miHoYo, also known as HoYoverse outside of China, has built a global empire thanks to their work on games such as Genshin Impact, Honkai: Stair Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. These are gacha mobile games that scratch a certain itch for players, but like a lot of mobile-centric developers, HoYoverse is looking to jump into the AAA space.
We saw this with developers such as Shift Up, best known for Nikke, who released Stellar Blade in 2024, and Game Science, developers of Art of War: Red Tides, who created the award-winning Black Myth: Wukong. It’s now HoYoverse’s turn, as at Gamescom this year, they revealed their next big project: Nodusfall.
This is a massive undertaking unlike anything the studio has created before, on the scale of some of the biggest games to ever be released. At gamescom last week, we were invited to check out a short thirty-minute hands-on session with the upcoming title, and we were left awestruck.
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I can’t stop thinking about this one.
More Monster Hunter than Elden Ring
The first thing we noticed was just how akin this was to a Monster Hunter. It has all the aesthetics of an Elden Ring-esque experience, especially the second encounter in which we took down a dragon-riding knight, but there’s no denying the overwhelming amount of Monster Hunter DNA.
This is because, instead of creating a specific character and shaping them to your liking through RPG elements, we were thrown into an expedition with four different pre-established classes. Each one did drastically different things, such as two DPS (a ranged and a melee), a healer and a tank. It felt very much like an MMORPG such as Final Fantasy XIV, although you’re able to defeat encounters without pre-determined compositions or their unique synergies.
With that said, we couldn’t see anyone playing Nordusfall without a healer. They were a crucial part of our success, as you only have a set amount of healing items and a single mistimed guard or dodge can chunk your HP bare for quite a bit.
That’s not to say it’s on the same level as something like an Elden Ring, or even some of the most advanced Monster Hunter bosses, as, at least from what we played, it’s not as punishing. Still, you will have to be an incredibly seasoned player to play this solo or without a healer.
A Class for Everyone
In terms of controls, Nodus Fall feels very precise. Each area is massive, with the local life doing their own thing and even engaging in conflicts with one another. You will need to find the bosses themselves in this vast environment, although we never had trouble locating them.
Similar to Monster Hunter, a boss will fly off or relocate to lick its injuries, but this will generally trigger additional phases. How it was set up in the demo was interacting with something in the world to be teleported, but given you can use mounts and collect items in the world, there’s a good chance this won’t be in the final version.
As we mentioned, we were given four different classes to play through. While there were two DPS and one healer class, we elected to go for the classic warrior archetype, wielding a massive sword and drawing most of the attention away from the rest of the party.
This class is, as you can expect, tanky. It can not only take a hit, but it has special abilities that allow you to repel certain attacks. That’s on top of its parry feature, which helps build a certain meter that allows him to unleash a devastating charged attack, something that is tiered with three different strikes.
…there’s no denying the overwhelming amount of Monster Hunter DNA.
We do hope there will be more selection of moves to choose from, though. While there were some exciting actions, a few of them felt situational. Being able to assign specific attacks to button commands would allow for a great amount of customization when building your classes.
On the Hunt
Even before going on a hunt, we had to get situated in our home base where we could interact with other players and customize our characters. Each class plays drastically different from one another, with, hopefully, even more being added when at launch. The first boss we faced was a Behemoth-looking lion with wings. The encounter lasted a good ten to fifteen minutes and took us to a couple of different locales.
The second portion of the fight was the more interesting of the two, as we were given actual mechanics that would wipe the party, or at least kill players, otherwise. The one annoying aspect of this boss, especially given being a melee, is how much he soars off. Half the fight felt like it wasn’t meant for melee users and favored ranged. With that said, its wind effects certainly added a level of flair to the encounter.
The second encounter felt more like a FromSoftware game as we not only took on a fire-breathing dragon, but halfway through the fight, its knightly rider came down. This fight was intense and incredibly fast, with several attacks that were challenging the parry. Having both bosses available acted as a good showcase in displaying the blend of different encounter setups and combat variety.
We should also mention that player interaction is a lot more of an emphasis in Nodusfall than anything else. When you look at games such as Monster Hunter, it’s primarily just four players whacking an enemy until it’s dead. In Nodusfall, players will be encouraged at certain breakpoints to perform certain specialized cooperative attacks and deal immense amounts of damage to the enemy. These are not only effective, but flashy as well. It’s these types of interactions that truly bring out the cooperative focus in the game, as it’s a game that’s meant to be played with others.
Customizing Your Playstyle
While there wasn’t much in terms of customizing your character, there were at least options to choose their unique skills and their cosmetics. As we mentioned, we went down the tank route with the warrior class, and doing so allowed us to take on a special defensive ability. With that said, you are able to go a little more offensive with this class, with specific abilities tailored for different play styles.
As for customizing your look, there are different armor adjustments, sch as equipping a mask, and there were options to change your outfit in general, but what was shown was limited and there weren’t many options. We can only assume that these will be filled with more cosmetics when the game launches. Whether these cosmetics will be a premium or obtained in the game itself will be determined at a later date, although we wouldn’t be surprised if it was a mix of both.
Nodusfall is still a long way until it releases on PC as a free-to-play title, but the very little we got to experience has us beyond excited to play more of it. Thirty minutes didn’t feel like enough time to truly dig into every nuance, but it gave us a good understanding of the direction the studio is going. It’s a fast-paced, exhilarating cooperative experience that’s shaping up to be HoYoverse’s biggest game yet.
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