Nightingale is an interesting game for me to review. I don’t usually play survival crafting games. A lot of players enjoy the freedom and creativity to go out into a survival virtual world and craft their story. I prefer a more guided and structured approach with clear signposted goals and targets to achieve. With Nightingale being an open world survival crafting game, why then am I here, 35 hours of gametime later with no plans to drop the game, and eager to explore into the end game?
Nightingale is an early access title, with many improvements and changes to come. This review should be taken in that context to help you decide if you should pick up the game now or wait to see how it develops and improves from here.
The launch trailer for Nightingale draws you in with an impressive, dreamy world full of large exotic architectural structures, colourful environments, and giant mystical creatures. Unfortunately for most of the 35 hours I have played so far this has not been my experience. While it has its moments, Nightingale for the most part is a slow-paced relaxing game both in gameplay activities and in narrative pace. It’s only as I am reaching the later game that it has started to deliver on the visual and content experience I imagined off the back of the trailer.
That’s not to say the graphics aren’t impressive. I am running at max settings for all graphics and display options. The game runs on Unreal engine 5.2 and makes use of the engines nanite and lumen technology for impressive, detailed objects at any distance, along with accurate real time lighting and shadows that these two technologies combine to offer. The environments in the game are technically impressive. In the forest biome for example, birds and wildlife fly about in large numbers, while grass draws deep into the distance and trees have high amounts of detail.
Nightingale starts with a long tutorial that introduces you
to one of the games key, unique concepts, that of realm diving. This takes the
forms of portals where cards are combined to procedurally generate a unique realm
to dive into and explore. Once you complete the tutorial you arrive at the
abeyance realm. This is your home world where you set about building your
permanent base.
While you get to choose some nice stylised Victorian steampunk clothing
options in the character creator, you are quickly making some bland generic clothes
to “upgrade” to along with your basic generic wooden and stone home. This is
the first sign in the game the unique visuals and art style are not going to be
here in the early game, at least not when it comes to your own home, clothing
and tools. While this is eventually delivered on, it takes time to unlock and arrive
at through the traditional survival crafting grind.
It’s from this realm, you use the cards on a portal to go on
your adventure and realm dive into other unique locations. This essentially
boils down to two cards types. A biome card of forest, desert, or swamp, and a
major card which in effect sets the difficulty level of the realm by altering the
dangers, creatures and puzzles you will encounter. Some additional visual
styling and atmosphere such as an impressive skybox and moody lighting are also
set based on the major card chosen. Inside each realm you can also play a minor
card. These are fun twists that alter different aspects of the world, such as change
all trees to drop meat instead of wood, permanent night sky with a blood moon
and more aggressive creatures, or reduced gravity. There is a large amount of
these cards on offer, giving a good variety and unique changes to each realm
when used.
Within these procedurally generated realms, as well as exploring the world and gathering resource for crafting, a range of points of interest are on offer such as puzzles to solve, sites to defend and agility challenges amongst others.
While this is an open world survival crafting game, there is also a quest log that signposts you through the games content and progression. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game and has been one of the key things that has encouraged me stick with it and enjoy it. While I would have dropped other survival crafting games in the early game, in Nightingale I have always had multiple signposted goals to achieve that offered just enough info for me to be able to progress, while not giving too much away to me. Leaving me to explore and discover the various aspects of the game, the upgrades and builds needed to achieve the goal.
One of these repeated goals is to unlock one of the many sites of power found in your abeyance realm. These are gated by gear score, which when completed, unlock a new major card of higher difficulty. This is the games central content gating and progression system. The towers act as combat heavy dungeons and can offer some rewarding, tense, and challenging gameplay. A nice change of pace from the serene and satisfying crafting systems.
It's through completing these sites that the game begins to slowly open up and deliver on it’s trailer. Magical augments begin to be made accessible through the different realms vendors which can be tied to weapons, along with an increase in the variety of tools and weapons available. This leads to some interesting strategic combat choices depending on the enemies and situations being faced. The variety of enemies and beings found in the realms become increasingly varied, unique, fantastical, and impressive. Then finally the large, impressive beings we saw in the trailer make an appearance towards the end game.
Combined with you ever improving your crafting benches, home
improvements and new architectural styles it’s here where the game begins to
shine and show it’s best. This is where I am in my journey in the game
following my 35 hours. The games systems are coming together, the unique style and
features of the game are in full swing, yet there are more objectives to complete,
more progression to be made and much more content to come.
When the end game is finally reached, a location I have read about called the watch opens. This is a player hub lobby, where groups of 6 can party up and go off and tackle a procedurally generated dungeon known as a vault. While you can recruit an NPC follower through the game or play with friends, I can’t help but think this content should be made available in some form in the early game, for example, optionally matchmaking into a group at the entrance to a site of power. That said it offers a tantalising target to eventually reach as a reward.
Throughout the game it’s this tempting hint of what’s to come later that keeps you progressing, contributing to the enjoyment and reward the game offers. To conclude though I am reminded of the often repeated quote “Life is a journey, not a destination”. It’s this long journey through the game that brings the enjoyment, not what there is to do and see once you get there.
