Elden Ring Nightreign - Review
The Lands Between beckon you once more. Can you stop the encroaching night in Limveld, or are your destined to meet your end at the hands of the menacing Night Lord? With your fellow Nightfarers, brave the dangers and the looming threats in your tireless expeditions to try and stop the Night once and for all.
Elden Ring: Nightreign is the newest game from acclaimed developer From Software. An extension of the world that was developed in Elden Ring, Nightreign looks to take the Soulsborne formula that From Software have created and develop it even further. Taking the Battle Royale format and applying it to a PvE focused multiplayer entry, Nightreign stands alone in a few unique ways that will either drag players in or ostracise diehards of the From Software modern catalogue.
From the word go, it is clear that Nightreign is very different to what we’ve experienced previously. The basic formula of the action RPG is present, and your familiar weapons and bosses are here. However, the familiarity is quickly dispersed once you start getting into the thick of it. Taking the idea of a starting class and making eight heroes to pick from, Nightreign really pushes the class fantasy in this entry. Each character has a different style of stat growth, unique powers for each of them, and unique boons in the form of relics that make each character feel fundamentally different from each other, but don’t give you the wiggle room that one may come to expect from FromSoftware titles.
This however is a good thing. Nightreign isn’t focused on a world building, heavily obscured narrative with limitless exploration and things to find. Nightreign for all intents and purposes is a Boss-rush style Battle Royale game, that encourages you to play fast, hard and aggressively to roll the dice on the right equipment to see you through to the different Night Lords that you’ll encounter through your runs. The Battle Royale aspect of Nightreign adds a level of intensity, with the two days forcing you to specific map points and areas but the encroaching ring of Night. You’re on a timer at all times, and how you move through the world will play a major role in your success or failures in Limveld.
The quick nature of Nightreign is refreshing. Every run feels different, even with how often you will experience the same bosses and dungeons. The enemies feel sufficiently like the fodder they should be, making you focus on getting to the boss of each dungeon to hopefully get the right weapons or passive boosts to make your run a successful one. Coupled with the eight unique hero classes, Nightreign gives you the ability to jump in, play however you are feeling that day, and get out in record time. You’ll get the adrenaline rush of fighting bosses unique and familiar, whilst not having to spend hours trying to grind up to get over that hill.
That part is probably the most important aspect. Unlike other Soulsborne entries, Elden Ring Nightreign doesn’t let you simply grind and out-level the difficulty curve. Nightreign is a game focused at Souls veterans, moreso than the new and casual player. The game is designed in a way that it expects you to already understand and be competent with the Souls gameplay formula and be able to succeed against content that is scaled either equivalently, or beyond your level in game. Nightreign may in turn be one of the most unforgiving FromSoftware games, in that it doesn’t give you that learning space. You need to be competent, or you’ll fall by the wayside immediately.
This is even more prominent of an issue when you consider that Nightreign is a completely multiplayer focused title. While it is possible to expedition on your own, slowly getting the hang of the different character abilities and how each individual hero plays, you’ll it can be even more difficult to progress on your own, compared to going in with two other people. Be they friends, or stranger. This is important too. If you’re not competent enough for Nightreign, you’ll be a burden on others, and it is not fun at all trying to carry an inexperienced player through the game, particularly when there can be such high learning curves on certain boss types.
The range of bosses, both old and new, is where Nightreign really shines. Everything from the quick dungeon bosses that take the form of Golems, Battlemages, Large Albinaurics, to the more iconic bosses like Gaping Dragon, Nightriders, Fell Omens and Erdtree Avatars. There are so many bosses packed into Nightreign, with a randomised element to which dungeons you’ll have, the bosses in them, as well as the Major Boss that you’ll face at the end of each day when the night circle forces you to gather at a single point. There is a beauty in seeing all these bosses fought in such rapid-fire fashion, but the Nightlords themselves may be the best of them all.
If you succeed at getting through the first two days and nights, you’ll enter the Spirit Shelter and move to fight the specific Nightlord your expedition is looking to take down. At first, you’ll have just the Tricephalos expedition, which ends with Gladius, Beast of the Night. Gladius is a three headed wolf with a giant sword attached to a chain on its back, that throughout the fight will split into three individual wolves that aggressively hunt down the player. Every player must beat Gladius at least once to unlock the remaining Nightlords, and each one is even more impressive (and dangerous) than the last. The Nightlords may be the best designed boss fights that From Software have ever made, and the pure spectacle of them alone is really impressive.
Each of the Nightlords have specific affinities that they are weak against, and through smart play in the preceding days, you’ll hopefully have gathered the right weapons and items to effectively target and fight the Nightlords, not hamstringing yourself on being underpowered going into the encounters. The relics you take, and your party composition play a big part in your success too, with some being far better in design for different bosses. The most upsetting thing with the Nightlords, is because they are only able to be faced if you succeed in the previous days, there is a lot of runs that will never reach them. They are rewards in of themselves, but there are going to be players who never get to experience all of them, and this is a shame because of how well designed all of the Nightlords are.
In a truly baffling decision in the modern day, Nightreign also does not support cross-play. This means, if you are on PC, you’ll one be playing with other people on PC. PS5 with PS5, and Xbox with Xbox. As a result, from day one, the player base will be split across all platforms. An issue I ran into quite often through reviewing the game was there were times where I simply couldn’t find anyone else to play with. Though there is a matchmaking system in place, and you are able to select multiple Nightlords to queue up for, if you’re unlucky enough to be in a time zone with fewer players, a region with fewer players, or on a system that is unpopular in your area, there is a good chance you’ll regularly have to sit for five, ten, fifteen or in my case up to twenty minutes, without ever getting into a game. Though this is unlikely to be an issue on release, and if you’ve got two friends to play with consistently, you shouldn’t have any issue. As time goes on, it will become progressively more difficult to find people to play with, and the three-way split of the player base is going to be a problem.
There is a multitude of mechanics in play in Nightreign. Remembrances for each character, that will require you to play them to advance their individual stories, and in turn, unlock unique objectives for them, relics which will give you stat boosts and passive bonuses, with an array of different unique ones for each character on hand as well. Different outfits, a world of buffs and mechanics that you may not see for hours upon hours at first. There is a lot to Nightreign, and the more you play the more familiar you’ll become with it all. There is a learning curve here still, but it is a completely different one to that of which we’ve seen before. There is so much packed in here, that’s it’s not possible to explore and talk about every part of it, without prattling on incessantly.
Elden Ring Nightreign is a very interesting direction for FromSoftware. It takes what they have already done well, and amplifies it, putting a new twist and mechanic on the gameplay and forces people to play a far more aggressive and fast style of game than they may be used to. The decision to split the player base is a simply astounding choice in the modern day, and hopefully one that will be changed pretty quickly. There is a ton of game here to enjoy, and each run feels different enough from the previous that you’ll easily put in ten, twenty, thirty or more hours into the game and never feel like it becomes too samey. Nightreign isn’t for everyone. It is going to be daunting and possibly unapproachable for the newer or more casual player, but for the diehards, Nightreign gives them everything they want in quick, bite sized portions that is sure to be rewarding.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by Bandai Namco
The Pros
Nightlords are some of the best designed bosses From Soft has ever made
The runs are quick and varied
There is so much world building happening that progresses alongside you
The Cons
No crossplay is an absurd decision
Solo expeditions are close to impossible
Dungeon Bosses are kind of bland
