The Duskbloods Feels Like a Nintendo Party Game in a Bloody Wrapper

If you’d told me two years ago that Nintendo and FromSoftware would team up on an online PvPvE Switch 2 exclusive that’s also kind of a spiritual successor to Bloodborne, my first reaction would have been, “it’s called the Switch 2??” But jokes aside, I would’ve found this collaboration hard to believe. FromSoftware is one of the hottest devs on the planet right now, but its games rarely come to Nintendo platforms. Nintendo is publishing this game outside of Japan, and you can count all of the M-rated games the typically family-friendly company has ever published on basically two hands. Both companies also have long histories of fairly clunky online multiplayer, making the type of game they’ve gone in on together stand out even more. On paper, it’s a bizarre partnership, but after spending around eight hours with The Duskbloods network test last weekend, I totally get it now. In IGN’s interview with FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, he spoke about how the deal came to be, stating that Nintendo was “very excited and receptive” to the idea from the jump. And now that I’ve played it, it’s so easy to see why folks at Nintendo thought this would be a good fit for Switch, because once yo