Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger Haha, don't worry about me. More than happy to take a ban for a few days when it's for a good cause. I'm glad to see you ended up reposting your review! Sometimes peer pressure is the perfect medicine. 😛 I was unusually interested in this game considering I'm not really a Star Wars fan (some might even say hater as far as The Mandalorian is concerned), so it was nice reading about the game from a completely different perspective. Considering my relationship with the franchise I probably wouldn't share the same irks you've experienced with it, but I'll definitely make sure to tread lightly!

@JohnnyShoulder Not sacrilege at all, buddy. The closing comments are always where yet another ramble comes to an end, so I reckon they're the best part anyway!

Hope you enjoy Fallen Order as and when, and yes, good call on which version to play! Thank you!

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@Tjuz Thanks; real pleased (and relieved) to see you posting again! What is it about Jedi: Survivor that interests you so much, do you think? Or is it just a general response to its positive reception? I'm not sure how you'll fare, given your non-fan status. I'd like to think it'll help the story considerably, as I've seen a couple of other casual fans respond positively to its developments, whereas the hardcore tend to get caught up in the (arguably insignificant) details. Well, however it grabs you, I just hope you enjoy!

@RogerRoger Awh, thank you! Always glad to see you're still hanging around as well. I may not and probably will never be consistent in posting anywhere, but I'm glad to report I'm doing good at least! I think what it is with me and Jedi: Survivor is that I'm generally just very into spacefaring adventure-type stories. What turned me off of the previous entry was that I heard it was a bit Souls-like and had extensive backtracking, which are two elements I don't appreciate much in games. The visuals there also looked pretty bland to me compared to what I've been seeing from this sequel. I suppose I'm kind of hoping it'll have a similar feel to the Guardians of the Galaxy game from a few years ago since I very much enjoyed that game. I assume this story will be a tad more serious, but hope the spacelike charm mostly stays intact. I've heard this new game improves on the elements I mentioned before and the positive reception also definitely did a lot to pique my interest, so yeah. Those are the expectations! Feel free to correct me on them in case you think I might be disappointed. Probably won't buy it anyway until there's a sizeable discount since I'm not really in the business of paying seventy bucks for a game, haha.

No worries @RogerRoger.

Haven't had a chance to read your review yet properly but I will soon! Very glad to see it back up though!

That impressions piece I was telling you about is already 900 words long... I wasn't trying to be so long winded with it but... I just can't help myself it seems with anything

@Tjuz Glad you're doing well; always enjoy reading your contributions, regardless of how few and far between they might be, so as long as you're okay in those "between" bits, that's all that matters!

No correction needed; I think you've got a solid picture of the game. Survivor still retains the same Souls-like design and gameplay elements as Fallen Order, but the introduction of fast travel at its Meditation Points has all but eliminated backtracking, at least in terms of clearing the story. There are obviously a few puzzles and collectibles that you'd need to come back around for, once you've unlocked the abilities needed to fully traverse every nook and cranny of every environment, but it's mostly optional stuff anyway, so you wouldn't feel obligated to return. It also includes difficulty options, which I don't believe are a thing in FromSoft games, meaning that the tough combat can be made laughably un-tough.

And despite my personal grumbles, it is very charming in its world-building so yeah, based on everything you've said, I wouldn't rush to buy it, but if you see it in a sale someday, twenty bucks or less would leave you pretty pleased with your purchase, I reckon!

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@HallowMoonshadow Thanks; no obligation, as always! Sounds like you're busy writing your own piece anyway, so I'd much prefer you focus on that when possible! Looking forward to it!

Platform: PC, PS4 (version played) and Xbox
Release Date: May 23, 2023

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If nothing else, Resurgence is an apt choice of name. Not only is the wider Star Trek franchise enjoying one heck of a comeback at the moment, making the most of the streaming bubble before it bursts, but this specific game has been primarily created by Dramatic Labs, a self-described "collaboration of 20+ former Telltale writers, developers, designers, artists, and producers" working in partnership with former Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner. Could this be their resurgence, too?

