Elden Ring Nightreign is weird. But not in a bad way. FromSoftware has taken Elden Ring as a foundation and joyfully experimented with all its individual components to create something new. Something weird. Something great. The result is a small but punchy experience, rogue-like in nature and rough around the edges. It’s also, at least to me, a perfect send off for Elden Ring and The Lands Between.
So how does a run of Nightreign go? You select from a roster of characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and fly off into the fight. The game is broken up into three days, with ‘night bosses’ capping off the first two and a ‘nightlord’ concluding things with a bang on the third. Along the way you scavenge gear, picking up weapons with beneficial passives until you arrive at a certain play style. Maybe you’re the Raider with a bunch of poise and two-handed damage bonuses, maybe you’re the Recluse with a tonne of sorcery boosts and a massive laser beam. Maybe you’ve played poorly, and have a hodgepodge of trash that’ll you’ll have to kitbash together into a rudimentary build. Them’s the breaks.
You scavenge this gear from a semi-randomized Limveld; a world adjacent to The Lands Between‘s Limgrave. The map itself remains a constant for the most part, though what points of interest you can sack change each time. It’s your job to dart from locale to locale, drawing a path between yourself and loot as to arm yourself adequately. It’s a moreish process, one that brings equal parts challenge and surprise as you go.
It’s in this journey of discovery that Nightreign shines. I played with other press and influencers in a shared Discord server, grouping up for runs and jumping inthe odd voice call. This, I believe, is the best way to play the game. Chatting away with other players, calling out roaming bosses and weapon drops that may benefit your peers. A ranged weapon bonus might not be good for me, but maybe it is for your Ironeye buddy over there, or the Duchess Nightfarer you just pooled with. This shared comradery is so core to the experience – and, dare I say, the central message of Elden Ring Nightreign. Social play is hands-down the best way to play.
That’s because without allies you can talk to, Elden Ring Nightreign may be the most potentially toxic game I’ve played since Counter Strike or League of Legends. Bosses scale to the number of players present, just like in the base Elden Ring. That means if one of your team is a buzzed-out stoner, or not following map pings, or dying over and over again and losing levels, they are dead weight that can kill a run. If someone leaves a run, it’s a wipe. Tilt and anger is the poison in Nightreign’s heart, and given how tricky the game can be, it’s something I can foresee players experiencing on launch.
If you can overcome such hurdles, you’re free to explore what is a rich and vibrant map ripe for exploration. Learning what rewards each of the points of interest are home to is exceptionally fun. When you first play, it’s all new, it’s all a mystery. But a few dozen hours in and I can tell you what bosses spawn in what spots, where chests are, common spawn locations for scarab beetles that drop valuable talismans, and more. Mastering Nightreign is a journey itself, beyond what you’re able to do in prior FromSoftware games. There is mastery of combat, yes, but there is the mastery of knowledge that separates a good player from a great one.
After a while, the dangers that lurk around each corner become known quantities, and I believe this is by choice. Take the ‘sleep variant’ of the ruins, something you’ll run into often. This area always, always has a Rune Bear boss. I get why, From Software wants some consistency present, some method to the madness. But after a while, this robs the game of its thrill. I would have liked a greater variety of bosses throughout to keep things fresh and dangerous, as to stave away the feeling that the first day can be auto-piloted.
There are drastic map changes in the form Shifting Earth events, which help remedy this complaint somewhat. Killing certain Nightlords will alter the map in its entirety, to great effect. By killing the first boss, a volcano will be placed to the north of the map, bringing with it a selection of new bosses and rich rewards for those willing to delve down into it. These were lovely, and helped mix up the standard runs thanks to the additional goals they provide. If you do make it to the bottom of this volcano, you can upgrade a weapon to the legendary tier, a powerful damage boost that can make a doomed run salvageable, if you flee the volcano before the Night’s Tide closes in.
There is an attempt to throw smaller curve balls at you, though these are few and far between. Very occasionally, you’ll be suddenly invaded by the Fell Omen, or a portal of darkness will drop multiple copies of the same boss into the world, or you’ll be cursed with less max HP until a specific boss is killed. These sound harsh, but they’re sweet syrup that keeps you on your toes! If anything, I wish there were more. To my count there might be 4-5 random invasion style events. I say, why not 20?
This would add to the variation of Nightreign, a wonderful thing. Because in this soup of change, Nightreign shines. Take the Raider class. He is a beefy, burly bloke with a big axe. As such, you’re naturally drawn to colossal weapons and poise, right? Finding and equipping these will turn the Raider into a brick wall tank, able to soak hits with ease and deal massive poise damage. But maybe you come across lots of gear with increased jump attack power – suddenly your entire approach to combat shifts. No longer am I a grounded tank, but a hopping monster, and it works! So many times I leapt into a run, pick up a collection of interesting, build-altering gear, and form a powerful character from that.
