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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.
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What does impress me is how bizarre The Duskbloods is as a videogame in 2026. At times it felt like playing a PlayStation 2 game I brought home from Blockbuster with an offbeat multiplayer mode someone cooked up before battle royales and hero shooters codified a framework for how it’s done. Tutorial popups will tell you things like, “To obtain Virtue visit Sites of Ritual to pledge yourself on the Eve of the Third Moon before the final Bestowal.” That’s the kind of needlessly opaque but deliciously evocative language I love to see in a FromSoft game, but it also does absolutely nothing to prepare you for what it’s like to actually play it.
The simplest way I can describe The Duskbloods is by using MOBA words. It’s a game about killing creeps to level up and collect Virtue points as you prepare for the final PvP team fight (or free-for-all in solos) at the end of every match. Enemy players are there to gank you or be ganked by you as you race to become the strongest combatant in the lobby. Otherwise, collecting Virtue is your entire goal from the moment you and seven other players drop into the map and the first round begins. The rest of the game’s systems are there to disrupt you on your quest to farm as much Virtue as possible so you don’t get kicked, or culled, from the match early.
Even though I expected the PvP aspect of The Duskbloods to be the worst part as someone who avoids it in FromSoft’s other games, it’s actually so meaningless for the majority of a match that I almost wish there was more reason to hunt down players, but it’s huge risk with little reward. Dying to other players doesn’t do anything but set you back on your Virtue farm. It’s more lucrative to play it like you’re speedrunning a normal Souls game with opportunities to PvP every now and then if you want.
On paper, the Nightreign player in me should eat that up. This is a game where everyone can triple jump and air dash like it’s nothing. Over the course of my matches, however, I never fought anything that required more than your usual attack-and-dodge approach. Most monsters die in a few hits and the bosses ping-pong between players while everyone spams attacks into them until they die. I can’t tell which ones, if any, are supposed to be fodder like in a MOBA or challenging foes that reward you for memorizing their moves. At times, the hardest fight was with my eyelids, as I farmed the same mincemeat enemies over and over again. The routine is only occasionally broken by another player engaging a boss that lets everyone join under a temporary truce to help fight it. My hope is that the final game has more of these moments that rely on having a handful of players participating.
The Duskbloods desperately needs more reasons to care about its cast of certified freaks and their unique skills that aren’t purely PvP-focused. I love that I can turn it into a third-person shooter as Sniper Layla and press a button to make a gatling gun burst out of her chest, but standing still as you one-shot weak enemies gets stale real quick. Trang Lanh’s invisibility skill is largely useless against monsters who all have big attacks that’ll hit you anyway, which just reduces her into a weaker melee character. Even everyone’s favorite walking submarine, Zork, plays like your typical heavy-armored Souls character until other players show up and you actually have a reason to rocket yourself into them (AKA “Zorking it”).
Recruiting enemies as allies by yelling at them until they surrender is also great, as are the unique Kin you can have by your side. I found a shirtless man named Baritone who stood by me and sang to give me a defense buff and a small snake girl inexplicably named “Gargoyle” who healed me. You can level these weirdos up and have them tank tougher monsters for you, which ends up being pretty important as you get deeper into a match. The Kin are Elden Ring’s Spirit Ash summons if they were smarter and permanent—a really fun idea that I hope future character kits can build around. Unfortunately, the Kin feel ill-equipped for the speed of PvP fights, even sometimes sabotaging you by ruining a sneaky ambush by sprinting straight into battle.
Even with its problems, I am fascinated by FromSoft’s irresistible premise: a bunch of vampires from different eras and factions fighting on the eve of an apocalypse to give themselves up to a giant moon dripping with blood. I would like to know why there is a steampunk airship in the sky and why one of the bosses looks like Bloodborne’s Lady Maria riding on a headless horse. There are echoes of other FromSoft games imbued into the world, but so far it’s only enough for director Hidetaka Miyazaki to remind us that better games exist.
I used to be a believer that The Duskbloods would eventually make its way to the PC, but recent comments from Miyazaki seem to imply Nintendo’s involvement was so pivotal to the project that I wouldn’t be surprised if the exclusivity is indefinite. We’ve got another Bloodborne on our hands, apparently.
So with us computer-havers being denied the chance to play The Duskbloods with better framerates and no paid subscription, maybe we’re not missing much. Its best ideas fall flat in a game that is mostly about farming enemies like you’re on a quest in an MMO from 10 years ago. Nothing about it grabbed me and I’m worried it might end up being the first FromSoft game that I simply skip.
