Elden Ring Nightreign Review – A Compact Journey That Grows on you

Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco’s latest offering, takes the familiar Soulslike formula and refocuses it into a fast-paced, cooperative online experience. Built for three-player teams, this spin-off tasks players with surviving escalating encounters, looting upgrades, and ultimately facing off against powerful Nightlords in tightly designed sessions. It’s not a home run if you compare it to the original game, but it’s nowhere near a disaster of an attempt to expand what can be done with the series, especially during the height of its popularity.

New style, same feels

Elden Ring Nightreign is really one of those projects that gives FromSoftware room to expand what is possible with the setting they’ve created, and think outside of the trappings of the traditional action RPG realm to deliver a familiar experience that pushes cooperative play. 

While you can play the game offline and solo, Nightreign is specifically designed as a three-player online experience. Everything about it is Elden Ring, as the character design, action elements, the weapons and gear you pick up during a match are plucked straight from The Lands Between, since FromSoftware has used mainly Elden Ring assets to make Nightreign a reality. 

The originality comes from the game’s unique concept - three players enter a match battle royale style, as they go through two days of exploring and beating various encounters in this massive dynamic map to eventually enter a Nightlord’s realm on the third day, to hopefully defeat them with all that you’ve gathered in that run. 

It's a setup that works surprisingly well. Despite being asset-heavy from the original game, Nightreign doesn’t feel half-baked. If anything, it feels like a competent, contained experiment with just enough hooks to stand on its own. Nightreign can easily be treated as a multiplayer add-on to Elden Ring done right.

Soulslike built with speed in mind

I’m not kidding when I say this is fast-paced; the moment your character hits the ground, your team is off to the races as you go from one point of interest to another to slay mini-bosses that upon defeat will reward each player randomized upgrades from a new weapon, or passive upgrades like a 6% physical damage increase for the rest of the run. Speed is everything when it comes to getting your characters ready for the final boss, to the point where it feels like players are running as if they’re mounted. The added burst of speed is greatly appreciated, as you have a limited time to explore the world and gather all that you can, as the playable area slowly shrinks to a small playing field big enough for a boss encounter. 

Once they’re defeated, you get a significant reward and the chance to continue exploring a second time, eventually shrinking the land one final time for yet another boss encounter. Once you survive the second day, the final day is a direct path to fight a Nightlord, which is the game’s narrative focus, as the six playable characters in Nightreign were tasked to take them down one by one.

It might sound intimidating, and quite frankly, hard to understand, as Nightreign still possesses the vague storytelling and tutorial seen in previous Soulslike titles from FromSoftware. But it took a couple of matches to really get the groove, and thankfully it started to click rather quickly once you get a hang of what it takes to succeed in the game. 

During days one and two, death isn’t all that painful, as dying during the exploration part of a match only results in you losing a level, not a complete loss. It’s a big step back, but I have experienced players easily bouncing back even after dying a couple of times. The real pressure is at the end of the day when a team has to go head-to-head with the boss. This doesn’t have any respawning, as once all three players are on a downed state (you can revive downed players) it’s game over, and you’ll be booted out to the game’s hub where you can customize your characters, learn about the game’s lore, and queue up for the next match.

The game is hard. It won’t top the experience of beating a From Software Soulslike boss solo, but these encounters are fine-tuned to really test a team of three, punishing those who didn’t plan ahead or give a thought on how to build their character. Day one and two bosses are usually reused Elden Ring bosses, but thankfully the Nightlords are unique creations that can really kick a team’s ass with a single mistake.

The final bosses in each run are unique in the sense that their scale and attack patterns are designed to fend off a party of three. We have a three-headed wolf that splits into three separate wolves, a towering dragon boss with gravity abilities, and a one-armed centaur boss that turned so many of my great runs into losses. They are commendable in a sense that they greatly fit the FromSoftware quality you’d expect from a studio that has been doing this for years. On the other hand, it is disappointing that most of the other encounters are copy-pasted from Elden Ring into Nightreign, just fine-tuned for the co-op design.

Elden Ring with set playstyles

Elden Ring Nightreign features eight playable characters that come with their own sets of skills and stat allocation. Between the mage called The Recluse, the range specialist Ironeye, and the Revenant, who serves as the summoner of the group, they each have a set loadout of skills that can’t be changed and bring a certain playstyle that doesn’t necessarily make them a staple in certain fights. Each of them are playstyles, not specifically roles, and their stat allocation is preset, as you have no control over how your character's stats grow as you level up. That aspect of a character’s progression is set for you. 

For example, The Raider will always specialize in melee weapons due to him having more strength than the rest, effectively letting him utilize two-handed weapons like axes and great swords more effectively. You can still wield whatever you want, but don’t expect things to work or hit as hard, as the stat system and nitty-gritty of how weapons and skills scale are almost identical to what is seen in Elden Ring. 

