Elden Ring Nightreign is a vastly different kind of FromSoftware experience. It’s taking the hallmark, tough-as-nails combat and applying it to a three-player co-op title that takes inspiration from battle royales and roguelikes. But with these core changes, does that FromSoftware magic remain? This may not be what most people want or even like from the developer, but it sure is a lot of fun.
Nightreign exists in a sort of parallel universe to Elden Ring, where players are tasked with “repulsing the night”. It’s basically a non-canonical spin-off that reuses assets and enemies from the base game to craft up what FromSoftware calls a “session-based RPG”.
What that translates to is a day and night cycle that teams of three must survive: two day sections – roughly 15 minutes each – where you must gain runes to level up and collect weapons to make your build before a battle royale-styled circle closes in on you; two nights of randomised bosses, taken from Elden Ring and previous Dark Souls games, and, finally; the Nightlord fight, a boss unique to the round and the ultimate challenge of each run.
Respawning is an option during the day segments at the cost of a level, but if all three players die during one of the three boss fights, you’ll need to start all over again. And this introduces the risk and reward of the title, where every second of a run matters.
The intricacy of the base game’s buildcrafting is very much at the forefront of this outing, albeit in a new streamlined capacity. With eight classes to choose from, each with a passive, alternate, and ultimate ability, these act as the foundation for each run’s build.
Whether it’s the Duchess’ ability to repeat damage just done to enemies or the Wylder’s distance closing grapple, there’s a little something for each playstyle across these classes, and plenty of synergies to mess around with. There are certainly some favourites – we barely touched the Executor, yet couldn’t get enough of Ironeye – but a build is made or broken out in the field.
Elden Ring Nightreign completely removes armour from the equation so you can focus solely on the weapons. You’ve got your usual things to consider, like elemental status, Ashes of War, and of course, the type of weapon itself. But most importantly to the game are the passive bonuses, because those will influence whether you pick up a weapon you may never actually use.
With six weapon slots, each has the potential to enhance your build, with passives like HP restoration on enemy kills, increased damage negation on low health, or even adding elemental damage to every weapon in your inventory. You aren’t just looking for the weapon that works for your playstyle, but the weapon that works for your build, because you don’t have to equip these weapons for the passives to apply.
And that’s when the roguelike influences are really felt, as you drop into the latest rendition of The Lands Between. In our first hours, it was a mad scramble to collect any runes possible, hitting up the closest points of interest to take down bosses and collecting additional flasks at Marika sites, all in the hope of finding the ultimate build.
As you can expect, sometimes that just doesn’t happen, as the RNG gods aren’t always on your side. Eventually, however, you’ll become more familiar with how the map works, discovering its secrets and reliable aspects, so you can then formulate a plan to maximise your chances of a better build.
For example, dilapidated churches have a boss to defeat (often one of the easiest), and they almost always have a Stonesword Key, meaning you can take on an Evergaol too. Evergaol’s usually have runes as one of their rewards, meaning you can get your level up a bit quicker.
Most camps are marked by an elemental type, meaning the reward from beating that boss will relate to that type. Furthermore, each of the Nightlords has an elemental weakness, so it’s in your interest to take on the camps that relate to the final boss. And then, if you want to take your new elemental weapon to the next level, underground mines have some form of troll, which always drop a level two Smithing Stone.
With this knowledge, runs become an exercise of streamlining, where you’ll begin to know whether you are ahead or behind where you should be as you reach the end of your first day. It’s an invigorating feeling as you and your squad form a plan and synergise, working together to take down the ultimate challenge. However, Nightreign doesn’t want you getting overly familiar or comfortable with a run, so it has a number of tricks up its sleeve.
The map, for one, while not procedurally generated, has various forms, where points of interest are mixed around. But after a few dozen hours, the map can get a bit samey, as points of interest are copied and pasted around with varying enemy types inside.
However, there are also Shifting Earth events to mix things up, where the map can drastically change to include things like a lava-filled crater or a scarlet rot forest. These can create challenges in themselves, like when the final circle funnels into the scarlet rot forest, so you must find “the secret of the forest” to negate the scarlet rot buildup.
And then there are randomised events like when our team was befouled by a curse, which reduced our health pool. We had the opportunity to defeat a boss and rid ourselves of the curse, but the circle drew in too quickly, and our run was essentially doomed. You can also be drawn out of your run to face one of the previously defeated Nightlords, which can prove disastrous, but can also boost your chances if you defeat it and receive its runes and perks.
There’s a lot of depth to the basic gameplay loop, and the game smartly opens up the more of it you play. There are classes you unlock by completing secret questlines, world events revealed by defeating Nightlords, and even 20-something hours into the game, we were still encountering new challenges.
All of that is without mentioning the Nightlords themselves. Disappointingly, each fight takes place in the same sandy plane, although they all come with their own flavour, whether it’s the madness-fuelled Equilibrious Beast, the gracious Augur, or the sword-wielding three-headed Gladius.
With the gameplay loop and grind of the previous day and night cycles, reaching the Nightlords is incredibly daunting. All of your gear, your passive abilities and buffs are on the line, and there’s a palpable tension that might even supersede that of the base game.
These bosses can be really tough, and losing to them is heartbreaking, knowing that you’re sent packing right back to the start. However, beating them is also a euphoric achievement, and we had multiple occasions where we jumped out of our chair in victory.
Once you’ve beaten all the bosses that the game has to offer, though, what is there left to do? Depending on your squad’s skill level, “completing” the game will likely take you upwards of 30 hours. It’s a meaty multiplayer offering already, but it goes beyond the Nightlords.
There’s the grind for relics: stats buffs that are unlocked with each run, and can be applied to your characters, acting as extended foundations for your build. Then there are remembrances for each class: mini quests to complete when out in the field. And, of course, there is the Murk currency to spend on unlocking new skins for your characters and bonus relics.
FromSoftware has confirmed that more bosses, Shifting Earth events, and even classes will join the fray in post-launch. It doesn’t have the feeling of your typical live service, and we suspect that once the Nightlords have been defeated, most players will move on. Whether a lack of true endgame is a real issue or not is down to the player, but we’re inclined to say that a finishable multiplayer game is a good thing.
Something to consider in the quest to complete Elden Ring Nightreign is whether you’re playing with random players or friends. The game supports solo runs and solo matchmaking, but it’s clear this isn’t really the way FromSoftware intended you to play.
Teamwork is crucial in Nightreign, and while communicating is somewhat possible via pings, we always felt like we were missing a crucial part of the experience — even more so when we paired with rogue players who had their own ideas.
While there is a penalty for backing out of matches, we suspect a lot of solo players will suffer when members of their team back out of the game when a run isn’t going all too well. For us, there was a noted difference in how much fun we had with the game when we played with a full team using voice chat compared to solo queuing and using pings.
And lastly, PS5 Pro optimisation isn’t that great pre-launch, although it should be noted there isn’t a Pro Enhanced version of the game just yet. We played on the “prioritise framerate” mode, and performance was noticeably shoddy, with the framerate frequently tanking as you ran around its map. And with a lack of any real DualSense haptics or adaptive triggers, the PS5 version of the game is somewhat lacking. Although, as is suspected, performance will likely improve with a couple post-launch patches.