No. I hate to dump on developers but, unfortunately, lessons don't seem to have been learned in the five years since Telltale's infamous "restructuring" because, for better and worse, Resurgence bears all the hallmarks of a classic Telltale title. This is a game that was originally gonna be released over a year ago and yet, limping out of spacedock on Tuesday with little-to-no fanfare, the supposedly final product feels very rushed. It's poorly optimised, packed with familiar bugs and glitches, and looks fugly to boot. This level of performance was at least understandable when Telltale were victims of their own success, enduring extreme crunch to get multiple licenced games finished in time to meet tight deadlines, but here? After such a delay? And with no other distractions? It simply exposes what must be a "well, this'll do" attitude behind the scenes.

I apologise; that feels cruel to conclude, which is why I'm front-loading the technical talk, because there are also a lot of positive points that I wanna get around to (and hey, there's always the possibility of a patch or three). Nevertheless, I guess the most accurate way to describe Resurgence would be to say that, if you've ever played a Telltale game before, you'll know exactly what to expect.

My own experience is quite limited. Like the even-more-prolific LEGO games, I found that Telltale's narrative adventure schtick worked best when I was already invested in the licence at hand. Despite never having played "proper" Borderlands, I enjoyed its spin-off a lot, but then I played both of the Batman games as an established bat-fan and absolutely adored them (the second was especially special). Alas, the common factor between them ended up being a persistence of framerate issues, texture pop-in, audio bugs and transition freezing. I played the Batman ones on PS4 and they fared better, but Borderlands on PS3 was a nightmare, particularly in its action-packed climactic chapter, where each screen-tearing camera cut would take two or three seconds to cycle as dialogue got drowned out by badly-balanced explosions.

Resurgence isn't as dire as all that, but it still commits a lot of the same sins. In the heat of battle, switching from showing the bridge crew to an external space shot makes the game judder and stall, which can undercut the excitement and tension of an otherwise well-crafted scene. Hair and shiny surfaces all suffer from that hideous TAA ghosting that's become so widespread nowadays, although this is definitely one of the most gratuitous examples of it I've ever seen. I was constantly having to pause and tweak the audio settings, as music, sound effects and dialogue all wrestled for dominance on a scene-by-scene basis. Some voice lines cut themselves short, while others looped in place of the next, meaning that I'd miss crucial context. During the big finale, I had to quit and restart because the soundtrack continued to play a sad song from the previous scene over an uplifting momentum-building swell, dampening my victorious mood.

Dramatic Labs' marketing material (which, again, has been practically non-existent, perhaps with good reason) seemed to suggest a native PS5 version but, in actuality, what they meant to say was that Resurgence would be a PS4 game playable on PS5 via backwards compatibility. Even so, when judged by its chosen platform, this is some spectacularly "early days of a new generation" stuff. It'd be childish hyperbole to call it PS3 quality, because it isn't, but it does come close in a few places. I dread to think what it'd be like to play on a PS4. Perhaps morbid curiosity will get the better of me during my second playthrough.

Because yeah, despite seeing its credits roll yesterday (a single run takes ten hours, give or take) I'm gonna be starting Resurgence again. Sure, its trophy list is a 50/50 set of major binary turning points and I do like an easy platinum, but separate from that, I think I'd still be giving it another go.

It's here where I'm reminded of why, back in their heyday, Telltale was inundated with licencing opportunities left, right and centre. Their games might not have run well, but they all told excellent stories, ones packed with compelling characters who fit seamlessly into their source material, which was always treated with the utmost respect. It's in this regard that Resurgence benefits from nothing having changed. It's a triumph of a Star Trek tale, nailing the vibe of the "golden age" shows from the 1990s with palpable passion and a deep understanding of what makes Gene Roddenberry's vision so engaging (pun semi-intended). Most importantly, it makes the rough ride worthwhile... but only just.

To begin with, you join Commander Jara Rydek as she assumes her duties as the new First Officer of the USS Resolute, a science vessel which recently lost twenty of its crew in a tragic accident. Just as you're getting to grips with your role, however, you're also introduced to Enlisted Crewperson Carter Diaz, a lower decks engineer and general dogsbody. It's via these dual protagonists that you'll get different perspectives on starship life, interpersonal politics, and a diplomatic crisis which seems straightforward on the surface, but which also might be hiding a dormant threat.

