Nightingale is a survival crafting game set in an alternate Victorian Era where magic thrives and traveling realms is possible. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your time and money.
Nightingale Review Overview
Nightingale Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Good Building Mechanics Visually Captivating Environments |
Repetitive Landmarks Overly Complicated Crafting Not Much Guidance Combat Takes Too Long To Get Fun |
Nightingale Overall Score - 62/100
Nightingale’s strengths, which lie in its unique art style, captivating story, and visual appeal, are drowned out by its bland gameplay and overcomplicated mechanics. There’s very little guidance and its UI isn’t very user-friendly, making it hard to stay organized. The procedurally generated maps’ emptiness and repetitive locations make exploration feel unrewarding. It’s a tedious back-and-forth grind of scavenging for resources, upgrading materials, and repeat.
Nightingale Story - 7/10
Nightingale features a unique and captivating story, but you have to read through countless text boxes without voice acting and lost letters you’ll find along the way. Because the game’s place is extremely slow, reading through the story makes you feel even more impatient. Good story but the execution could’ve been way better.
Nightingale Gameplay - 4/10
Nightingale feels very much like a survival crafting game. However, the game offers little guidance and overcomplicates what should be much simpler things, like crafting. Combat is very bland for the early game and is nothing like what was seen in the trailers. It takes way too long for the guns and magic-imbued weapons to appear in the game, leaving the early to mid-game combat as bland as Minecraft’s combat.
Nightingale Visuals - 8/10
Nightingale is a beautiful game that offers very nice views. However, most of the landmarks you’ll encounter, although visually appealing, are pretty barren. Performance issues are also prevalent with lags, FPS drops, and bugs being common.
Nightingale Audio - 8/10
Nightingale works well to immerse you in the world. The soundtrack evokes mystery and curiosity as you explore, but grows more intense should you be facing any threats. Sound effects also sound as they should. Good audio, but isn’t really an auditory masterpiece.
Nightingale Value for Money - 4/10
Priced at $29.99, the game simply isn’t enjoyable enough in its current state to be worth that money. If they fix the overcomplicated crafting systems and make exploration feel more rewarding then maybe it can make its case. For now, it’s really not worth it.
Nightingale Review | There’s Nighting To Do
Nightingale is set in an alternate Victorian era where magic thrives and humans and faes have lived harmoniously. Humanity’s greed sparked a cataclysmic event and some lucky humans have taken refuge in Nightingale, a magical city. In this universe, there are countless realms to explore and some humans called Realmwalkers have the power to travel through these realms. You play as one of these Realmwalkers on a quest to get to Nightingale.
You’ll start off by creating your character, which lets you customize their looks however way you want. You can choose a background of what you were in the past, which grants certain bonuses, much like a select-your-class type of thing. Once past this, you’ll meet Puck, a mysterious fae who comes to your aide. From there, he’ll give you a bunch of quests that you’ll have to accomplish to push the story forward.
What separates this game from other survival games is the Realm Cards feature. You’ll be collecting cards, which you could use to alter the world you’re creating a portal to. These cards affect the environment you’ll be in, along with the wildlife and NPCs you’ll encounter. Some cards also grant unique map-wide effects like low gravity and higher crop yield.
Each environment has its own set of elements going for it. Forests are covered in flora and land formations, with seas around them and predators like wolves and bears roaming. Deserts are much more scarce when it comes to resources, and you’ll constantly have to beat the heat by staying under cover or using an umbrella. Swamp realms are much like forests but with different flora and fauna and watery/muddy areas all around the map. Traversing through these waters must be done swiftly, as you could catch diseases when there’s too much exposure. Each one is visually beautiful in its way.
The sights you’ll take in in this game are stunning. However, you’ll quickly find out that a lot of the puzzles and landmarks are exactly the same, almost as if they were copy pasted. The loot you’ll find also isn’t all that interesting, making exploration feel like a chore rather than an exciting adventure. Most of my time playing this game was spent on resource collection. You’ll be asked to collect X to craft Y and rinse and repeat. Your curiosity about the beautiful world around you will quickly be replaced with boredom as you scour the beautiful but barren realm you’re in to look for wood to chop down and ores to mine.
Combat in this game was something I was really excited about after seeing the trailers. The gunplay and magic-imbued weapons were something I looked forward to wielding against the mystical forces of the realms. However, these weren’t present until much much later in the game. The early to mid-game’s combat essentially boiled down to smacking things with whatever tool you have in your hand. It’s not any more complex than Minecraft, which I found to be extremely disappointing. This can easily be fixed by the developers by letting players access these much, much earlier in the game.
Crafting in this game is a hot mess. It was made to be complex, but it’s far too complex making it hard to organize and plan accordingly. It also doesn’t help how the game doesn’t really explain how you get things done. Each crafting component boosts certain attributes. The things you craft will have these bonuses based on the components you use. In most games, it’s the items themselves that have bonuses and not the materials. This makes crafting much harder and time-consuming than it should actually be and you’ll have to look through tons of resources that look alike but grant different bonuses.
