I was fortunate enough to get an invite to the Network Test for The Duskbloods on the Switch 2 this past weekend. I was able to embark into the land of dusk over the course of all three days it ran and I walked away excited about what FromSoftware is cooking up here. Like every FromSoftware game, it feels built on the back of the last game, and the influence of Elden Ring: Nightreign is clearly apparent. But interestingly, it also evokes Bloodborne in equal measure, while offering something that feels familiar, but unique.
Nightreign and The Duskbloods feel like the yin and yang of of FromSoftware's online gameplay. While Nightreign brought the jolly cooperation, The Duskbloods is set to bring PvP to the forefront, though there's still a healthy helping of cooperation here as well. That said, if PvP in FromSoftware games is something you actively dislike or are uninterested in, this game probably isn't going to be for you.
Navigating the Density
If you had the opportunity to play Elden Ring: Nightreign last year, you'll pretty quickly feel at home in The Duskbloods. But like Nightreign, there's a tremendous amount going on and the nuance of it all makes for a very dense experience. You're not going to jump into a match and have a clear sense of exactly how you win. For that, FromSoftware fronted the Network Test with a set of tutorials which helped explain exactly how you play it and what the goals of each match were. While it wasn't fun wading through an hour of tutorials, they were immensely helpful in distilling the experience down.
In short, The Duskbloods is all about collecting Virtue. The game has a five round structure and each is somewhat distinct in what it's for and how you're meant to engage with it. By round five though, if you aren't in the top three in terms of the amount of Virtue you've collected, you will be culled. The last remaining set of players are transported to a dueling arena, with two lives each and two heals per life - the last man standing wins.
Being that this game is all about Virtue, it stands to question - how do you collect it? And as it turns out, there are myriad ways. The Duskbloods is a PvPvE (player vs player vs environment) game, so earning Virtue requires engaging with both the environment and other players. Throughout the map, there are a variety of places where you can light purple candles on corpses in chairs - if you're the first to arrive and light these candles, you'll claim Virtue points for yourself. Additionally, similar to humanity in Dark Souls, enemies will drop Virtue in single doses that you can also collect.
In rounds one and two, no culling happens at the end of the round, so you have a lot of flexibility in how you proceed. You can start collecting some of this environmental Virtue, or you can focus in on leveling up. In the course of match, you can bring your character up to Level 20 and doing so is absolutely in your benefit. As you level up, you will unlock additional skills for your chosen character (more on this later), some of which are extremely helpful when battling other players. Additionally, leveling up makes the field bosses more accessible to kill quickly.
Similar to Nightreign, the clock is always ticking, so you are doing constantly calculations on what's actually worth your time. Fighting bosses for Virtue is a great idea - but only when you've leveled up enough that you can dispense of them quickly. Learning what's on the map and where you can go most quickly is going to be an important skill in order to route each match for earning as much Virtue as possible, while leveling up as quickly as possible.
That said, while the general construction of the map stayed the same each match (like Nightreign), each area had some light randomization, meaning that you need to learn general spaces, and assess across each round what's actually where so that you can route effectively. Additionally, similar to Elden Ring's spirit ashes, you can enlist the help of a spirit by finding a specific sigil in the field and summoning them. Finding a good companion earlier is better, as fighting the trash mobs and bosses will level them up alongside you, which naturally gives you an advantage in every interaction.
There are also items all over the map that you can pick up, some of them will increase the number of heals you get, some will straight up give you experience, or give your companion experience, others are useful attack items, like fire bombs. Yet another way to earn Virtue is through commendations - so picking up the most stuff will grant you Virtue points if you manage to outperform the other seven participants. Same goes for killing enemies - if you have killed the most at the end of the round, you'll earn that commendation, granting you more Virtue.
It was my experience that these commendations were sometimes the difference between living to another round and being culled. As I learned the map, I was sure to pick up as much as I possibly could and kill anything I could as quickly as possible.
The Culling Rounds
By the time you get through rounds one and two, you should be sufficiently leveled to really open up what you're doing in the last two rounds before the final skirmish. As such, these two rounds were a little differently. The last couple minutes of each round sets up a special ritual site on the map and you need to be there if you want to start earning Virtue in heavy doses.
This is where the PvP part of the experience starts to take over. At each ritual site, there are a set of sigils you can interact with, that take a few seconds to claim. This will lease you some Virtue, as you need to prevent other players from taking over the sigil for themselves. Additionally, defeating other players in the ritual site grants a bunch of Virtue, so while claiming these positions, you will be looking to take down any foes in your proximity. If you fail to beat out enough other players, you will end up being culled at the end of these two rounds, never making it to the final battle.
These final rounds also make the biggest baddest field bosses more accessible. If you kick off a boss fight with one of these greater foes, other players will get a summoning call to jump in cooperatively to take it down and earn some Virtue and level ups. In all of my time in the Network Test, I found that these cooperative interactions happened fairly sparsely. These foes take a while to kill and time is always of the essence. If nobody shows up to help, it's nearly impossible to defeat the boss in the time frame allocated.
That said, killing field bosses in general is a good idea, especially in these later rounds as they offer other upgrades to your character like improving attack, or reducing the cooldown on certain moves. Crystal lizard like enemies are also found throughout the lands and they can offer huge improvements, like extra usages of your most devastating attacks, which can help turn the tide when you're facing off against the other players.
Finally, there's also some other mechanics that allow you to form temporary alliances with other players, but this also happened pretty rarely in the network test, so time will tell how that mechanic really affects the experience.