One minute you'll be with Jara, conducting critical negotiations alongside Ambassador Spock, and the next you'll be with Carter, fixing a faulty relay on Deck 9 and wondering how the mission's going. No matter your task, however, rest assured that it has its purpose, and everything leads towards a singular, satisfying crescendo. Admittedly, the ending feels a bit Star Wars in its "pew pew, stop the baddie, pew pew" execution, but it doesn't forget to check in with its Trekkian roots, pausing to ask you moral questions about self-sacrifice and whether or not you should show compassion to an unrepentant enemy. What comes before is all quintessential Star Trek, though. Some of the supporting cast are prone to an occasional bout of extremism, which can feel at odds with their established role (when a fully-trained Starfleet officer began to loudly advocate genocide, I rolled my eyes) but this is a by-product of the gameplay, and these conflicts are always generated in service of potential options for one of your forthcoming dilemmas.

Jara and Carter make for really strong leads. They're easy to like and therefore easy to care about. I warmed to Jara a little more than Carter (mainly because I'm so done with romance being an inescapable factor in story-driven games; it should either be balanced fairly or entirely optional, and if it's the latter, don't make it freakin' obvious that saying "no" is the wrong answer) but both are incredibly charming and made me smile a lot, as did many of the surrounding NPCs. Usually I'm a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to making in-game choices, but I'm actually looking forward to seeing how everybody'll react to some of the branching paths as I explore other possible outcomes.

I won't look forward to revisiting some of the minigames, but not to a prohibitive degree. They're well-paced, repeating themselves more than a couple of times and then falling away almost entirely towards the endgame, before they can outstay their welcome or cause too much frustration. I could've done without some of the needlessly clunky cover-based shooting sequences, but there's a simple satisfaction to be found in "actually" running a scan, or getting a transporter lock on a friend, or even just removing an isolinear chip from a databank. I didn't expect to find myself flying a shuttlecraft through an ion storm either, but the handling worked well enough to make it my favourite flavour of interactive variety (and characters could still chat during the trip, which helped maintain that all-important immersion).

And that's the whole point of a Telltale game, isn't it? The clue's in the name; you're here to be told a tale, and when it's a tale of this quality, a few smeary textures and a lil' screen-tearing ain't so bad, right?

Well, that depends. Maybe five years isn't long enough to call Resurgence a "retro throwback" (even if the distance for what's considered "retro" seems to be getting shorter and shorter nowadays) and it's not like there aren't other, more stable choice-based narrative games on the market, but I can understand how serving up a dose of 90s Star Trek nostalgia in this decidedly last-gen fashion has hit the spot for some. Conversely, I could also understand if somebody struggled through the first ten minutes and instantly regretted buying such a broken mess of a thing (pending patches, although I doubt that a mere patch can fix some of the problems clearly embedded in the code's foundations). Moreso than I've ever meant this before, I reckon Resurgence will succeed or fail based on what each individual player brings with them.

As for me? I'm a Trekkie. Not only that, but I'm a Trekkie who grew up during the very era that Dramatic Labs has so effectively emulated here. I'm also not a performance snob when it comes to my games, but I have to admit that Resurgence did get janky enough to test my patience. It's a mixed bag then, but a well-meaning one, fundamentally flawed in some universal ways but triumphant in other, more unique ones. That makes it complicated to summarise, and therefore difficult to stay impartial.

One thing's for sure, though.

I will remember this.

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When Scored as a Game: 5/10
When Scored as a Star Trek Story: 9/10

Overall Score: 7/9

@RogerRoger Oh wow, had no idea Telltale was up to their old schtick again under a new name!

Telltale Games tended to fail as choose-your-own-adventure narratives (illusion of choice, etc.), but I can't deny that you're right about them fundamentally understanding the power of effective storytelling in the first place. My choices might not have meant anything, but I can't say, in the case of their breakout hit The Walking Dead Season One, for example, that the emergent and tragic father/daughter dynamic between protagonist Lee Everett and Clementine was anything less than utterly compelling. It's good to hear that, despite being subpar game developers, the writers still have that magic touch that allows them to tell a brand new story in a way that aligns well with the general ethos of the licensed property it belongs to.

BTW, I'm not sure how far off you are with the PS3 graphics thought. I mean, it's probably obviously running at a higher resolution than 720p, but those screenshots do NOT look like they belong to a game releasing on a modern power console. Not even when you consider their lower-budget nature.

I've actually, since last December, been watching through the Star Trek series with my family, starting with TNG (also finished Strange New World and Picard, and am about halfway into the first season of TOS, which is... interesting...), and not even Star Trek fully understands what makes a good Star Trek story sometimes, frankly. And I don't mean in terms of quality. While I'm generally pretty tolerant of "pew pew" sci-fi in TV/film form, I was a little horrified when I watched First Contact (supposedly the best of the TNG films) and found little more than a violent action vehicle. It felt very wrong in the context of such a thoughtful franchise. So if these developers can capture that Trekian essence at all, it's to their credit. It's much easier to do generic space drama than actually flesh out interesting character drama, which I'd argue is at the root of the IP.

