Marvel’s Midnight Suns blends Firaxis’s trademark turn-based action with a robust card collecting and battling system. In between tense missions to save the world though, your character—the resurrected Hunter—spends their free time with various superheroes. These moments allow you to give gifts, as well as invite other heroes to Hangouts and Haven activities.

This concept, almost akin to a dating sim, works surprisingly well. You’ll glean additional background information on your allies, including their motivations and concerns, and the bond you form with each teammate also eventually unlocks their Legendary card.

Hangout activities in Marvel’s Midnight Suns offer bonus friendship points depending on the character and the activity that’s selected. For instance, Spider-Man enjoys playing video games, whereas Captain Marvel and Captain America prefer working out in the gym. Don’t expect Scarlet Witch to feel the same way about these activities.

Havens function in a similar manner, strengthening your bond with a hero by sharing an activity. The difference is that these specific locations you discover in the Abbey can only be selected once for the entirety of the campaign. You do receive bigger bonuses, so it’s important to understand the contextual clues based on each hero’s disposition.

You’ll also need to take note of context clues when giving gifts in Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Gifts come in different rarities (i.e. up to legendary tier), but you can’t just hand them over on a whim. First you have to figure out whether a character would dislike, like, or love a particular item.

The most common theme is that heroes love gifts that they have a personal connection to, such as the comic book where they first appeared—for example, Tales of Suspense #39 for Iron Man, Runaways #1 for Nico Minoru, and New Mutants #98 for Deadpool.

The gift can also be something that reminds them of home or their background. For example, Magik was born in Russia, so she’ll love it if you give her a book on Nineteenth Century Russian Poetry. As for Wolverine, he prefers an item called Madripoor in Pictures owing to the time he spent on the island in question. Coincidentally, both he and Deadpool also love Snack Box (Root Beers of Canada), since they’re both Canadian.

As you give gifts and boost Friendship levels with heroes in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, you’ll eventually get your teammates to open up about themselves. Iron Man, who initially scoffed at the idea of the occult, later tells you about conducting research to see how the occult can benefit mankind. Blade regales you with tales of his previous adventures. And Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes) confides in you about suffering from imposter syndrome, fearing that he’s not as good as Johnny Blaze.

The end goal is to reach Friendship level 5, as that’s when you’ll unlock each hero’s unique Challenge Mission and Legendary card. The process can take a while, but it’s certainly worth it—and learning more about your teammates along the way makes it all the more engaging. Marvel’s Midnight Suns truly manages to capture what it means to be part of a dysfunctional superhero team.

If you’re keen on befriending heroes and taking on nefarious villains, you should grab Marvel’s Midnight Suns, which is available on the Epic Games Store. We also suggest checking out the Marvel's Midnight Suns Legendary Edition, which contains the base game, 23 premium skins, and the four DLC characters: Deadpool, Venom, Morbius, and Storm.