Early VerdictNightingale is an enchantingly pretty game that can’t hide the fact that there’s not much interesting beneath the surface. Those familiar with survival games may find this one too familiar, though it’s rarely offensive - with the exception of some technical and server issues.
Early Verdict
Early Verdict
Nightingale is an enchantingly pretty game that can’t hide the fact that there’s not much interesting beneath the surface. Those familiar with survival games may find this one too familiar, though it’s rarely offensive - with the exception of some technical and server issues.
Nightingale is an enchantingly pretty game that can’t hide the fact that there’s not much interesting beneath the surface. Those familiar with survival games may find this one too familiar, though it’s rarely offensive - with the exception of some technical and server issues.
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FAST FACTSRelease date:February 20, 2024Platform(s):PCDeveloper:In-housePublisher:Inflexion Games
FAST FACTS
Release date:February 20, 2024Platform(s):PCDeveloper:In-housePublisher:Inflexion Games
Release date:February 20, 2024Platform(s):PCDeveloper:In-housePublisher:Inflexion Games
Au Fae
(Image credit: Inflexion Games)
Nightingale gets off to an arresting, if rather bewildering start, with a robust character creator that allows me to create a ruffled Edwardian noble tied to the usual system of nose-and-chin sliders – though there’s no combination that won’t make you look likeArkane’s interpretation of a Spitting Image puppet. But it’s only then that Nightingale offered up a whole new system, one which let me choose a bunch of goggle-eyed ancestors and mix them into my avatar’s DNA, and achieved little except to undo all that slider-refining work. Still, it’s an optional, harmless oddity; with it I created a chinless dilettante who looked like he’d never fought anything tougher than a vol-au-vent, and moved onto a context-laden cutscene that ultimately served to confuse more than illuminate.
The world is gorgeous screenshot-fodder and the characters are written fine enough – well, maybe a bit overwritten – but that fierce creativity doesn’t seem to extend to the way Nightingale plays.
The world is gorgeous screenshot-fodder and the characters are written fine enough – well, maybe a bit overwritten – but that fierce creativity doesn’t seem to extend to the way Nightingale plays.
The goal? Find the city of Nightingale, a bastion of humanity still holding out against the Pale. The process? Explore biomes, locate portals that will transport you to the next, and craft up a storm along the way, repurposing all those ugly trees, rocks, and magical creatures into something more useful, while fighting corrupted enemies with first person stamina-managing combat.
Pixie Sticks
(Image credit: Inflexion Games)
Unfortunately, that was the point where Nightingale started to lose me. The world is gorgeous screenshot-fodder and the characters are written fine enough – well, maybe a bitoverwritten – but that fierce creativity doesn’t seem to extend to the way Nightingale plays, which struggles to extend beyond a very familiar survival crafting formula, and never really hits upon anything particularly exciting. When Puck appears in a puff of whimsy and waxes soliloquies at you to explain the next step, only for an objective box to translate his spiel into “Make a pickaxe”, I feel more is lost than gained.
What interesting ideas it has are at the periphery rather than the core loop, probably the best of which is the ability to tailor and modify the biomes you visit through special tarot cards, using them to turn the difficulty up or the gravity down, among other things. It’s a neat notion, but one Nightingale probably doesn’t utilize as much as it should. If I could draw a Black Lotus mid-combat and immediately hijack physics or open an escape portal, I might be more enthusiastic about the concept, rather than having to hike to the one reality-bending machine in the district and carefully feed a punchcard into it.
Steampuck
(Image credit: Inflexion Games)
Still, the hike provides a chance to appreciate the scenery. Whatever world you generate in Nightingale, it’s guaranteed to sell you on the mythic quality of its setting, with rising hills, radiant forests, sweeping golden sands, and sun-dappled swamps. Not only that, but all of these are peppered with a mixture of steampunk outposts and ancient temples, many of which house (questionably-fun) puzzles and bosses. There’s also some interesting monster design – not so much the more obvious wolves and bears, but I love when I find a creeping aberration made of tree roots or a flock of hovering brass lanterns, which perfectly evoke the alien, yet storybook nature of this realm and constantly keep you guessing about what to expect. When a titanic ghost elk walks calmly through my camp without even reacting to my meager presence, I’m genuinely enchanted!Thatfeels like an experience authentic to charting the untamed edges of reality, not feeding fiber into a spinning wheel to make – be still, my beating heart – refined fiber.
But ghost-moose was just a moment’s thrill, and there was too much hampering the experience at that point to sustain it. The UI is pretty at first glance, reminiscent of a vintage explorer’s journal, but pretty unintuitive even with practice. The combat engine is sluggish and unremarkable no matter your weapons, and will need to be a massive area of focus as Nightingale works its way through Early Access. And while I appreciate that there’s a story to guide us through this little exodus – something more survival crafting games should have – it’s mostly fetch quests and favors with little to emotionally invest in.
(Image credit: Inflexion Games)
Nightingale certainly didn’t do itself any favors with the array of glitches, bugs, incredibly long load times, and multiple server crashes that threw me back to the main menu – the Fae are pretty damn fickle, it turns out. Yes, it’s Early Access and such things are arguably to be expected, but that certainly wasn’t helping my overall experience at this point.
I think the core idea of exploring worlds somewhere between Fable, Dishonored, Jules Verne and Shakespeare’s hippy phase is a perfectly fine one, but Nightingale has yet to really convince me that it’s quite ready to do justice to that idea. When the scenery wasn’t holding my attention, I was uncomfortably aware that I was just going through motions I’d simply done too many times before, and I suspect that anybody who’s played more than a couple of survival games in the last decade will feel the same way. If Nightingale is going to rise to greatness during its time spent in Early Access – which it may still very well do – it will need more than mere refinement. It needs an injection of new ideas to help elevate it above the crowd, so it might still find that whimsy and wonder that right now is only present for fleeting moments.
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More about nightingaleBioWare veteran’s new studio hit with layoffs as its survival game Nightingale “hasn’t been commercially successful enough"Nightingale boss Aaryn Flynn opens up on the game’s challenges and massive new update: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face"LatestI didn’t know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tastySee more latest►
More about nightingaleBioWare veteran’s new studio hit with layoffs as its survival game Nightingale “hasn’t been commercially successful enough"Nightingale boss Aaryn Flynn opens up on the game’s challenges and massive new update: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face"LatestI didn’t know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tastySee more latest►
More about nightingaleBioWare veteran’s new studio hit with layoffs as its survival game Nightingale “hasn’t been commercially successful enough"Nightingale boss Aaryn Flynn opens up on the game’s challenges and massive new update: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”
More about nightingale
BioWare veteran’s new studio hit with layoffs as its survival game Nightingale “hasn’t been commercially successful enough"Nightingale boss Aaryn Flynn opens up on the game’s challenges and massive new update: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”
BioWare veteran’s new studio hit with layoffs as its survival game Nightingale “hasn’t been commercially successful enough”
BioWare veteran’s new studio hit with layoffs as its survival game Nightingale “hasn’t been commercially successful enough”
Nightingale boss Aaryn Flynn opens up on the game’s challenges and massive new update: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”
Nightingale boss Aaryn Flynn opens up on the game’s challenges and massive new update: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”
LatestI didn’t know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tastySee more latest►
Latest
I didn’t know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tasty
I didn’t know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tasty
I didn’t know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tasty
See more latest►
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1Nemesis review: “A magical sense of tension”
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