The game might be VERY imperfect, but it sounds like they generally got it right where it counts when it comes to Star Trek.

As always, an excellently constructed review! Although is that final score actually supposed to be a 7/10, I wonder?

@RogerRoger Great review, and another hidden gem in the haystack of the PSN! As a fan of the old Telltale games I must admit that the game arouses some interest. I’ve almost done a clean sweep of the old Telltale games but thanks to @johncalmc ‘s grave 3/10 review of the latest New Tales from the Borderlands , I’ve wondered if the magic could ever be recaptured. I’m not a Trekkie or a Trekster or anyone who identifies with the clan, but I have a shallow working knowledge of the Star Trek Universe and enjoy it from an arm’s length. I’ll keep it in mind if I ever get around to finishing the last Season of TWD, and get an unquenchable thirst for more Telltale. It sound vastly superior to the new Borderlands one.

Thank you for the review as always @RogerRoger. I've just picked this up myself, so I'll be interested in going back through your review again when I am done.

I think most Mass Effect fans will tell you they've spent over a decade chasing a high that series gave them that has just never really been replicated by anything else. I am not one to replay games generally, but I tend to play Mass Effect through again every couple of years because there really is basically no other. I picked up Resurgence in the hope that it scratches even a little bit of my itch, followed by the Expanse game later in the summer.

That said, I booted up Resurgence for an hour or so to give it a quick go and it makes an... interesting first impression. I am playing on PC, and it is in a pretty rough shape there. PC really has taken a battering this year with a string of woeful ports. There are basically no settings at all and it is locked at 30 fps. I guess that is fine for this style of game, but more annoyingly is that if I set it above 1080p resolution it warps the image, squashing it down and stretching it out. 1080p on my 4K TV, when I know it is capable of much higher resolution, just looks really bad to me.

I also can't tell whether it is the lower resolution, but it visually has a real seventh gen game given a HD remaster vibe to it to me. Like facial animations are somehow vibrant, yet there is a stiffness to them as well, same with the walking animations, hair etc yet the skin on some of the models is crazy detailed, I dunno, it is weird. It sorta looks great and kinda off at the same time. Although I thought the art direction captured the world of Trek quite strongly and started lighting that Mass Effect fire for me for sure. Again, it is weird we often don't get games like this where we can move through these sorts of spaces from this perspective and level of fidelity.

I can't work out whether Rydek is a Bajoran or a Kobliad which is probably bad form of me, but it is cool to play one of these games as a non-human. The human perspective was central to Mass Effect and couldn't really exist without you playing as a human, but we've played countless games where we experience the perspective of fantasy races like orcs, dwarfs, elves etc not enough science fiction games where we navigate a world through the perspective of a non human.

@RogerRoger Hmm, I’ve been very tempted by this one but maybe better to see if there’s some patches incoming!

Thanks to everybody for reading and replying! Incredibly kind of you, as always!

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@Ralizah Yeah, this one snuck up on a lot of people, mainly due to the game's near-total absence of marketing and the long gap between its announcement and eventual launch. It'll be interesting to see how much traction it gets, 'cause a few outlets have given it an average-to-good review. Knock ten bucks off its price and place it prominently on a digital storefront, and it could end up a sleeper hit.

I never played The Walking Dead games but obviously know of their reputation (let's be honest, who doesn't at this stage?) and respect how engrossing the stories can become, even when the choices aren't really a choice. It's funny because normally, I'm totally against a timer bar on dialogue choices, but Telltale's inclusion of one definitely raises the stakes, and perhaps that's where the artificial not-really-choices get their edge. Whatever the secret sauce is, when it works, it works. If you haven't played them already, I'd strongly recommend the Batman games.

You're right about the visuals. There are some moments where I know a PS3 would flat-out refuse to run the game, which is why I opted for kindness back there, but it wouldn't take much of a compromise to get it running on seventh-gen hardware. When the story started to reel me in, I adjusted and got used to the "retro" look, so it's a shame that the bugs ended up being a constant reminder of the game's poor quality throughout, right up to (and including) the finale. Otherwise it might've been okay.