Building in this game also takes some time before it actually gets good. You could lay out whatever you’re building even if you don’t have the resources for it yet, so you could easily come back and finish the job, or remove them entirely without committing any of the resources into actually building them. You could also move built stuff, which makes building feel more user-friendly. However, you won’t get the nice stuff until much later in the game, and you’ll be stuck with your very basic wood/stone estate until then.
Overall, Nightingale shows promise in its visual beauty, unique story, and combat (as per the trailers). However, its strengths are drowned out by its major flaws. With a few updates that address player feedback and a dedicated development team, this game CAN be good down the line.
Pros of Nightingale
| Things Nightingale Got Right |
|---|
|
Good Building Mechanics Visually Captivating Environments |
Good Building Mechanics
If there’s one thing that Nightingale is somewhat user-friendly with, it’s the building. It’s a nice touch how we’re able to map out whatever we’re building first, even without the resources required yet. This way, we’re able to see if we like what we’re building without committing any of the resources into actually building, only to tear it down after finding out it doesn’t look or work the way we intended.
Visually Captivating Environments
Whether it’s the mystical forests or the unforgiving deserts, Nightingale’s realms are a sight to behold. There’s lots of strange things all around the map that pique your interest and pull you in to explore. Unfortunately, you’ll quickly find out that they’re all the same and once you’ve seen a puzzle or a dungeon, you’ve seen them all. The unique landmarks are definitely interesting though. If the developers manage to add more unique places and mix up the puzzles/dungeons, the game won’t only look good but will feel rewarding to play as well. Sadly, this isn’t the case at launch.
Cons of Nightingale
| Things That Nightingale Can Improve |
|---|
|
Repetitive Landmarks Overly Complicated Crafting Not Much Guidance Combat Takes Too Long To Get Fun |
Repetitive Landmarks
When I first traveled to the different realms, I felt a sense of curiosity about the beautiful yet intimidating landscapes all around me. There were lots of structures and landmarks that piqued interest. However, upon exploring these further, I noticed that these either served no purpose, or were completely the same as the last. I encountered towers, caves, and puzzles that were completely identical to all the others I encountered. Your curiosity will be replaced with boredom and soon you won’t bother exploring these landmarks anymore as you’ve learned that they’re not worth exploring at all.
Overly Complicated Crafting
As mentioned earlier, the crafting in this game is much more complicated than it needs to be, thanks to the crafting materials themselves offering attribute/stat bonuses rather than the actual item offering unique bonuses. This added layer of complexity doesn’t do the game any good, and instead, makes players have a harder time figuring out what to do and which materials to use. It also wastes the players’ time by having them look at resources that look exactly the same, but grant different bonuses. This is really bad for a game that’s already quite slow.
Not Much Guidance
The game tells you what to do and what to look for, but it doesn’t tell you how to do it or where to look for things. There’s zero hand-holding in this game, which some people may appreciate, but most would wish for a more informative and user-friendly experience. It’s easy to get lost and completely lose your sense of direction. This lack of guidance makes this game a terrible choice for those unfamiliar with the survival crafting genre.
Combat Takes Too Long To Get Fun
Nightingale’s trailers showed off cool guns and magical weapons with visually striking effects. This was something I was really excited about, and I was expecting combat similar to that of Bioshock or Witchfire. However, my experience couldn’t get any farther from that. For the several hours I played, I never even held a gun nor a magical weapon. All I had to defend myself were the tools that I used to hunt, mine, and cut trees. Imagine having big expectations for combat, and then experiencing something similar to Minecraft’s combat where all you do is smack enemies with whatever melee weapon you’re holding. I’m sure that this is hidden away somewhere deeper in the game, but it takes way too long to get there.
Is Nightingale Worth It?
Not At Its Current State
Nightingale shows promise. Its potential is yet to be unlocked, but requires dedication from the developers’ end to improve the game and fix its glaring issues. At its current state, Nightingale is not worth the $29.99.
Nightingale Overview & Premise
In an alternate Victorian era world where magic thrives, humans and faes have worked hand-in-hand together. Humanity’s greed has led to a cataclysmic event. Countless fae realms exist and the humans who can utilize magic to travel through these realms are called Realmwalkers. You play as one, whose goal is to get to the mystical city of Nightingale, where a population of lucky humans have taken refuge.
Nightingale FAQ
How to split stacks in Nightingale?
You can split stacks by selecting the number of items you want separated in the campfire. Alternatively, you could do this when interacting with storage chests. There’s no option to do this in your inventory without either a campfire or a storage chest.
How to play with friends in Nightingale?
You can do this from the party menu which you can access by pushing the P key.
Game8 Reviews
Nightingale Product Information
 |
|
| Title | NIGHTINGALE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 20, 2024 |
| Developer | Inflexion Games |
| Publisher | Inflexion Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Survival |
| Number of Players | 1-6 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Nightingale Website |
