Elden Ring Nightreign Review – It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

Elden Ring Nightreign on PC

FromSoftware’s latest isn’t the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree follow-up we were asking for or expected, but Elden Ring Nightreign is worth your attention… if you’re a particular kind of player. It’s easy to write something off as ‘slop’ when it doesn’t fit your view of what games should be. I’m as guilty as anyone, especially when it comes to experiments that are built around well-established franchises.

Yes, even if we’d only received one game before, Elden Ring is now a massive brand. In a way, we should’ve expected a mid-sized spinoff to happen before the inevitable Elden Ring 2. A multiplayer-only riff happening less than a year after Erdtree was a shock, though.

Longtime FromSoftware fanatics could’ve predicted this, actually. Consider the developer’s output since the early 2000s. Since its early days, the company liked to iterate on winning formulas as much as most studios and publishers back in the day.

With production costs and development cycles escalating past a healthy point, we’ve seen Japanese developers like Ryū Ga Gotoku Studio thrive with yearly releases that masterfully ‘recycle’ what works while artfully wowing with new takes on Yakuza and other properties. The project doesn’t need to be built from scratch every time, and I think long-term survival in the gaming industry will force more and more companies, especially Western ones, to roll things back to what once worked just fine.

With Elden Ring Nightreign, it’s become clear that both Bandai Namco and FromSoftware can (and will) walk a more sustainable path going forward. Mind you, the Hidetaka Miyazaki-led developer has been constantly putting out unique bangers for what feels like forever, but at some point, weird off-beat experiments fell to the side in favour of the big releases that made the company a modern household name in the industry.

Under Junya Ishizaki (one of the biggest Souls veterans around) as game director, this multiplayer spinoff aims to answer a very simple question: What if the complete Elden Ring experience could be condensed into relentless 45-minute roguelite runs?

The end result could’ve been a remarkably dull affair, but Nightreign is lean and mean, something its price tag accurately reflects. I think players who vibe with the main pitch here will get more value out of this spinoff than from other full-priced games hitting the market as I type these words. Those are the Lands Between we’ve visited before (kinda, the BR-like map is smaller and changes), and 90% of all those big and small enemies are lifted straight from Elden Ring and even past Souls games. Who cares when the whole feels fresh and professionally designed and executed?

We used to be okay with this, and despite its rough edges, Elden Ring Nightreign is a friendly reminder that game development could be more sustainable and that we shouldn’t have to wait so many years to return to our favourite fictional universes. Artistically, it also feels like one of the most sensible approaches to an established IP I’ve come across in a while: While many may see the RPG element of Elden Ring as central to the experience, it turns out that going with a more character-driven action game approach works as well.

The core philosophies of exploration, combat, and power levelling are all there, but this isn’t the sort of Soulslike experience that asks you to figure out stats, loot enchantments, and a functional character build.

Instead, you pick up uniquely skilled heroes that are visually distinct and even pack compelling backstories and matchmake with other players to blast through a dense map filled with enemy camps, mini-dungeons, ruins, and other places that feel familiar but happen to be smartly remixed to accommodate a structure which falls halfway between what you’d see in Fortnite (or any other popular battle royale) and dark fantasy co-op action games.

Too many people are fixated on the ‘closing circle’ aspect and coloured loot comparisons, but Nightreign has a rhythm of its own. If anything, it feels like a unique answer to Monster Hunter and the quiet rise of ‘boss rush’ co-op games. FromSoftware was uniquely positioned to answer that demand, and the early sales numbers of Elden Ring Nightreign back this entire endeavour up.

On the ‘basic gameplay’ side of things, characters control almost the same as they did in Elden Ring. The fun thing is that having heroes of sorts allowed the developers to have fun with archetypes and add in some unexpected twists. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, as backed by the stat distribution (that you don’t mess with) when they hit a Site of Grace to level up after collecting enough runes. Movement and the ability to dodge are also defined by who they are and what they’re supposed to do. Still, perhaps the most significant differentiating factors are their active skills (one basic, one ultimate) and passives, as well as the type of weapon they favour.