Oh blimey, I could sit here and debate the specifics of the Star Trek franchise with you for hours! Your point about First Contact is well-made (it has all of the right ingredients, but the balance could be a lot better) and I reckon we'd agree on a lot of broad principles. It's almost like, giving Star Trek a budget is a dangerous risk. I also agree that going back to The Original Series is a big ask nowadays! Best of luck going forward; I hope you don't suffer burnout, what with the sheer volume of content you and your family have got to get through. Definitely take breaks between shows, if not seasons, when possible.

I couldn't think of any decent screenshot captions this time, so my terrible puns had to go elsewhere!

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@Th3solution Wow, that's a lot of Telltale games! You must really love the format! Which bodes well for if you ever boot up Resurgence, because you'll likely be a lil' more forgiving of its flaws, even without a pre-existing passion for the source material. Rest assured that the story does a solid job of explaining itself, despite being strongly connected to an episode from 1987. Had this been released at the height of old Telltale's success, though, I think it would've made a bigger splash. It'll be interesting to see whether its technical shortcomings are (or even can be) addressed, to try and help keep its head above water.

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@Pizzamorg Ah yes, Mass Effect... the greatest Star Trek games ever made...!

In all seriousness, I totally agree. It's felt strange going from Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (amazing game with a sub-par story) to this (sub-par game with an amazing story). It's like, surely there's a way to get this right, and create something truly special... but hey, y'know what? At least I've been able to enjoy good examples of both components, even if they were spread across two separate games.

Just looked up some footage of the PC version, to see what you're in for. Rest assured you'll be playing the best possible version of the game, as it looks sharper and more stable than the PS4 port, but it's a shame that it still suffers a bunch of bizarre shortcomings. It definitely felt sub-1080p at times, especially when looking at a sweeping vista (or heck, even a wide shot of the bridge) but then you're right, some of the character close-up shots fare better, and reveal a level of detail which is lost 90% of the time. Hopefully you'll be able to adjust to the game's performance long enough for immersion to take over, and for your imagination to paper over most of the cracks. I'd advise against playing it alongside another modern game, because it'll always lose a contemporary comparison and feel jarring to return to.

And totally agree; it's a rare treat to get a non-Human perspective in a sci-fi game. I felt that Jara Rydek's background was treated well, in that her identity was touched upon where necessary, but it never became the defining lynchpin of her entire story, a story set in a future where race isn't (or shouldn't be) a big deal. She's Kobliad, by the way, so you were in the right ballpark!

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@nessisonett That'd be wise, for sure! I'm gonna take my time with my second run so, if a patch drops and appears to make any major performance improvements, I can let you know, if you'd like?

@RogerRoger Indeed it is quite a lot of Telltale games I’ve played. The furthest I went back was to play Back to the Future (ed. — unintentional pun 😄). I never played the older stable of games like the Sam & Max games or the CSI and Law & Order games, etc. I also skipped the apparently abysmal Jurassic Park game. And the only recent-ish games I’ve not played are the Minecraft ones.

Taking a look at their Wikipedia page, I’m reminded of the collaborative effort with Deck Nine to develop The Expanse: A Telltale Series and it shows a release date of July 27th. That’s not too far away and so I’m really curious if that will actually come out as planned. Deck Nine did a bang-up job with Life is Strange: Before the Storm (and by all reports True Colors also, which I can’t yet confirm) and so this might be another really good Telltale entry to keep in mind, especially for lovers of Sci-Fi. I really need to go back to watching the Expanse TV show but when I was watching it I did enjoy what I saw.

@Th3solution "Marty! We've gotta go back! We missed a Telltale game!!"

I've been tempted by that Jurassic Park game before, but never ended up biting. From what I gather, it's the earliest statement of intent with regards the "story first and foremost" approach, so we're probably better off watching a YouTube playthrough if we ever get curious enough.

Will be interesting to keep an eye on that forthcoming one based on The Expanse. That's the reformed, restructured, actual Telltale working on that one, I believe. You're right, though, I trust Deck Nine on the basis of Before the Storm (and really should get around to True Colours soon). Hopefully they'll be able to give it that extra pre-launch TLC that Star Trek: Resurgence is lacking.

At any rate, it's good to see the format making a bit more of a comeback!

@RogerRoger That reminds me of the Back to the Future Telltale game which I remember really enjoying about 10 years ago. Definitely more of a classic point and click game than the ones that followed.

