I've been a pretty consistent fan of FromSoft's games, admittedly never beating either Dark Souls game I've gotten (though I got very far in DSIII, with only the last two DLC bosses and the final boss unbeaten) but adoring both Bloodborne and Elden Ring.
When Elden Ring: Nightreign was released, I considered playing it, but ultimately decided that the kind of short match-style multiplayer system is just not what I'm into (I've been more or less a solo player in WoW of late, thanks in large part to how the game now accommodates such a playstyle with things like Delves as my endgame).
Gameplay-wise, though, Nightreign seems like far more of a fit for me than The Duskbloods, as while the former is entirely built around co-op, the Duskbloods is ultimately a competitive PvP multiplayer game (though with environmental threats to face largely as a way to earn character progression and avoid being "culled." I am also given to understand that there are scenarios not available in the initial demo that end in boss battles rather than PvP free-for-alls, but it's still built around competition with other players).
So, once again, I'm left with a game I'll probably be curious to hear a lot about, but I doubt I'll actually play it (I don't have a Switch 2 either, though that feels like an eventual inevitability. I've had every Nintendo home console starting with the SNES).
But on an aesthetic level, The Duskbloods actually looks incredible.
The game has more of a gothic look than the medieval look of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, though in contrast with Bloodborne's more "early to mid 19th century" look, this really appears more Steampunk in vibe, arguably more of an early 20th century feel.
Like Nightreign, you pick from established characters with their own built-in capabilities. Probably the most distinctive is a guy (actually, I'm making an assumption here. I don't know that they're male) in a big steampunk armor suit whose signature attack is to use rockets to shoot forward and ram into their foes. There's also evidently an event that can bring a big airship overhead that you can call upon to bombard large groups of foes.
If Bloodborne is... sort of... about werewolves, Duskbloods is far more vampire-coded, with the player characters having vampiric abilities, including the ability to bite foes and temporarily make them into allies (I assume only for the NPC ones).
FromSoft is known for re-using assets, so I wouldn't read too much into this, but many of the non-player foes that I saw in Vaati Vidya's preview looked like the Pthumerians we encounter in Bloodborne. Now, I don't think we can draw any direct lore conclusions from that - Bloodborne was a Playstation exclusive and Duskbloods is a Nintendo exclusive, so I think it extremely unlikely that there will be any canonical connection between their stories.
But thematically we might see some similar ideas. What I find interesting here is the presence of, well, kind of World War 1-era weaponry. I believe the idea of the game is that it's an era called "humanity's twilight," and massive wars like WWI felt pretty apocalyptic to those who lived through it. Again, unlike Nightreign, this game does seem to be oriented toward competition, with only one victor arising from each match, and I wonder to what extent that theme of competition winds up being part of the story as well - a world brought to perdition because of endless competitiveness.
FromSoft's combat has undergone an interesting evolution. Early games like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls had very slow, methodically-paced combat. But over time, they've pushed for faster styles of combat that still maintain the meaning and weight of each strike. Duskbloods actually looks kind of insane, with what appears to be all characters getting several in-air jumps and the ability to clash mid-air.
Anyway, it's a little frustrating that, two games in a row, I'm finding myself likely to be looking in through the window. But maybe we'll see the next single-player game from the company incorporate some of the cool ideas developed for Nightreign and Duskbloods.
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