Summary
The year is off to a great start with survival games, including hit titles likeEnshroudedandPalworld, both currently in early access. Now, Inflexion Games’Nightingaleis bringing up the tail end of things with a survival experience unlike any other set in the mysterious Fae Realms, where secrets and dangers wait around every corner.Nightingalehas certainly proven its worth thus far, but it still has its issues nonetheless.
Nightingaleis currently in early access, so issues are, to some degree, to be expected. Many of these issues revolve aroundNightingale’s quality of life, but some are found in its exploration, which is an especially tough pill to swallow consideringNightingale’s main feature is exploration. However, being thatNightingaleis in early access and Inflexion Games is already hard at work to make it a better experience, these are problems that can be improved throughout the game’s early access period.
How Nightingale Can Improve Its Gameplay Throughout Early Access
Nightingale Has Quality-Of-Life Issues in Its Crafting That Need to Be Addressed
When it comes toNightingale’s quality-of-life pitfalls, the majority of them exist within the game’s crafting system.Nightingale’s crafting system has garnered the most player feedbackso far, as it essentially flips the normal crafting mechanics of every other survival game on its head and does things backwards, so to speak.
Rather than allowing players to craft increasingly strong items with better stats using basic materials,Nightingale’s materials possess the stats instead, which ultimately leads to one type of material having varying rarities and tiers. This results in overflowing inventories with a multitude of items that all look the same but have different stats.
This is all especially difficult to deal with because of the limited space inNightingale’s inventory and storage containers. Even if players are under the weight limit, they can still run out of space in their inventory due to the enormous amount of materials they are expected to hold. Additionally, rather than allowing players to craft or build using materials from a nearby storage container, they are required to first have those materials in their inventory, inevitably resulting in players spending a significant amount of time running back and forth more than necessary just to build something.
While this would likely take a complete overhaul ofNightingale’s crafting system, condensing each material down to one basic type might be enough to change things overall.
Nightingale’s Long-Term Exploration Needs More Diversity
Nightingaleis primarily based on exploration, as one of its core mechanics involves players essentially “crafting” Realms usingdifferent Realm Card combinationsto determine the Realm’s biome and type. Each realm is then procedurally generated to allegedly offer a brand-new exploration experience every time. Unfortunately, while the game begins by honoring that notion, the longer players spend time in the world ofNightingale, the more likely they are to begin to notice how similar everything looks.
Games with procedural generation tend to have the problem of everything looking rather “copy and paste” after a while, so some of that is to be expected. BecauseNightingalethrives on exploration, it can’t afford to fit in with that group of games. After a while, though, everything inNightingalestarts to look the same.
Players will likely begin recognizing different structures as locations they’ve visited before just 15–20 hours into the game, and the lack of diversity in the rewards for exploration doesn’t help either. For example, most chests provide different potions and ores, and that’s about it. If exploration was more rewarding and provided more than beautiful scenery to look at, it might benefitNightingale’s longevity.
None of this is to say thatNightingalegets it all wrong. In fact, it does a lot of things right that its competition can’t currently compete with. That said, the hope is that Inflexion is taking note of and planning to improveNightingale’s current issues that may prevent it from being enough to pull players from other games likeEnshroudedandPalworld.
Nightingale
WHERE TO PLAY
Nightingale is a PVE open-world survival crafting game played solo (offline or online), or cooperatively with friends. Build, craft, fight and explore as you venture through mystical portals into a variety of amazing and fantastical realms.You are stranded beyond our world, cut off by the collapse of the arcane portalnetwork. This catastrophe has left you fighting to survive in a labyrinth of beautiful and dangerous Fae realms.Your goal: become a skilled Realmwalker, and navigate the web of transdimensional portals. Only then can you discover your way to the magical city of Nightingale, the last known bastion of humanity.Prepare to make your way through Faewild forests, harrowing swamps, and shimmering deserts as you unlock the portals leading deeper into the lands of Fae. Cook meals, build shelter and muster the spirit to persevere in the face of adversity.
