The Duskbloods Network Test review – FromSoftware offers multiplayer vampires

GameCentral dives into FromSoftware’s Switch 2 exclusive, where fast-paced Dark Souls combat collides with a knockout tournament.

FromSoftware’s pantheon of classics are primarily thought of as single-player experiences, but the majority have at least some form of multiplayer. Across Dark Souls and Elden Ring, you can summon others to assist you with bosses, engage in competitive fights, or scatter messages across the open world. They are optional features, but these shared elements offer a collaborative struggle which makes their punishing worlds less overwhelming.

Over recent years, FromSoftware has pushed this sense of jolly co-operation to the forefront. Last year, the studio released Elden Ring Nightreign, a flawed roguelike co-op remix of the original. It was an interesting experiment, but as a project not directed by CEO Hidetaka Miyazaki, it didn’t carry quite the same level of prestige as the studio’s best. 

The Duskbloods might share DNA with Nightreign, but the expectation is different. This is a new IP, with Miyazaki in the driving seat, and the studio’s first Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. FromSoftware titles often have some secrecy to them, but aside from it being geared around multiplayer, The Duskbloods has been almost a complete mystery since it was announced – until the Network Test over the weekend. 

It’s presumably only a small slice of the overall game, to stress test the servers, but this early taste shows off the core gameplay loop. At first glance, The Duskbloods is a familiar brew. The combat fundamentals of past FromSoftware games – a mix of light, strong, long range, and character-specific attacks – are intact, and the burning gothic landscapes of the only map you can play, named Lowanro City, harkens back to Bloodborne’s Yharnam. 

A key difference is the fluidity, and flexibility, in your movement. You can jump as normal with a mere tap, or hold down for a supersized launch into the air, which can be extended with three extra mini-jumps. It’s as if you’re permanently riding on Torrent in Elden Ring, only on two feet instead of four. However, with a complete lack of fall damage (and respawns), you’re bounding around these environments in a more cartoonish, haphazard way compared to the studio’s prior titles. 

It’s a design choice to remove friction on a semi-large multiplayer map. At its core, The Duskbloods is a competitive – yet occasionally collaborative – knockout competition across multiple phases. Your primary goal is to collect Virtue, which you can gather in various ways; whether by killing enemy players, taking down bosses, wiping out low-level scrubs, or finding offerings from pillars and corpses by exploring the map. 

If you collect more Virtue than your opponents, you’ll be saved from the ‘culling’ at the end of each phase. Matches start with eight players, but by the final fourth phase, only three remain, who all fight to the death in a small battle arena to determine the winner. 

The overarching structure is simple, but the depth within these parameters is what makes The Duskbloods compelling. You can make a pact with a ‘kin’, which essentially adds a permanent summon to your ranks – ranging from a singing prisoner to a whip-slinging brute. Additionally, while you’re in competition, you can team-up with your fellow players temporarily; whether to take down a difficult ‘trespasser’ boss or to form an alliance, whereby you share your Virtue rewards with another player and are unable to harm them until the final phase. 

There are other layers nestled beneath the surface. You’re trying to level up your Bloodsworn character at the same time as collecting Virtue, to boost your HP and attack power, and to earn more advanced skills for an extra edge. There are Sigils too, which if equipped, will give you a small mini-mission – like taking down a specific player or forming an alliance – that banks more Virtue if successfully completed. 

It’s an ambitious mix of ideas which strives to make competitive fights (almost) optional. Sure, you can wage war against every enemy player you encounter, but your journey to the next phase might be better assured if you join others to take down a boss, or if you avoid other players altogether and farm experience points by heading to one of the points of interest – like the clock tower or nearby cave – to find a particular enhancement. 

At a base level, it’s a fun adaptation of FromSoftware’s bread and butter gameplay and storytelling into a multiplayer setting, with some excellent characters to mess around with. A vampire swordsman named Albert is the default starter, who packs blood sword attacks and a submachine gun. Our personal favourites were Senator Samir Patres, who can assume the form of a dinosaur and charge foes, and Zork, a Bioshock-esque diver who can barrel across the landscape with a jetpack. 

Between its accelerated speed and zany abilities, The Duskbloods has the energy of a chaotic mod laced over FromSoftware’s stunning art direction and world design. In truth, after several hours in the Network Test, we’re still not sure how we feel about it. It’s undeniably enjoyable, but whether it has any staying power will take much longer than these few days to determine.

A Network Test was never going to provide the full picture, but we are intrigued by the missing details. Miyazaki has promised comprehensive amounts of story tied to the hub area you inhabit between matches, along with character customisation, additional maps, and a new fourth phase where you team up to kill a new boss, instead of each other. If it can meaningfully integrate story progression around its concept, or provide some other cogent incentive, The Duskbloods could be an enticing and fresh proposition in the multiplayer arena. 

If any studio were to innovate when it comes to narratives in multiplayer games, FromSoftware is the safest bet  – but right now The Duskbloods is still too vague a proposition to truly quantify. It’s frantic, unashamedly silly, and unlikely to win over anyone who hasn’t chimed with the studio’s previous PvP work, but it’s a long time since From has made an actively bad game and this doesn’t look likely to break that chain.

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