The hype that Elden Ring generated prior to its release was an event of its own. Fans may remember scouring through every tease, trailer, and concept art for years until the game's eventual release. As predicted, it went on to be the developer FromSoftware's biggest game launch ever, going on to sell over 30 million copies since 2022. Even now, the Soulslike RPG pulls in massive player numbers. I gave the open-world title a 10/10 in my own review. Numerous awards, a successful expansion pack, and a movie deal later, it's time to see how a spin-off will fare in the market. Enter, Elden Ring Nightreign.
A smaller-scale project like this is not something we normally expect to see from the developer. As such, neither FromSoftware's famed director Hidetaka Miyazaki nor author George R. R. Martin is involved here. Instead, studio veteran Junya Ishizaki, who has given his own spin on the gameplay, focus, and pacing, is directing the project. The title has been built on top of Elden Ring, stripping away many of its elements that make it a Soulslike RPG, while also leaning heavily into making it a full-on cooperative roguelike.
I was expecting the game’s pace to be quick—and it was, so quick that it barely gave me a moment to breathe if I wanted to succeed. Now, after spending over a dozen hours in this cooperative multiplayer-focused experience, I have collected my thoughts for a full review of Elden Ring Nightreign.
Nightreign
It shares a name with Elden Ring, the exact same visual style, and even the land and regular enemies are straight from the 2022 megahit. Despite all that, Nightreign is a straightforward roguelike with all the rules changed. Here, there are pre-made playable characters, a simple objective (beat the big boss), loot to gather during runs, a battle-royale-like map that shrinks, and meta-progression to make future runs a tad easier even after defeats. If you were expecting anything even close to Elden Ring’s slow and methodical gameplay design, where you spend hours just perfecting builds to go through grueling dungeon crawls, you are in for a big surprise.
Before descending into the fight, you can choose from eight fighter types, each coming with affinities for different types of weapons and magic. Gone are the days of fully custom characters. Each of them also has a couple of special powers, which can be extremely useful for getting out of tough spots. After that, it’s time to choose the boss battle (you can queue for multiple) you will face at the end of the run. You can even see the foe’s primary weakness on this screen.
Just like in almost all the other Soulslike games I’ve played, I went for the highest strength I could have, that specializes in giant hammers and blades the size of park benches. This served me well in almost all my matchmaking sessions, where I could soak up damage and deal it back while the higher damage-dealing teammates stayed out of trouble. The game does want you to play more characters to unlock their lore and story information if you want to take that route.
Each run is split into three days with around 10 minutes of gameplay each. During this time, the map is continuously shrinking, leading to a final boss battle at the end of each day. Making it to the third day and beating the boss you selected in the beginning is the ultimate goal, but it’s easier said than done. The map itself can change to reveal a new type of location every time you defeat a boss too. While this sounds like it can throw in some surprises, the reuse of almost every asset, foe, and building from the original game, even within these unlocked sections, sort of makes the variations seem muted.
Gameplay
Nightreign is fast. The moment that several ghostly birds drop me and the two other players into the map, the clock is ticking down. The slowly shrinking borders of the map can already be seen when coming in for the landing, making the small island (in comparison to the original game) already feel cramped. Traversal is quick and painless, with our characters being able to sprint like horses and even double jump on walls. On top of that, there are spots to leap over mountains, plus even more birds at places to fast-travel across regions.
When a fight begins though, the standard stamina concerns arise, making me internally debate just how to manage guarding, attacking, and dodging while some three-headed giant is assaulting me with long range chain-swords.
Plenty of cannon fodder litter the landscape for easy level ups in the starting stage, but defeating the mini-bosses residing in larger structures is our temporary goal. While being satisfying to stomp, defeating them also gives a whole lot more upgrading materials as well as weapons and useful buffs for the run, making upcoming fights just a little bit easier.
There is some method to the speedrunning madness. It’s possible to go into mine-like locations to get upgrade materials and simply keep your original weapon until the end, for instance. Or go beat up specific smaller bosses touting weapons with some special sauces that are perfect against the behemoth in the final fight. Or save up enough money to buy a weapon and upgrade it from a shopkeeper. While not many, I appreciated the choices available, and depending on where the group ends up running, I found that a mix of these can happen during runs too.
I was surprised to see just how forgiving Nightreign can be. FromSoftware has implemented a revive system that has you beating your downed allies up to get them back up again. Even a complete death during the day (prior to the day’s end bosses) does not mean the end; the character respawns nearby, a level down, and with lost resources. This does put your team behind on time and power, but I appreciate this approach to simply getting kicked out into the menu to matchmake again.
Depending on what you accomplished, a premature death or a win, the game presents random buffs to use in future runs. I found it a bit annoying that these aren’t specific to the character you played, since the developer wants you to play as more than just one, but it didn’t take too long for me to find some actually useful buffs for my hammer-wielding caveman.
Roundtable Hold
Unless you live and breathe Soulslike games, the way to increase the chances of winning a run is to… not stop running. It’s pedal to the metal all the way till the night comes and the bosses appear.
The only downtime happens in between runs, where I could finally get a breather and figure out what went wrong or right. This simple hub area—good old Roundtable Hold from Elden Ring—offers earned buffs to swap in and out using a slot system, alternate costumes to unlock, and some lore expansion via dialog and cutscenes with those dwelling inside it (the cast of playable characters). There is even a practice location with a dummy to check out weapons and powers.