The Final Round
Assuming you've collected enough Virtue to land in the top three, you'll be whisked away to the arena for a an all-out brawl. The chaotic nature of this three person battle (with three likely companions) made this experience feel really at home on Nintendo's Switch 2. In a sense, it's not just about skill (though I'm sure the meta will distort this further) - you need to have prepared throughout the match to be the best positioned and regardless, the chaos could mean you get defeated from just not being able to track all of what's happening.
My final battles were a mixed bag - I scored two wins in total over the six or so hours I played. The times I won were a total shellacking - I had great rounds and absolutely dominated when I got to the final battle. All the other times, I generally placed second, especially once I found a character I was comfortable with.
From the PR materials, it seems that matches won't always end like this, but the network test didn't have any alternatives on display. These chaotic three player matches were extremely fun though and I liked how even through the chaos, you could build strategies. Sometimes you get blindsided by the third enemy, sometimes you make a mistake and get pummeled for it. In the instances where I had middling results from the preceding rounds, the battles were all very close, which only added to the excitement of it all.
Also, I like how there are preconfigured characters for this experience, each with their own unique moves and play style. FromSoftware PvP typically requires a tremendous amount of learning because near-infinite builds are usually possible. Here, you quickly learn how each character plays, what attacks they have, and the tells for them. This allows for a more interesting dynamic more quickly, effectively stripping back the infinite to just six.
The Characters
Each character offers a unique gameplay experience - picking the right character will depend on how you personally play the game and different characters will resonate with different player. The game starts you with Alfred, the most balanced, middle of the road character - and he's fine for being that. I generally don't mesh with those starting characters in From's games, so I'm usually hunting for someone a bit more specialized.
I tend to enjoy having options for close quarters combat, as well as ranged - and The Duskbloods offers that for every character, so the specific movesets are much more of a determinant here in who you choose. For instance, Alfred has a machine gun that's semi-accurate and it can really interrupt what you're trying to do, allowing him to keep the pressure up throughout a battle. Sniper Layla, though, gives you a sniper rifle (duh) and you can really hit with some force from a distance and knock off a bunch of a foe's health.
I ended up with Senator Samir Patres - who felt most like a Bloodborne character to me with his quick cane-based attacks. He also offered one of my favorite special moves - Saurian form. You might've seen a character transform into a dinosaur and chomp a foe - that's the Saurian form I speak of. It was highly effective at catching other players off guard and dealing both massive damage and massive poise damage.
Similar to Sekiro and Armored Core, you can build up the poise bar of your enemies and when it's full they will be stunned, where you can move in and suck their blood, restoring your health, while inflicting massive damage on your enemy. You can also perform a parry move that will interrupt your enemy's attack and raise that meter significantly. A well timed parry can be the key to a win.
Characters also have light and heavy attacks and a dodge, like any other FromSoftware game, allowing you to leverage your existing skill sets here. However, the game brings an enormous amount of verticality into the equation - now you can execute a triple jump and a use a mid-air dash and you can engage in combat in the air. As a matter of fact, between all of the unique characters, moves, and new mechanics, The Duskbloods is easily one of the most complex FromSoftware combat systems. It take a minute to build up the comfort to leverage all of these different capabilities in the flow of combat.
Like Nightreign, it just feels really good to get around the game world and it's exciting to imagine how all of this new experimentation will play into future offerings from the company. We all know that these features are destined for more in the future. The different characters offer the same level of excitement - between this and Nightreign, FromSoftware has a huge selection of new playstyles to draw from when constructing their next big single player experience.
Final Thoughts
I had a blast with the Network Test and I am eagerly awaiting the announcement of the official release date. I easily invested a couple hundred hours into Nightreign and I can see The Duskbloods being quite similar for me. Learning the maps, characters, and becoming proficient with all of the new combat abilities is going to be extremely fun and satisfying when the game eventually comes out.
That said, I did have a couple misgivings I hope they clear up. For one, there was some definite input lag here or there, so I hope that in the final release things are even tighter. For PvP, you want everything to be as tight and perfect as possible, but I will say, I was mostly impressed with how smooth everything felt, especially on a Nintendo system.
The map was probably my biggest issue here - I found it less readable than the Nightreign map and when I'd die, it was very hard to tell where I was when that happened. Sometimes I wanted to go back to finish up a boss I was close to killing, but got turned around and never made my way back. It's cool that you can fast travel anywhere, so having a better map will make that ability have even more impact.
I do fear for a couple things as well. I'm worried that the meta that will develop will ruin the experience and produce a bunch of sweaty try-hards that will only do the optimal build, killing the fun of all of the variety. I'm also worried that far fewer people enjoy the PvP aspects of FromSoft's games and that'll lead to a very thin number of players, especially since it's on new hardware with an install base that's still pretty small.
Of course, I already own a Switch 2, so by definition, it can't be a system seller for me, but I also can't imagine many people buying the hardware for this game specifically. If there were a single player component, I could see more doing so, but I think it's a tough sell in today's economy for players to get a Switch 2 (at its new increased price), a Nintendo Online subscription, and a copy of the game, which I assume will be $70.
I'll be there day one though - it's always a treat when a new FromSoftware game drops and I couldn't be more excited after the Network Test. There's clearly even more to this game and that makes it even more exciting to me. If you're a fan of their PvP mechanics and gameplay too, you should keep this one on your radar, it's shaping up to be yet another banger.