For example, the beginner-friendly Wylder likes big swords, has a sick grappling hook (always good in video games), and can literally dodge death once. If you prefer magic builds, the witchy Recluse is your gal, but her skills aren’t exactly generic. There’s a fun twist to each character in Elden Ring Nightreign, and I personally also love that they added in a bird-man and a katana-wielding warrior with a fursona. It’s just a buffet of fun-first design all around, and this also applies to the veil of lore and narrative covering the whole conflict: In this alternative universe, the events of the original game never happened, and the Nox have succeeded in defeating Marika and the Golden Order.

With the Erdtree gone and a fatal Night engulfing the world, the central ragtag group of warriors attempts to save what remains of the Lands Between: a procedurally generated version of what once was Limgrave. It’s enough to get things moving and set the stakes. Coupled with some breathtaking vistas, Nightreign evokes the epic scope of the original outside the combat encounters as well… even if its intentions are very different.

Such classes/characters don’t forbid players from tinkering a bit with their builds as they find chests and defeat bosses big and small: The loot pool in Elden Ring Nightreign, at the time of writing, is big enough, and stats and powers/passives on weapons and equipment are randomised well enough. Moreover, relics that are gained after each run and bought from a friendly living jar at the Roundtable Hold help establish a simple but effective layer of meta progression that slowly makes things easier and encourages experimentation.

Then again, you won’t be spending much time inside menus. This is totally Elden Ring for speedrunning enthusiasts and players who are open to brave swings from franchises which could just stick to what they do best. Reviving teammates by smacking them isn’t even the weirdest thing in this game, and it’s great to see FromSoftware mixing its expertise and distinct DNA with modern multiplayer trends on top of strange creative decisions.

Of course, the resulting experience hinges on how good (or at least useful) your online partners are. Yes, you can stick with friends and better coordinate, but you’ll also spend lots of time teaming up with random players. The lack of voice chat or a communication wheel is disappointing, even if pings do the job most of the time. Being aware of the skill level of the average player who would be putting down money for Nightreign is a critical consideration.

Like in the limited co-op of past Soulslike titles by the studio, less-than-desirable teammates show up from time to time, but it seems that almost everyone has a solid grasp of what they should be doing thanks to their experience with the subgenre. The powers that be were targeting a particular set of players, and almost every aspect of the game’s design supports that approach.

At its dullest, Elden Ring Nightreign isn’t worse than a bad short run against one tricky boss in the main Elden Ring game. At its best, you’ll be hollering after desperately landing enough hits on the three-headed cerberus Gladius to take it down.

Even when you and the team are well-prepared enough and have the right passives, powers, and weapons going into the finale of each run, Nightreign is finely tuned to always feel like a David vs. Goliath battle in the end. Few multiplayer moments in recent times have felt as exhilarating as landing last-second revives on my mates as a monstrous dragon tries to engulf me; it was just enough for everyone to lock in and erase the remaining health it had left.

On the technical side, I could say it’s feeling sturdier than Elden Ring at launch, at least on PC, but the console version exhibits the disappointing issues we’ve come to expect from an otherwise excellent developer. Those expecting this one to go past 60 FPS to maximise use of their beefy builds should temper their expectations; I can only guess this is an engine limitation and/or tied to the netcode.

As for crashes or disconnects, I haven’t suffered any, but your mileage may vary. The most disappointing aspect of the online element is the lack of crossplay support, which could become a problem as the player base dwindles. It might take a long while to get there, though, as it’s exceeded expectations and become one of the year’s best-selling games so far.

All in all, it’s hard to imagine Elden Ring Nightreign slipping into the most prestigious ‘best of the year’ lists, but we desperately need more unconventional, mid-sized games from big studios. I think it’s underbaked around the edges and that it lifts a bit too much from past games to make a lasting impression truly, but at the same time, it’s fantastic to have bite-sized Elden Ring adventures that aren’t tied to a single area or boss or odd summoning systems. More shocking is the fact that the game has no live-service aspirations and feels traditional in its offerings, as well as in how unlocks and progression work. Even with planned updates and a few DLC packs on the horizon, I’d prefer it to remain relatively small and anomalous, and that’s what makes this game special.

Elden Ring Nightreign is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.