plus Extra.
But I'm happy to go with the flow, I know Dave the Diver is on the list but I was going to delay that for a patch or two as I heard it was a little crash prone. This might have been fixed in a recent patch but I was going to wait and see how things go.

@sorteddan So I've unlocked the Light trophy and I'm thinking I should just start dumping into the Dark side. Is that what you are doing? Or do you expect the Light/Dark stat to just reset on NG+?
I expect it to reset but if it doesn't then it is best to start a NG otherwise it will take twice the amount to swing it from one extreme to the other.

Well I've just watched the credits roll on Marvels Midnight Suns... and the expected Marvel end credit scenes..

The end battle was spectacularly epic and im not going to give any of the mechanics or gimmicks away but I would recommend you head into it with a somewhat balanced squad. I do like how the game encouraged me to mix and match in this regard, rather than just focussing on a couple of heroes as I was planning to. However saying that I will stick with my earlier assertion that Nico is awesome!

Took around 65 hours all told which is the most hours I've put into any game for a long while. Also did it in around mid 60s game days so you can probably figure out averages from that yourselves.

There were a few issues that I mentioned in earlier posts that would have made it better or more enjoyable for me but the vast amount of hours I've put in over the last few weeks suggest I did really enjoy it regardless.

@CaptD
My first thought was to do both in one run but a few internet sources suggest it would be quicker to do in NG+. Yes the light/dark balance does reset, you can skip all cut scenes, have all early/plot conversations again and if you only have dark cards equipped you can take Hunter into threat room everyday for another couple of bonus dark points. Doing it on your first run would require a 400 point swing which even if you did it optimally would need around 70-100 missions (game days) from where you are!

And since that is the only trophy I have left to achieve I think we all know I'll be jumping straight back in.

@sorteddan Well done on finishing it so promptly, you still have a week before the end of the month.
I'm surprised you aren't a little burnt out from our band of heroes, I'm starting to feel that I need a break and I haven't finished Act 2 yet.
Trust you didn't find that challenge arena too difficult, getting to round three. I've been reading up on cheesing tactics for it. 😂

@CaptD
Oh threat room was fairly easy tbh. Most characters have a quick move and knockback ability using those with a bit of positional awareness can see you through. I maybe only failed to survive a couple of times and then I had a fair idea of which cards in the deck were causing the problem - too many heroics or skills for example. I would recommend with completing them in roster order or keeping a note of who you completed with to save issues later when you can't remember!

I just put that into the daily routine for a while, doing one with the next character before the days mission so didn't seem like a grind. Also worth noting that you can use the combat ability tonic things in threat room and they get refunded afterwards so you don't need to worry about that. And as soon as you get to the third round you can play the conceal one and end your turn and you automatically win should you need to. The other one I found useful was the one that gives lifesteal on all attacks for when you leave too many alive and take a few hits and need to recover health.