Adam Beck is an Editor-at-Large at DualShockers with more than two decades of experience covering the video game industry. He began writing about games in 2003, with his first published review covering Disgaea: Hour of Darkness for PlayStation 2, and has since written news, reviews, previews, features, guides, and interviews across a wide range of genres.
Before DualShockers, Adam contributed to outlets including Hardcore Gamer and Advanced Media Network, and has experience managing writers as well as covering major industry events such as E3, GDC, Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival, and private preview events. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems.
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.
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.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.dualshockers.com/gamescom-2026-nodusfall-hands-on-preview-hoyoverse/
