Nightingale is a survival sim from the new studio Inflection Games. The studio was formed by the former executive of Bioware. The game is a major departure from what we expect a Bioware game to look like. It is a procedurally generated style survival game. As a survival sim, the setting is deep. The presentation is a lot more polished and flushed out than other such games.
A good survival game should have a balance between crafting and the way players approach the environment. The game achieves it by giving players choices to interact with the world the way they see fit but under some conditions. Most of the things that the game introduces as features can dampen the fun. However, the basic formula of a survival game is there. There is a lot to discuss before reaching a conclusion which begs the question, Is Nightingale worth It? Let’s find out.
The Background
The premise is an interesting part of the game. The setting is the alternative Victorian era where humans are using Realm gates. These are gates to different realms. You have Victorian technology but can also visit other realms that have magic and stuff. After a cataclysmic event on Earth, you are stuck in this alternate world. Your goal is to reach the last human sanctuary of Nightingale and find out what’s happening. The basic premise that it sets presents a unique idea. A survival game set in multiple worlds. Nightingale goes in harmony with the premise which is one of its strongest points.
The Realms
What makes it different from others are the Realm Cards. You can find them or create them. These Realm Cards are used on realm gates to open portals to other dimensions. Every portal you open requires two different cards. These two types of cards are known are Biome Card and Modifier Card. These cards will affect how realms appear, the enemies inside them, and their difficulty. Each realm is randomly generated.
The one thing that it does best is the way these environments are randomly generated. The worlds you visit don’t feel random as these Biomes have enough diversity that make them feel unique. There is a lot of visual diversity and geometry to them. They don’t just look like random hills and stuff. At times, it can look really good as well.
The Online Problems
When everything sets together, the world looks stunningly gorgeous. There are visual glitches and other glitches in gameplay that can break the immersion, making it look really bad.
It is an online game so it needs an online connection even when playing by yourself. A lot of other survival games let you play offline but not this which can be annoying. There are issues like failure to connect, intense lag, high pings, and stuff like that. There are lots of game-breaking bugs related to the idea of being always online. It is a bummer since there are things to like about Nightingale.
Crafting and Building
The process of building things is satisfying and simple with everything working together nicely. Exploring the random alien worlds is when the game is at its best so standing around building different things can work against it. However, in the long term, this could be the major factor that keeps players coming for more.
At times, Nightingale can overwhelm you with choices. It can quickly get complicated. In the first few hours, you get more than 5 different crafting stations. Most of these crafting stations create materials that you would need with other crafting stations. This is where the whole system comes together. Items have different qualities, so based on the type of material you put in an item decides how effective the item you craft is going to be.
Based on the location of the things you build, your structure gets benefits. Building crafting stations near the fire will warm things and speed up crafting. If you build inside a structure your crafting station will take more time to deteriorate. It is a solid foundation but only in theory. In reality, it means that you have a bunch of different items stuffed together to get the benefit of that location. If you are the type of person that makes these crafting stations outside, these effects will be more annoying than fun.
There is an entire enchantment system where you can add special equipment to an item. It is good for people who will stay for a long while and would want to make builds. Depending on the type of player you are, having this many items would get you excited.
The Depth of Crafting
Nightingale is missing a lot of quality-of-life details. There is no system to craft directly from the inventory. This could be intentional as well. UI is not that great and navigation with the mouse can be troublesome. However, when it comes to the controller it is a complete mess. It seemed like developers were trying to add something new but ended up creating a mess. Clunky UI will improve in the future as developers are already working on it. Crafting is functional but has way too many complications.
The amount of stuff you have to get through to build anything at all, adds more trouble to the experience. Some people might like it since it is a deep approach to crafting, so a lot of it depends on players.
General Gameplay
Randomly generated alien worlds work really well. It is fun to go around and see how the wildlife is, gather loot, and check out points of interest. Some of these places have crafting recipes and currency to discover. It is worth checking them out even if there are not enough unique locations on the map. These places do start to feel the same after a while but that much is to be expected from these types of games.
Biomes are not big, there are a few main points of interest which are usually some kind of boss enemy or vendor. The vendor system is weird, you will trade them with the essence which can get you items and recipes to buy in Nightingale. This currency is really easy to get. You can run around a vendor to cut some plants and you will have enough resources to buy everything that vendor has. Everything else requires some time to get but not currency.
Combat
There are enemies to fight but combat is not the focus of Nightingale. There are some interesting enemies and adds mystery to the realm you have entered. Fighting is a brainless activity because the combat just can’t keep up. Think of it, like a slightly improved version of Robolox. You just walk up to an enemy and keep hitting them until they are dead. There is an unpolished dodge that doesn’t help too much. Long-range combat feels better but even that is pretty basic.
A bare-bone combat would not be that much of an issue for a survival game. However, the problem is that you will constantly be thrown into combat which makes the situation worse. To open the realm gate you have to fight waves of enemies. To unlock card recipes you have to go through dungeons full of enemies that end in a boss encounter.
At least, there is the option of helpers who is an NPC. You just need to help them with something and they will join you. Their AI is funky, you cannot just tell them what to do and they constantly teleport or get stuck into things. They are good at carrying stuff, you can also use them as meat shields, and they can revive you if you die which is one of their best features.
Quality of Life
Tree-cutting animation is really bad. The way trees fall is laughable at best. Fishing is equally goofy, a lot of fish will swim from one side to another until their health is down. Everything looks great but once motion kicks in, it completely ruins the experience. The guy that tells you the story just tells you to do this, build that, and other stuff like that. All of it is just busy work and not worth spending your time on.
It has a lack of natural progress which usually works against a survival game. You are not doing everything as part of the gameplay loop. Basically, you are just checking boxes since that is what Nightingale demands of you. Progression is locked behind gear score progress which is restrictive and even confusing.
Verdict (Is Nightingale Worth It?)
There is a lot of stuff that is wrong with Nightingale but at the same time, there is a lot to like about this game. The core idea of setting you off on a journey across different realms makes up for an interesting scenario. How the game incorporates the realm hoping idea with survival mechanics creates a solid foundation. The problem arises when these ideas get overly complicated.
There are some really good ideas in crafting and the way you use these ideas to progress. These complications can be features for some players but for any casual player, this is a decent setup at best. For hardcore crafting players, this could be a dream come to thanks to all the details it put into crafting.
The game will improve over time with all the things that will be added to it. At its current stage, it’s not complete and a lot of things could have been done better. In terms of mechanics and UI, there is a lot of stuff to be worked on, stuff that cannot be considered polished. It is too unstable at launch and needs more time to be better. It’s possible to turn things around because there is a lot of good stuff here.
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