Nightingale

Fun game with unique game play

Great game!

I tried. I really did. Visually, it looked SO promising, but that promise, or perhaps the premise itself, was broken right from the start. It honestly felt like false advertising. I understand it takes time to get to the really good stuff they showcase in videos, but the user experience of this whole mess was UTTERLY MADDENING! I loved the atmosphere and the core ideas even though I found Puck to be an annoying, pointless, overbearing footnote. The crafting tabs and learning trees look pretty straightforward enough. The art is lovely. The whole idea of it all made me want to dive in and explore it in every way. But... More than half of what little time I spent the moment I got out of that first cave was trying to aim properly, fiddling with inventory, and making sense of those actual crafting trees. Then I experimented with 3rd person mode, but that was even more awkward and actually made my dizzy. (Granted, I do have sensitivity to motion with some camera setups, but even with Valheim, I made it through a few hundred hours despite it having a pretty bad camera and janky FOV). Also, more than a few times, I got stuck and couldn't move except spin the camera around for some reason... while in the middle of the path and apparently nothing blocking my way. Maybe it's just my setup. In fact, this is the only review I've ever posted so far with my specs, just in case maybe that's a factor. I dunno. Worst of all, this feels way too much like an inventory management nightmare. This much is clear from other reviews. What seems to be a lore-filled world with lots of things to do and explore is hampered severely by an outright convoluted and exasperating UX that really should already have been cleaned up and polished at this stage. If it was CONTENT and balancing that was still in the queue, I could understand. Take Runescape Dragonwilds for example, which is also in EA at this time; not necessarily the most fantastic world or narrative IMO, but overall execution and polish? Pretty great! But here, there are too many things that feel inhibitive and sorely in need of QoL fixes. How am I supposed to explore, fight, and build when the very systems in place for doing so are also a constant and aggravating hurdle? Anyway. At the end of the day, there just wasn't enough for me to push through the annoyances. I'm kind of sad and disappointed at the whole experience. In all my years on Steam, I've only once ever left a negative review for something refunded. This marks the second. I simply can't recommend something that's in this state and this lackluster after apparently being in early access for two years.

This is definitely a fun game with what they have currently but there have been a few bugs that have started to make it annoying to play. The first is inconsistency with gear, my umbrella will do the particles and the sound effect, yet doesn't actually activates the umbrella. Climbing picks are hit or miss, half the time it automatically puts me on to the wall to climb and other times it does nothing, even after hitting space, I still don't attach to the wall. The last one concerns the food, I've wasted far too many potions because it uses potions while I hold Q, without letting it go. I will go to feed and as soon as the food menu closes, it uses my potion. This game is definitely fun but with the frequency of these issues that I'm experiencing, its gotten to be pretty annoying. My keyboard is also brand new, just bought a couple months ago and hasn't had input issues except for this game.

decided to do a new playthrough with a buddy after it swapped to p2p and its still a solid game just needs minor stabilization fixes and some bug fixing, of the content. id just ask for more voice acting and some more variety to the types of objectives in the realms

It is fun enough. The crafting is really robust and you can spend a lot of time min-maxing. I have no idea what the lore is, because every bit of dialogue and log in this game was written by someone clearly paid by the word and beaten if it was too interesting. It was really cool to meet Edgar Allen Poe, and skip 100% of the dialogue, because every character in this is a yapper with absolutely nothing to say. It's like someone sat down and was like "What if we sounded like Shakespeare, but without the jokes, and the double entendres, and we get rid of plot and intrigue, but we keep all the flowery language? Like it should be like skipping through the field of flowers, but the flowers are all fake and instead of soil it is just human teeth, so it just becomes a slog, but if you are standing REALLY far away and you kind of squint it sort of looks like it is pleasurable. Like I love to read Charles Dickens, like love love love him bro, but like what if rather than a story about the French revolution, it was just the scene with the bottle of wine falling on the ground stretched out to the whole book. BRO BRO BRO, I KNOW, IT IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA!" For those of you who don't know, that was a reference to A Tale of Two cities, and no, I do not recommend it, because much like the dialogue in this game, it is overly wordy, with a plot I stopped caring about about a 3rd of the way in. If you are confused, you are probably asking yourself "Why is the person, in this hypothetical dialogue you have come up with, a gym bro?" It is simple, my young padawan. In the year 1954, Philip Morris & Co began advertising using "The Marlboro Man". This six shooter carrying, cigarette slinging, mascot was not a well researched representation of historical cowboys, but a caricature birthed to sell cigarettes and is basically why Red Dead Redemption 2 looks like that. The exact same dude bro that went "bro bro bro bro, what if we made grand theft auto, but cowboys?" decided what the dialogue for this game looked like they read some classic books in college, because they thought it would impress some girls... that's good enough. You see how that entire block of text was just meandering, pointless, and you are dumber, and have lost some of your life? That is a taste of the dialogue in the game, but with less pointless adjectives and filler words. It is just as vapid and pointless. However, unlike the devs, I know reading all of this was a waste of time, and I did all of this because I HATE YOU.

This game is generally lacking in optimization, both in its platforming sections and quest objectives, as well as in crafting and housing. However, there's been a long way to go between the early versions of the game and its current state, so I'm looking forward to playing version 1.0 someday! Despite the game's current flaws, I enjoy it a lot and recommend it.