I just finished my New Game+ playthrough of Midnight Suns and realised I have never written any real detailed thoughts about this game, but now at almost 120 hours (spread across the main game, the DLC, and NG+) played, I feel like I am in as good of a position I will ever be to get some thoughts down.

Right away, I must make it clear that I am not a New Game+ enjoyer, so the fact this enticed me to play through it all over again - and just a few months after I finished it the first time, no less - tells you more about how much I like this than maybe it would for those who somehow play a 20 hour single player game for hundreds of hours.

It obviously helped that Midnight Suns had post launch heroes, and actually delivered them all, which meant that my New Game+ had new characters to interact and play with, with new missions to go through, meaning it wasn’t just an identical playthrough like it might be in other games. By its nature too, playing a second time allowed me to make different choices than I did the first time around. Although admittedly this is more in the True Colors style of choice, rather than Life is Strange. I also played as a male Hunter the second time, to experience a slightly different central performance as well. This does I guess make it somewhat of a cheat, as it is almost like a 1.5, rather than just playing through the identical thing again, but even without all of those things, I just think Midnight Suns has such an addictive, incredibly playable, loop.

What is Midnight Suns? Effectively it is like what you would get if you took say a Fire Emblem or a BioWare RPG, filled the cast with Marvel characters, added deck building elements and took out any direct reference to sex and romance. If you thought that sounded like it might be a bit of a mess, you would be correct, but it is the hot kind of mess, at least in my books. This game clearly polarised people, but I feel like if you vibe with this niche, you are gonna vibe hard. There is no middle ground here.

Plus like… I’d like to think I wasn’t a prude, but I feel like sex is rarely handled well in games..? Am I allowed to say that? Almost all of the relationship stuff in say a Fire Emblem is usually kinda creepy that I've experienced, anyway. But then even in say BioWare games, which are often considered more on the mature side, I often just find a lot of the romance stuff really cringe. And those sex scenes in Cyberpunk 2077? Christ, they live rent free in my nightmares.

I dunno, I am sure some people would have loved to have been able to bone down with Spider-Man or whatever, I just don’t think it would have ever worked. Especially as the quality of the writing isn’t that great, I am not sure they could have pulled it off in a way that just wouldn’t have felt really uncomfortable.

Instead, Midnight Suns social sim elements are about taking your player created character and embedding yourself in a family of super powered weirdos, who all are just chomping at the bit to call you their best friend and play video games with you. Is it all rather stupid and wish fullfilly? Yeah, sure, I guess, but what is wrong with that? Just a lovely cosy, comfy, good time.

Like I say though, what I am not saying here is that the writing itself is perfect or… even that good, a lot of the time. There are some really jarring uses of tone, and characterisation throughout, which I think really was the source of much of the negativity around this one.

Midnight Suns very much makes the characters their own and this comes with the best and worst of what that approach offers. There will be some diehard fans of X character who will absolutely hate the representation of their character here, but if you take Midnight Suns as its own universe with its own internal rules and logic, I feel like they found a cohesive tone within the four walls of the game. Plus, like, I vibe with way more of these versions of the characters than I don’t. Would this have worked better if it was set in like Xaviar’s school or something? Probably. But I dunno, I liked it overall.

Outside of the social sim elements, the game also delivers really excellent turn based, deck building, combat. For all the wobbly characterisation outside of combat, in combat, almost every hero has been distilled perfectly into a deck of cards. A difficult feat on its own, but an even greater one given you can focus down specific roles for heroes based on the cards you pick, meaning they needed to create not just one authentic feel per hero, but multiple, as they serve different functions decided by the player. Every hero is so much fun to use, experiment with and see how they combo with other heroes.

Part of what makes this such a great NG+er is that deck building sandbox, I am sure you could spend dozens of hours just experimenting with decks, and combos of heroes, if you really wanted. Building individual heroes in different ways as you swap in and out types of cards, apply cards with different modifiers, and then experiment further how those roles for those heroes can complement other heroes with different roles that you have also built. Combat won’t ever feel truly unique one encounter from another, but it will certainly feel varied enough - especially with the inclusion of the 5 bonus heroes (one for clearing the game, four through the season pass) - to give the smoke and mirrors feeling of having an almost limitless chain of combinations to mess around with. Like I say, it is just buckets of fun.