This is clearly the intended approach to Elden Ring Nightreign. The game will shower you with relics, stones that you can attach to characters before a run. If you like the Raider, you can add additional strength, power with big hammers, and poise from the get-go. Or, you can get spicy with it. One of my favourite relics provides a substantial attack power buff when I have three twinblades in my inventory, flipping my looting goals on its head when using that with a dexterity-scaling character. Instead of grabbing stuff based on its buff, I can now look out for a certain weapon type, regardless of its stat. And it all just works.
This is a golden design decision, and is especially wonderful for Souls fans. If you’re like me, you’ve played a similar character in every single From Software game for over almost two decades: big dude, big weapon, big swings. But because of how the looting system works here, I found myself experimenting with the giant arsenal available. I never used the Envoy’s Long Horn in Elden Ring, but with it filling a perfect spot in my Nightreign inventory, I grew to love its wacky bubble projectile and the ranged utility it provides. Nightreign is like an artichoke for your Elden Ring taste buds, it makes the base weapons, spells, and incantations taste all the sweeter.
If Nightreign as a game enhanced my enjoyment of the offensive options, then its characters enhanced the archetypes. Each character reflects a certain style of combat; Ironeye is an archer, the Recluse is a mage, etc. Each character has a skill and an ultimate that allow you to truly immerse yourself in their area of expertise. Take the Recluse – I hate sorcery in FromSoftware games! It’s not my bag, but with her combat rotation of shooting out spells, then using her skill to harvest back an element charge and gain back some FP, then unleashing her charge as a bombastic free spell is fantastic. It’s the sorcerer play style turned up to 11, and every character provides that. Executor has a Sekiro-style parry, Wylder has a grappling hook. It’s a celebration of combat that Radahn would be proud of.
So all of this is good, right? Yes, but I’ve left my favourite parts of Elden Ring Nightreign to last. First, the art team responsible for the sky boxes at FromSoftware deserve a million dollars in cash. Each. They’ve done such a great job depicting The Lands Between at siege, assaulted from all around by immeasurable cosmic forces. Giant specters will roam the borders of the map on an endless march, and in boss fights a reused sandscape is transformed into the ocean floor, a raging inferno, a flowery field. The best work caps off the game, which I shall not spoil both for embargo reasons and because I wouldn’t rob you of the spectacle.
Speaking of bosses, they are phenomenal. FromSoftware does this brilliant thing, it loves to experiment when rounding off its games. Dark Souls 2 and 3‘s DLCs were like this, content that Elden Ring Nightreign shares a spirit with. In Dark Souls 2, Burnt Ivory King pushed the line as far as multi-target fights go, and Dark Souls 3’s DLC brought the series’ first three-phase boss fight. Nightreign is the same, in that it gets silly with it. A boss split into two targets, where ranged attacks are borderline mandatory. Bosses that suffer crucial debuffs when hit with certain affinities. They’re messing around with the formula in a way that’s incredibly interesting to veteran Soulslike players.
My favourite aspect of Nightreign comes from the story. I was worried about this at first as a lore goblin, someone who loves learning more about the world through item descriptions. The game does lack somewhat in this area – there are new items with new story tidbits especially where they attach to each character, but less so of The Lands Between. You’re left mostly with crumbs about the world outside its borders (enough perhaps only for five hours of VaatiVidya content). But, where the wider world-building takes a back seat, the connecting narrative between each character, their desires, their relationships with each other, takes the wheel with both hands.
Elden Ring Nightreign is about taking down a big scary night fella, sure. But more than that it’s about people from different walks of life coming together to overcome great odds. This is a narrative throughline that weaves between story and gameplay alike – it’s a meta narrative. The characters are coming together, growing fond of each other, and growing individually as comrades in arms yes, but so are you! You, and the random people you match up with on your journey. That random dad who ran off on his own and died twice in the fire, the French guy who clutched out the Nightlord and somehow revived the whole team. The connection between The Guardian and his newfound flock is a mirror to the bonds you build with the online randos you’ll no doubt matchmake with.
This is a powerful message in a FromSoftware game, given the series history. Think of LetMeSoloHer, or the untold thousands of other real people who you may have interacted with over the years. I remember a player with a Uchigatana helping me take out Ornstein and Smough while I was still at school. I have fond memories of invasions at Archdragon Peak, and the heroes who would help folks out with Slave Knight Gael. If Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree tells a tragedy of a group of allies turned to each other’s throats, then Elden Ring Nightreign tells the story of how allies can come from the most unlikely of places, and together save the world.
I can not help but to love Elden Ring Nightreign. It’s a strange beast, kitbashed from parts of Elden Ring that feel clunky in places (god, the vaulting system can be frustrating at times). It has bugs, and it has blemishes. It’s not a traditional Soulslike experience and as such will surely turn away fresh faces and diehard veterans alike. But it’s also a celebration of you, the massive community of Soulslike players, and, specifically Elden Ring players. It’s a game and a story about you, and all the weirdos you’ve met along the way. If this is a send off to Elden Ring and The Lands Between, it’s a perfect one.
Elden Ring Nightreign was reviewed on PC, courtesy of a code provided by Bandai Namco.
