Choose My Adventure: Mucking through the Magwytch Marshes to close out Nightingale

Well, it just makes sense that I had to bite the bullet and push forward, particularly since Tier 3 stuff was awaiting: The polls decreed that I was to make way to the Magwytch Marshes story realm in Nightingale, and honestly I was feeling pretty ready for that task as I started the adventure.

As you no doubt read last week, most of my effort and time was spent with putting my new Tudor forest manor together, so I was more than raring to rip open that portal and get going… except for the fact that I was running kind of low on supplies and my materials were pretty much split between my old base and the new one.

So yay, more house moving.

This was not a great deal of fun, as one can imagine. Not only was I having to make multiple trips from my new house to the old in order to ferry materials for what I’d built over, but I was also having to determine where my stuff was going to go.

Yes, furniture placement problems are a thing. Anyone who’s put together a home base in a survival sandbox or just put together a cozy home in an MMORPG that has housing understands this dilemma. Though I always feel like it’s heightened in survivalboxes. I try to arrange things in an orderly and concise fashion, but I always manage to find routes that are even faster than the ones I think of when placing stuff.

Also this house is so big that I have a lot more empty space than I expected. Guess I’ll have to decorate at some point later.

But I digress. Once the final boring phases of getting things from the old house to the new were set and I crafted some more ammunition for my guns, I plopped the Magwytch Marshes realm card into the big ol’ stone portal and leapt in.

As one might expect, the marshes were pretty wet, but they were also colored a sickly lime green while rain was constantly pouring overhead. The portal dropped me atop a tower of some sort in the middle of a tiny town, but I had bare little time to get my bearings as I was almost immediately assaulted by Bound.

Normally when I’m being attacked by these weirdos, I have to find the little spawner thing to destroy in order to stop the waves from coming, but this time there were no such spawners. And the baddies kept pouring in. For a little bit there, I was kind of confused. I didn’t really have a lot of time to think about it, though, because this region introduced a big smashy brute-style Bound to the mix, as well as one that likes to throw fire around.

Now I’ve fought these guys in prior builds of Nightingale before, but it had also been long enough that I kind of forgot how to deal with them. Let’s just say I was able to slowly figure it out only through the grace of past me making multiple stacks of healing potions. And also I was reminded that the helper NPCs really, really love to throw themselves into explosions.

Eventually I figured out that I had to stand in some zones and wait for their glyphs to turn from red to blue, fighting off the oncoming waves of enemies as I went. Thus ended the hot drop into the marshes and began the quests that were in this zone: I had to turn on the power to several different factories in order to gain entrance to the realm’s site of power, all while hoping to find someone who was sent out awhile ago and I’m pretty sure we can guess that things ended up badly for this NPC.

I will point out before I go much further that, unlike other story realms, this one is one I did not complete – not necessarily because I didn’t want to but because at this point I sort of figured I knew what the gameplay loop was going to be. I had to go to a POI, clear out some enemies and their spawners, and then interact with something or other to finish the step. And no, this time around there were no sneaky ways in to the site of power like in the last zone.

I don’t know that boredom has pervaded this process so much as a sense of over-familiarity. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I’m writing articles about it already. About the biggest motivator for me as I went along was the slow unlocking of Tier 3 recipes. I envisioned how good it would feel to have all of these better pieces of gear.

Yet in the end I didn’t really feel the urge to race to the end as I kind of did in the prior story zones. I think I’ve just gotten comfortable with Nightingale and would rather take my time in the walk. At least that’s the kind of thing I think I’ll be doing for this game outside of my allotted time for this column.

Yes, I do plan on keeping this one on my SSD and playing it. For one, I could just continue to mark its early access progress, but primarily I just feel like I’ve gotten the overall thrust of this return to the title. I can guess what’s next. I’m not sure there are any more surprises waiting for me.

That’s not to suggest that I think this game is finished, though. I will say that the structured setup is good, and the aesthetic of it all continues to make me smile, but the deeper gameplay loops – the crafting and the gathering and the combat – still don’t feel like they’re at their best. I guess you can’t really make crafting in survivalboxes all that engaging when there are multiple worlds and a few different trees of kit to get through.

I don’t know that I dislike my time in Nightingale this time around. In fact, I’d say I have enjoyed myself overall. But I still hope a few things improve. Assuming, of course, there are major improvements down the block. This game hasn’t gotten updates since the big one mid-March, and that concerns me.

Perhaps it’s because this game gave me the bug, or perhaps this game has me seeking out other such experiences, but I’m feeling the survivalbox vibe for at least one more month. So the next game we’ll be exploring together will be another survivalbox. I promise I’ll get this out of my system soon; just give me a few weeks. Oh, and select where to go, obviously.

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Polling closes at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 2nd. Now that I’m “off the clock” on this one, maybe I’ll just mosey my way through. Who knows? Perhaps I’m close to the titular city now.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.