Nodusfall – 'Elden Ring Clone' or HoYoverse's Strategic Gambit?

When the winged character appeared in the first trailer of Nodusfall, Vietnamese gaming forums needed less than three minutes to recognize the "shadow" of Malenia – the most annoying boss in Elden Ring. Below the video, two camps quickly clashed: some called Nodusfall a "rip-off," others reminded that "dark fantasy" is not something FromSoftware has ever monopolized. The debate spread from Reddit to Facebook groups within 24 hours, turning a teaser under two minutes into the hottest topic in the gaming community this month. In football, the only thing worth trusting is what the crowd hasn't seen yet. With games, perhaps it's the same. HoYoverse – the Chinese developer behind Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail – is known for anime aesthetics and gacha mechanics. Nodusfall is a major turning point as they unveiled a realistic dark fantasy project with four-player co-op boss hunting. Side-by-side image comparisons between Nodusfall and Elden Ring spread quickly: from the winged character to the white-haired woman, every frame was scrutinized. The biggest question now: is HoYoverse crossing the line between inspiration and plagiarism? Elden Ring, winner of Game of the Year 2026, set a new standard for action RPGs. Over the past three years, nearly every game with a gloomy atmosphere, rhythm-based combat, and vast landscapes has been compared to FromSoftware's masterpiece. This created an "industry meta": anyone choosing dark fantasy must face accusations of imitation, no matter how much personal creativity they add. But look closer: what truly sets Nodusfall apart lies in gameplay, not appearance. While Elden Ring is designed as a lonely journey where solitude is part of the experience, Nodusfall focuses on coordinated boss hunting. Four players must constantly communicate positions, divide roles, and time dodges to take down gigantic monsters. This is closer to Monster Hunter than Elden Ring – a completely different ecosystem. My first big bet did not come from courage. It came from the crowd's mistake. I have seen too many matches misjudged because people looked at the lineup on paper and ignored the actual pressing system. Nodusfall is suffering the same disease: fans see similar frames and tag it "plagiarism," while no one has seen a single minute of actual gameplay. Current accusations rely on about 120 seconds of cinematic trailer – a tiny sample to judge a dozen-hour game. The counterintuitive point here is that the "rip-off" controversy could become Nodusfall's greatest marketing asset. Before this, few outside HoYoverse's hardcore fans knew the project. Within a week, hundreds of comparison videos, analysis posts, and debates pushed Nodusfall to trending topics across platforms. If the development team stays calm and releases a long gameplay showcase featuring the four-player mechanic, the initial anger could be converted into media momentum. Gaming history has seen titles branded as "clones" succeed through their own quality, just as a player doubted to shine at a big stage silences critics with performance. People also forget that Elden Ring itself was built from pieces of Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, and even the Berserk manga. The line between influence and plagiarism is always blurry, redrawn by the court of public opinion rather than lawyers. If HoYoverse has a competent legal team, they would have reviewed character designs before releasing the trailer. The fact that the trailer shipped suggests they believe those winged, white-haired archetypes are common dark fantasy motifs, not direct rips. If you ask me why I chose analysis as a career, my answer is: I don't watch football for enjoyment. I watch it to test a long-term hypothesis. With Nodusfall, that hypothesis is: can a giant from the anime-gacha space learn the design language of a genre that belongs to FromSoftware? The answer lies not in emotional social media comments, but in the gameplay data that will emerge in the coming months. Of course, risk remains. If the next gameplay reveal shows every dodge, attack stance, and enemy layout identical to Elden Ring, this controversy becomes a verdict. But if HoYoverse proves differentiation – through four-player coordination, boss mechanics scaling with party size, or a loot system leaning toward Monster Hunter – the "clone" label will quickly fall away. The biggest question is not whether Nodusfall copies Elden Ring. That is surface noise. The real question is whether HoYoverse dares to release a long gameplay video, where viewers see four people team up to topple a giant boss, where all comparisons to Elden Ring become irrelevant. Then the community will have data instead of emotion. And I will trust the data – until the data says otherwise.