As a big Elden Ring person with an additional 600 hours in Nightreign, the FOMO of FromSoftware's next multiplayer experiment, The Duskbloods, being a Switch 2 exclusive was hitting me hard. That is, until I actually played it: I spent the majority of the closed network test held over the weekend confused about what the hell was going on, and even when I finally learned, I wasn't particularly impressed.
To be fair, the network test wasn't built to make a great first impression. It was limited to one map, six playable characters, no build customization, solo queue only, and seemed to only have a portion of its intro tutorial. I also experienced borderline unplayable input lag from the Switch 2's docked and handheld modes, which meant I was fighting the basic controls for longer than I'd like.
Assuming the final game will have all of that fixed and more, I might end up liking The Duskbloods in the end. Elden Ring Nightreign didn't click for me for close to 20 hours, and when it did, I dug it so much I spent the first half of this year playing it daily, even climbing to the highest level of its ranked mode. The Duskbloods might reveal itself to be a masterfully created vampire multiplayer game, but as it stands right now I think it's an aimless mess of intriguing systems that don't cohere into anything worth PC gamers buying a $500 (for now) console for.
What does impress me is how bizarre The Duskbloods is as a videogame in 2026.
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