I do, however, have a lot to say on the things that I don’t like about combat (negatives are always easier to go into detail for me) so this is going to seem like a more negative section of this review than I actually feel about the combat in practice, just a warning. Here we go:

Probably my biggest issue with combat is how random it can be at times. For all the control you have over building your heroes your way through your card choices, once you take that deck into the field, it becomes almost entirely hands off at times. Especially at higher difficulties, the deck based system is less of a fun sandbox tool and instead feels like an infuriatingly restrictive prison cell.

Some missions are like watching the car go off the road at 10 MPH, and it would be so simple to just turn the wheel to the left and get back onto the road safely, but there is either no steering wheel provided or the steering wheel is locked behind an unnecessarily convoluted layer of interacting systems, meaning it's right there but you just aren’t allowed to use it. Forcing you then to just helplessly plummet over the side of the cliff into a chasm of frustration. It is one thing to lose a battle due to poor planning on your part, another to basically lose to RNG.

Part of the problem is combat is sorta overly complicated despite its seeming simplicity on the surface. The core fundamentals is you get three card plays and one move once per turn, and this is shared across your party of three. However, most attack and more powerful cards also have a Heroism cost associated with them as well, which is a resource you have to build on a turn by turn basis using specific types of cards. You can redraw cards if your hand stinks, but you only get two of these per turn. Although, there are also systems to generate more card plays or moves or whatever as well.

The cadence I guess is to play weaker, or more support focused cards, to then generate enough Heroism to get off your big damage moves. However, there will be turns where you generate massive piles of Heroism, use up your redraws and still have absolutely nothing to use it on. And trust me, especially later on, a single dead turn can often be at times as good as game over. Sure, you can use your Heroism to turn your environment into a weapon too, but once these environmental interactions are used they can’t be used again. It just feels so frustrating at times because you are absolutely at the mercy of RNG and as a player there really is little you can do to circumvent, brute force or overcome a bad hand.

For the first third of the game though, this feels less apparent, because enemies are generally well tuned and designed so that a dead hand every now and then doesn’t necessarily have to be a game over. This all changes about a third of the way through when new enemies are introduced, all of which do not feel properly balanced in mind with the limitations the combat system can at times layer onto the play.

They suddenly throw a lot of ***** into the mix at once, and almost all of it ***** sucks. They introduce enemies who can replicate, bind you in place or apply status effects, none of these systems feel like there were given a shred of testing or balance, status effects can be stacked onto your heroes, and the combined ticks will kill you faster than anything else can in the game and this is seemingly unavoidable.

Likewise the replicating enemies can only be stopped if you kill them in one hit, but they are introduced at a point in the game where one shotting enemies is not a reliable or even particularly realistic prospect, so they can quickly overwhelm your board and the game basically just gives you nothing to answer back with, other than to just turn the difficulty down until you can one shot things, which feels bad that it is at times necessary.

Talking of difficulty specifically, there is also a difficulty ladder to climb. Combat actions are weighted, and they provide you an overall score of up to three stars depending on how well you perform. Getting a teammate downed might ding you some points, but clearing the battle in x amount of turns might give you a boost, whatever. If you get enough three star clears a new difficulty unlocks and the main benefit of this is it adds a higher modifier to the cosmetic currency rewards you would earn for that mission. So let's say you get 10 currency for completing the mission in five turns, at base difficulty this might multiply by 0, but at difficulty five its times by like 0.75 or something. However, personally, after I climbed to maybe the sixth difficulty I think..? this system just did not seem to be tuned or balanced properly.

My team was basically getting one shot by everything, and every time someone is downed it would minus some currency from your overall rewards. And having a person downed also puts you behind tempo, so it takes more turns to clear the mission as well, which also reduces the currency you can earn if you take too many turns to clear a mission. So by the end when it totalled up how much I earned, minused off the amounts I lost, and then applied the modifier, I was coming out with less than I was on the lower difficulties, where I wasn’t getting downed, or taking multiple extra turns to clear the mission, as the currencies deducted at higher difficulties were always far greater than the modifier applied at the end.

And that isn’t even talking about how all of the frustrations and poor balancing in combat are magnified to excruciating degrees at the higher difficulties, too. I eventually made my peace with basically always running the game at least two difficulty notches below the highest one I had unlocked at that time. These are superheroes, they are meant to feel powerful, they aren’t meant to be getting one shot by goons or using ultimates on goons just to do a bit of chip damage.

