Somehow, I’ve spent nearly 40 hours playing Nightingale, but I’m still searching for the fun.
A Victorian world of old-fashioned explorer garb and backpacks, of canvas and ironwork.
And the fantasy world lurking just beside it, filled with unexplained phenomena and menacing faerie folk.
These are craftable and collectable and open doorways depending on the cards you use.
Match a desert or forest biome with a card representing a certain difficulty, and it will then appear.
It’s a great idea that works brilliantly with the setting of Nightingale to make the game feel distinct.
They’ve all got their pros, they’ve all got their cons.
Better yet, there’s a visual spectacle to doing this.
It’s instinctive survival, and the survival-crafting genre at its most effective and persuasive.
Sadly, though, that feeling doesn’t last.
My house is, increasingly, a mess.
What irks me about the survival crafting side of the game is the grind of it.
This is added to by the way Nightingale handles crafting recipes.
Need a better Gear Score?
You’d better imbue all of your existing equipment with Essence.
But you’ll need to farm Essence from enemies first.
Oh but here’s a recipe for a slightly better piece of equipment!
Then you’ll need to imbue that piece of equipment, too.
Every step forward seems to involve a cascading set of mini-grinds so that take.
It doesn’t help that the things you’ll be doing over and over again aren’t very exciting.
It’s a similar thing for mining rock and ore.
It’s donkey work.
It’s just a mindless slog.
Exacerbating this sense of slog further is the time it takes to do anything in the game.
Time: that’s what drains away here, that’s what the game really takes.
Its demands on you are much more like an MMO’s.
I’ve been pursuing it like it was some kind of Shambala.
Reaching The Watch could take hours more.
But I have seen signs of life.
Nightingale has worn me down.
This is Early Access, though - early Early Access - and it’s worth underlining that fact.
I hope so, anyway.
It’s no good holding your treats back if no one ever gets to try them.
People will simply turn away.
There’s potential here, it just needs to be unlocked.
