// PC GAMER — GAMING
My FOMO over The Duskbloods not coming to PC evaporated once I actually played it
The vampire PvPvE game is a confusing mess that isn't going to be for everyone.
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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.
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 with 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