And I get it, this is what makes a game strategic or tactical, rather than just a straight turn based RPG. Combat is a puzzle to be solved, but the puzzle has to be more than artificial shackles you have chosen to layer onto me and then force me to overcome with no mechanics to support it. At least in my books. Obviously this’ll be unique to you, but the higher tier difficulties are in my opinion total garbage and not worth the trouble.

Now for the hardest part, wrapping these thoughts up so we don't end on a negative note. I guess my tl;dr really was already said higher in the review. If any of the stuff in here sounds like it'll appeal to you, it'll appeal to you tenfold. If anything in here sounds like you'd really dislike it, times it by ten again. It is just the weird affect Midnight Suns seems to have on all of these who play it. Personally, for all its warts, I vibe with its unique wavelengths and I may have to come back for some more again sooner rather than later.

@Pizzamorg "Plus like… I’d like to think I wasn’t a prude, but I feel like sex is rarely handled well in games..?"

I really vibed with this point. I would like more romance in a game, but it's often handled in a way that's uncomfortable to me, that with most games I'd rather see them leave it out completely. I know people love Persona 5 for letting you pick a partner, but I thought it was done in such a weird hentai dating sim way, that it creeps me out - and I'd rather just have the complete cast remain friends (I still picked one of them for the trophy, though). I had the same with the Dragon Age games, in which I really liked the characters, but they become less interesting once you start to date them.

And I'm kind of the same with story. So many games have such uninteresting stories that it gets in the way of my enjoyment, which is why in recent years I'm gravitating more to gameplay heavy games. And I love great stories in games (The Last of Us!), but these are quite rare.

Anyway, that's just highlighting one sentence out of your review. The rest of your review
made me super interested in Midnight Suns, but it does sound like a very long game! Is it 60 hours for a playthrough?

Not to over complicate things @Kidfried but game length is fairly subjective. What I mean, is that the game has a collection of main missions set over three acts, sometimes these missions will require you to do a randomly generated side mission first or complete a research project or something, but really these are the only mandatory activities in the entire game.

While it will make up a bulk of what you are doing, basically everything else is effectively optional. Especially if you are running it on the lowest difficulty, where minmaxing your bonds and stuff may not be quite as important.

An example is that your base of operations, The Abbey, has this Metroidvania style extended quest branch that threads through it, unlocking additional areas which provides lore or character details that feed back into the main questline. It is an ungodly mountain of tedious busywork though, so while I finished this the first time around, I didn't touch any of this the second time (outside of the mandatory introductory missions/cutscenes for this questline) and was never required to, either. I can't imagine how much time that shaved off of my playthrough.

Likewise, there are groups that run social clubs in the Abbey too, they also come with a bunch of busywork side activities which I also skipped the second time around, which again probably saved me so much time.

I think of my 120 hours, probably about 60 to 70 of that was my first playthrough with me being super thorough to try and do everything in the core game (no DLC touched). There is probably another 10 to 20 hours on top where I dabbled in endgame and DLC content. Then the last forty or so hours was my new game plus run with all the DLC included.

No idea what you could possibly mean!

It always struck me as a little weird that you can date your teacher or little sister, but all the guys are off-limits lol.

@Pizzamorg The card game aspect of Midnight Suns baffles me. How does the developer of XCOM develop a card game instead of the polished SRPG gameplay everyone thought we would get? I'll never understand the choice.

It definitely sounds like you tended to enjoy your time with it, though. Will have to give it a try at some point. I also love social simulation gameplay. I just wish it was literally anything other than Marvel superheroes!

Yeah it is weird, because in a lot of ways the best part and absolute worst part about Midnight Suns is its deck building stuff. Like would the game have worked without it? Of course, and it would probably be a lot less frustrating too. But also so much of the loop is built around you building decks and shaping your heroes, the game would lose so much if you took the deck building out. And I guess you could probably replace it with some other system, but off the top of my head I can't really think of anything that would fit nearly as well.

Also, it is probably fine if you don't like Marvel, as few of the Suns really truly embody their characters in other media (at least outside of battle). It is also full of smaller heroes too which maybe you won't have much knowledge of to take in with you, like Magik, who is voiced by Laura Bailey of all people doing a terrible Eastern European accent.

@Pizzamorg That's a shame her performance is bad due to the accent. They should have given her a different role then since she's usually great.