Each run, win or lose, rewards players with a currency that lets them unlock relics and other emotes or customizations, but the important reward at the end is the relics, which are items that improve your character's stats or change how a skill will behave. Characters can slot in three relics at a time and can only slot relics in the appropriate relic color slot, so there are limitations and different types of relics that reward multiple runs. These relics are randomized as players are rewarded with a variety of combinations, so at times it gets a bit confusing. You can get relics that give you resistance to certain status effects, straight-up stat increases, elemental damage increases, and even increasing how much faster your character’s ultimate skill will be available for use. It’s random enough that the combinations don’t necessarily make sense, but there’s enough here that would entice players to chase for that particular relic that would fit perfectly on a specific character.

Relics don’t effectively change a character’s playstyle, but steer it to a loadout a player would like to specialize in for that particular match. For example, I want my next run as the Duchess to be more effective when using straight swords, or increase the potency of the holy spells I pick up. These are slight bumps to your character’s potential, as at the end of the day, what gear you pick up and the upgrades you earn carry roughly equal weight as relics when it comes to your build.

What I do appreciate in Nightreign is that despite the drops not going my in my favor, I still was able to find successful runs through smart timing and cooperation with the other players. I’ve had a couple of runs where I didn’t feel all that confident with what I’ve picked up, but was able to win because I knew the final boss’ attack patterns. Your knowledge and smart choices can still determine the outcome.

Cooperation is faint

Nightreign’s gameplay loop is surprisingly well-thought-out, as each run felt refreshing and repeatable. Over 40 hours of play still has me still reeling, as based on what I’ve read, I still have more to see in this dynamic map that has unique sections, as one match could feature a icy mountain or a fiery crater with its own set of secrets awaiting the team that dares to explore it. But despite these alterations to the map, you’ll eventually find repetition, as each point of interest really just involves your beating whatever encounter lies in wait. 

It’s simple in that sense, and since there’s a time limit attached to the first two days, it’s only natural that players are always sprinting to the next location as fast as possible, as the faster you clear areas, the more upgrades and currency you’ll generate, and thus the quicker you’ll level up. The sense of urgency to go fast has pushed the community to pick a location and run it - after hours of play, the pathing becomes automatic. It’s not chill in a cooperative sense, as those lagging behind could effectively see no action, as those not familiar with the terrain could just reap the rewards of the kill and continue catching up. 

Players will not wait for you, and that’s a sign of Nightreign becoming a less friendly environment for new players the longer the game is out. With no clear way to communicate outside of the ability to ping items or locations on a map, players will often go their own way. Thankfully, the pros are eager to do things together, but they won’t wait for you if you want to take a minute to see if this weapon is better than what you already have. I can catch up easily, as I too was embracing this style of play, but newcomers might be in for a negative experience as the community grows more and more accustomed to Nightreign’s gameplay loop. You can’t blame either the new player or the veteran, as time is gold, plus the area to explore slowly shrinks, Battle Royale style, to steer the players to the eventual boss stage for that particular day. This is more of Nightreign’s design philosophy at play rather than the community forcing such behaviour. 

I must say that servers held really well at launch with barely any issues in any of my online matches. Matchmaking was mostly quick, and lag was manageable to a point that it didn’t ruin the experience, especially during clutch moments that required me to make key dodges to save the run. Glitches are also close to non-existent in my experience, though I do wish that the developers would give more penalties to those who leave a game early or encourage players to stay, as I’ve experienced a couple of games where my team was one player short due to an early disconnect. But I do appreciate the online features available at launch that made the whole experience more tolerable when you experience issues, like being able to reconnect to a game when you do disconnect.

A Welcome Return to the Lands Between, But Not For Everyone

Beyond this, Elden Ring Nightreign is a byproduct of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco utilizing the assets they’ve created for their hit action RPG with great success, as this could have easily been a wasted effort at capitalizing on the original 2022 game’s success. If the objective was to think outside the box and deliver a Soulslike experience with multiplayer co-op at the forefront, then they have succeeded, as the gameplay and concept of Nightreign is a fun intermission as we eagerly await FromSoftware’s next big title. 

The price point for Elden Ring Nightreign is reasonable, and the content is serviceable to keep players interested long after its release. I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue to build upon this by adding more ways to challenge players, adding more characters, new bosses, and more to really see the potential of this system. But don’t expect anything grand or vastly different. This spin-off is clearly built for fans expecting the same but with a nice co-op twist, as the team responsible for Nightreign was able to compress the Elden Ring experience into these 20-minute skirmishes, complete with adrenaline-pumping encounters, discovery, and challenge. And that I’m okay with.

Verdict: 4 / 5 (Fantastic)

PROS

• A clever gameplay loop that puts co-op as the main focus in a Soulslike

• Challenging bosses that fit the FromSoftware style

• Commendable replayability

CONS

• Mostly reused Elden Ring assets were recycled, from weapons to certain bosses

• Gameplay loop has the potential to be less friendly to newcomers as the community continues to gain understanding of the game

• Won’t be a lone wolf’s cup of tea

WHAT I'VE PLAYED

• Completed multiple runs on all available classes

• Defeated all available bosses at least once

*This review is based on a PS5 review copy provided by Bandai Namco

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