From Final Fantasy 14 to No Man’s Sky, we’ve seen plenty of dramatic comebacks over the years. In a year populated with big survival games including Palworld, Once Human, Soulmask, and Enshrouded – not forgetting regular updates for the likes of Rust, Valheim, and Ark – Nightingale struggled to maintain its initial player spike. But there’s always the chance for a dramatic resurgence. In a new developer update, Inflexion Games showcases its completely rebuilt Realms system and lifts the lid on a reimagined, more structured story campaign.
Dubbed Nightingale: Realms Rebuilt, the core focus of this dramatic overhaul is the selection of various Realms that you travel to via trans-dimensional portals. “We’ve heard loud and clear that the Realms can sometimes feel quite samey and repetitive at times,” Inflexion CEO Aaryn Flynn recently said of the feature, while art director Neil Thompson called their previous implementation “almost too open-world, too self-motivated in terms of goal setting,” leading to a lack of real direction in the survival game.
That’s all changed in Realms Rebuilt. While procedurally generated Realms will still exist in a similar form, your attention will now be more centrally directed towards a series of handcrafted zones called Storied Realms. This journey begins in a forest zone bearing home to The Crossways, a collection of portals that act as a hub leading you across the Storied Realms.
You won’t be alone, either, as goat-masked trickster Puck returns as your guide, featuring all-new voice work from Marc Warren. At his behest, you’ll be sent on a more structured main quest that will see you reawakening The Crossways and diving into the Realms beyond in search of long-lost secrets and wonders. At key points, you’ll have to handle combat encounters and puzzles alike at new Sites of Power, each of which will build to more distinctive and dramatic boss fights that should put your skills to the test.
Nightingale: Realms Rebuilt reworks progression, too, introducing a new menu that should simplify and unify all your upgrades into one place. To further support that, the forest zone playing home to The Crossroads also features a range of additional handcrafted locations where you can unlock additional tools and recipes for your new progression tree. Among these is the newly added bow and a target range where you can practice using it.
In addition to this campaign overhaul, you can look forward to further improvements arriving with the Realms Rebuilt update, including an upgrade to build limits. There’s no set date for launch yet, although Inflexion teases, “you may want to keep your eyes peeled at Gamescom for a sneak peek at what’s to come.”
Until then, here are more of the best crafting games on PC right now for a bounty of build-based delights. If you’re enraptured by the mystical and the wondrous, meanwhile, the best fantasy games are perfect to get lost in.
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