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When Elden Ring Nightreign was announced at the pre-Yule Game Awards ad fest, I wasn’t at all taken even when factoring in FromSoft’s near-flawless track record. Recycled Elden Ring assets and bosses fused by a battle royale’s asphyxiating circle and susurrations of all-consuming live-service dross – no thanks. I couldn’t have been more wrong though. Elden Ring Nightreign is some of those things, but above all else it’s a tight, confident, highly repeatable, and rewarding co-op rush.
In other FromSoft games, you can admit you’ll never git gud and summon help against tough bosses or play the invading pest. The former always feels like capitulating to the infamous difficulty of FromSoft’s games and an arena for skilled players to showboat. It’s a deflated victory. The latter is the reserve of trolls and PvP heads. Situational and niche, they always take a backseat to the toiled but sirupy gratification of the single player experience. Nightreign captures those same moments of satisfaction but makes them communal. I didn’t expect to find so much rushy joy in them. You’ll punch a trembling fist into the air in pure elation. Or nurse the sharp sting of failure just like in any other FromSoft game. But instead of alone as the streetlights flicker through the blinds at 2 am, this time around you get to share them, overcoming odds that are stacked against you together.
As a team of three Nightfarers, you’ll drop into Limveld, a new map loosely based on Limgrave from the original Elden Ring, to complete a three-day cycle. Familiar yet fresh, the map’s procedural-generation dips into a pool of field bosses and locales like forts, encampments, and evergaols to make the landscape and topography evolve and morph between runs. Instead of feeling recycled, retooled landmarks such as that deadly cliff-sided path leading up from Stormgate, Fort Haight, or the Waypoint Ruins trigger memories from the original game and become the setting for equally compelling new gags and escapades.
Throw in Shifting Earth events that alter portions of the map with legacy dungeon-like areas home to the game’s best loot and passives, and Limveld feels like an expansive instanced geographic puzzle. Random raids, i.e. special boss fights, pop up as well to spice things up further. Each of the eight classes have Remembrances, Nightreign’s elegant solution to questing that drip feeds snippets of lore to inject the whole experience with just the right amount of narrative framing. Some involve finding items out in Limveld, others winning solo fights from the Roundtable Hold pre-match hub. Even after thirty or so runs, I’m still discovering oddities, pushing forward character stories, and finding ways to optimise my path through Limveld.
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During the day you’ll farm Runes to level up your character, defeat mini bosses for passives and perks, and loot weapons and items as the flaming Night’s Tide, Nightreign take on the BR circle, progressively corrals you towards a boss to end the day. Beat them and the map opens up again for day 2 giving you time to farm again. It’s an addictive loop that promotes assertive split-second decisions and shrewd time management. Should you visit those Ruins to score a weapon with a useful affinity, or make a risky run into the life-sapping circle to retrieve an extra flask charge from a church? Or maybe downing that field boss will drop enough runes to get to the next level? Weapon pick ups and leveling has been simplified to match the hasty, double-speed pace of each run. You can use any weapon regardless of class and leveling up is global, removing the need to sink points into specific attributes. Fall damage has been axed and the new traversal options, such as surge sprinting and grappling up ledges, play into the urgency of each run and replaces the slow, methodical crawl of Elden Ring with a speedy sense of freedom and discovery.
The eight classes more or less reflect build archetypes from Elden Ring and other FromSoft games: the ranged arrow-pinging Ironeye, the all-rounder Wylder, the dex slashing Duchess rogue, the spellcasting Recluse mage, the shield-wielding Guardian tank, and even the Sekiro-like parrying Executor. Each one feels distinct to play thanks to their unique passives, character skills, and ultimate arts, but also an affinity for certain weapon types. There’s something for everyone here. FromSoft has also done well to inject synergies between classes, promote players to test and trial and put some pre-run thought into compositions to make the most of each Nightlord’s inherent weakness.
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Runs culminate on day three with a cinematic arena fight against against a fierce Nightlord chosen before matchmaking. While the Limveld farming portion of Nightreign is very much a best-of of FromSoft bosses with altered movesets – Margit, Misbegotten, Crucible Knights, Death Rite Bird, Godskin Duo, and more – the Nightlords are brand new. These are spectacle fights backed by truly beautiful, evocative music. They are hard, scaled for three players, making those moments of sweet triumph feel disconcertingly meaningful. Fights become a parade of heroics, decided by slivers of health and perfectly-timed dodge rolls. Like Elden Ring, failure is your teacher and path to progress. Meta-progression boils down to Relics, equippable items earned piecemeal at the end of runs similar to Talismans that confer passives, perks, and buffs. Stacked correctly and they make life easier though never diluting the core FromSoft tenet that skill and obstinacy are key to success.
I do have some minor concerns about longevity. Not so much from my own personal perspective, but more about how Nightreign will slot into a larger eco-system where players have become accustomed to battle passes, seasons, and a steady flow of skins to shore up repeat play. FromSoft certainly has a trove of options when it comes to introducing new DLC bosses, classes, weapons, and even fresh maps, but would that dilute Nightreign’s current state as a fixed release that eschews the fickle live-service model? I don’t know.
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Musings aside, Elden Ring Nightreign is a multiplayer game for people who prefer single player games. It’s a celebration of the power of silent connection, of fleeting virtual bonds, of giddy celebratory gesturing between strangers, and of collective, gruelling perseverance. It’s a fresh take on the steep challenge of the Souls formula that burrows into you, begging to be repeated. It delivers a frenzied high that’s quite unlike anything the Japanese developer has produced so far. As for me, I’ll be less inclined to doubt FromSoftware moving forward.
Reviewed on PC. Review code provided by the publisher.
About the Author
Elden Ring Nightreign
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X
- Genre(s): Action RPG, Multiplayer, Roguelike