Unfortunately, this didn’t give me the sense of wonder I had when I was exploring the same location in the original game. This truly felt more like a hub area for a multiplayer game than a place to explore the game’s lore or find secrets. Mirroring the fast pace of the gameplay, there’s a quick teleportation shortcut to jump to any location in the hub so you can quickly buy emotes, swap a character, or head to training.
It’s unfortunate that while matchmaking your party doesn’t appear in this space. It’s a simple number in a corner to show how many players have been found. When that hits 3/3, a cutscene and a loading screen follow before dropping into the map to start another run. Coupled with the accessibility adjustments to gameplay, these are absolutely useful additions and pacing adjustments for a multiplayer-focused game. But I think my familiarity and fondness of other Soulslikes that reward discovery just make the new speed-focused aspects feel a bit hollow and soulless.
Bosses
The bosses are the ultimate reward for grinding through the days and building up your character enough to face them. As you can expect, FromSoftware delivers. Brand-new, mind-boggling fights and returning surprises are how I would describe these phenomenal bosses without spoiling too much. Bosses come in flavors like walkers, flyers, stompers, jumpers, and splitters, added with multiple stages. Suffice to say, it’s the most impressive part of the game. I didn’t encounter any ‘unfair’ attacks and combos during my runs, but don’t expect the first encounters to go very well.
As there are multiple players attacking these monstrosities at all times, I found the battle dance to be quite different from Elden Ring or Dark Souls. Having allies as genuine backup that try to take the attention from the boss when it’s wailing at you, or throwing in magical powers to make everyone invisible, or someone simply reviving you from a distance with a bow and arrow as the other player is powering up his ultimate to stun the boss is an amazing sight to witness.
However, probably the hardest boss I had to face was the camera. Like with many other third-person games, the camera can just get stuck looking at the giant behind of a boss, a mountain, my own ultimate power that summons a giant cube, or anything nearby, making fights unnecessarily difficult. I found the lock-on camera extremely annoying with giant enemies like dragons or those that fly as well, something that’s been a staple with almost all FromSoftware games.
Keep in mind that I was playing the game in pre-release matchmaking sessions alongside other journalists and developers. Thanks to this, most of my sessions had everyone quickly pinging objectives from the map, sticking together, and coming in for a revive if I got a little bit too overzealous and have my ass flattened by an otherworldly creature.
Considering the usual random multiplayer group shenanigans, if you don’t have a couple of friends to play with, this may not be your experience. If even one person goes off on their own and keeps dying, that’s basically a useless run for everyone else. The opposite can also be true, where the other two players have a plan of their own, making you throw away your own ideas that seemed fun to try. Going in solo instead of as a trio (duos aren’t a thing, at least not yet) is an option, but I found this to be rather unsatisfying to play. It is still an option for those days you just want to be offline though.
Conclusion
Elden Ring of course had multiplayer like many of FromSoftware's Soulslikes. But that was delivered in the studio's iconic restrictive methods, making cooperative and invasion mechanics short-term instances. Nightreign has sent the scale in the complete opposite direction, making sure that multiplayer fans have all they hope for while removing or altering almost everything that made the original a methodical experience filled with discovery. With this spin-off, ease of use and accelerated sessions are the goal of FromSoftware, and it has accomplished that quite effectively.
You can jump into the game for the first time, pick a character, and within 20 minutes be battling an end-game boss. This is something unheard of in Soulslikes. The stylish and smooth gameplay, the sense of urgency from the shrinking map, and the need for cooperation make this a satisfying action roguelike to play. After facing just one boss, I was hooked to find out just what else the studio had cooked up, and suffice to say, it delivers.
Nightreign also genuinely made me have amazing cooperative moments, with allies rushing in to help when someone’s health is dwindling and last-ditch efforts with a hail mary revive as the entire world is exploding in front of jaw-dropping bosses. Quiet celebrations with simple emotes at the end of the day make the whole thing endearing.
Still, the third-person camera is a chore to control when facing massive enemies, and the small map with its reused assets and mobs from Elden Ring can become a chore once you have gone through a few runs. I really wish the studio drew from its previous games for adding more enemy types to the open world. The lack of cross-play is also a bizzare decision for a game like this. Even with massive launches, multiplayer games benefit enormously from pooled platforms to keep them from dying in the long run.
As a purely multiplayer-focused cooperative action game, Elden Ring Nightreign is a solid, compact, and enjoyable experience that is dangling its bosses as the hook. It’s a game that I can recommend for a friend group who wants something quick to jump in and out of. The $39.99 price tag also makes it an attractive option in the sea of new releases that are targeting higher and higher prices nowadays. However, for FromSoftware fans, or Soulslike fans, that want their next dungeon-crawling RPG experience, it may be wise to look elsewhere, or adjust expectations when jumping into a game that has the Elden Ring name attached to it.
Elden Ring Nightreign launches on May 30, 2025, on PC via Steam,as well as Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 with a $39.99 price tag.
This review was conducted on a pre-release PC copy provided by Bandai Namco.
2 Comments - Add comment