4/5 ★ – Jack_Outside_The_Box's review of ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN.

When you look at the DNA of what makes each of the core FromSoftware games so memorable, you can argue it’s down to the general single-player experience. Each game, from Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring provides the player with a rich world to explore and challenging bosses to encounter. These games are designed in such a way that you cannot run it through from start to finish with another person, as that’s not the way FromSoftware ever envisioned you experiencing their games. The co-operative functions of these games are limited purposefully because of that, with you only really being able to summon allies for boss fights and little else. What doesn’t help is the way to draw a player into your world is made needlessly difficult all on its own, with key items required and so many arrangements that it feels like FromSoftware are trying to discourage you from even trying. Whether you agree with that or not is not something I’m out to discuss today, but it’s their overall reproach to the concept in these games which makes their latest release all the more interesting, as it feels like FromSoftware has finally given fans a bone and designed a game which primarily focuses on co-operation, that game is called Elden Ring Nightreign. Not much is currently known about the early development of Nightreign, except to say it was headed up by Junya Ishizak, one of the lead designers on prior FromSoftware games; including the base Elden Ring game. Developed by a secondary team at FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco, Elden Ring Nightreign was revealed to the world during the 2024 Game Awards and promised to deliver a spin-off experience set in the Elden Ring world. While George R.R. Martin crafted the foundation of this world, he was noted to not be returning to establish the story on this spin-off which is set in an alternative world to the one established in the base game. Its primary identity which differentiates itself from the base game is the roguelike, co-operative functionality which puts a focus on regular runs with its timed events and bosses. Released on May 30th 2025 across all current generation consoles, Elden Ring Nightreign showed a strong start with an aggregated critical score of 79% and touting a whopping 3.5 million-unit sales within 5 days of its release. In this alternative universe, the events of the Shattering were not followed by the wars for the Great Runes. In this world a great, primordial darkness fell across the Lands Between. In the wake of this darkness, the Nightrain began to fall, shifting the very foundation of the earth and with it came forth terrifying forces from other worlds. Ruling over the Nightrain are the Nightlords, beings of colossal power which have all taken to ruling over the land in service to the one true Nightlord; Heolstor. In the wake of this terrible curse, it is fitting that in turn, 8 Nightfarers step forth to challenge Heolstor and it’s fellow Nightlords to tear down the endless night for good. These Nightfarers consist of the Wylder, Duchess, Guardian, Recluse, Ironeye, Raider, Executor and Revenant, each with their own personal backstories and reasons to fight and end the darkness. With the game putting a clear, primary focus on the gameplay side of things, I wasn’t really expecting to get much out of the story in all honesty. That being said, it is quite surprising to see how much effort was actually given to at least attempt establishing a core theme and narrative in this game. It’s nowhere near the level of depth or scale as the base game, but for what’s here, it does serve as a nice compliment to the gameplay. The establishing of the Nightrain and the Nightlords gives the players a clear understanding of the perils they face and the reasons they must fight. It in turn justifies why the game reuses a lot of primary assets from Elden Ring and other Dark Souls games. I appreciate that each of the character classes get their own backstories too. While these backstories aren’t anything too big, they do give you a more intimate understanding of the characters and their justifications for uniting and fighting against the darkness. It’s worth arguing that again, FromSoftware didn’t need to even bother with adding a narrative thread. Players would have probably been fine with any setup as long as they could drop in and play, but the narrative we have been provided shows they actually cared enough to establish some sense of story here. What really drives the engagement behind this game isn’t its story however, it’s the gameplay. The base Elden Ring game felt like the best realization of their trademark formula with combat and wider exploration feeling the most expansive they’ve ever been. That foundation of that combat gameplay isn’t really added on as much as it is incorporated into Nightreign. This is where dependent on your perspective, you can argue that this game doesn’t really justify itself based on the fact it copies a lot over from the original game. Weapons, spells, enemies, bosses, environmental assets, it’s not so much adapted into Nightreign as much as it’s CTRL C’d and CTRL P’d. I must query however what people were expecting for a spin off game and at a reduced price for that matter? It was clear to me that this game wasn’t going to justify all the time and cost in redesigning everything when they already had a Smörgåsbord of existing content to utilize already. That’s not to say there’s nothing here that isn’t new. I will touch on them later, but the Nightlords themselves are 8 brand new bosses and there are some newly designed environments to appreciate. The core gameplay that helps this game to stand out is its roguelike formula, mixed in with the shrinking environment function from Battle Royale games. You’ll be hopping into one large map either by yourself or as a squad of three. It’s your job to explore the map, tick off key locations of interest, fight bosses, acquire buffs and weapons and survive each game’s three-day cycle. As you get halfway through a day, the Nightrain will begin to enclose around you and force you to navigate away from it. Eventually it’ll begin to enclose to a boss spot, in which you’ll be forced to take on a powerful boss to push the rain back for another day. You’ll repeat this process one more time for the 2nd day after which you’ll be transported to the final boss area, where you must take on a Nightlord. While the gameplay loop seems simple, you’ll be fighting against RNG for mostly everything in this game. There’s no guaranteed loot drop in this game, so you’ll be crossing your fingers that you can source a piece of gear or buff that will make your time against the Nightlord a little less stressful. I think the core design of this formula is brilliant as it gives players enough random variables to keep wanting to play. No one run will be the same and the ever-changing map design and gear you can find makes replaying such a compelling concept. What I also appreciate is the class system in this game. Gone away is the stat allocation and build strategizing of old games, as the essence of each run is time, there’s no logistical way you could style a build in that way while also trying to keep up with the time limit of each run. So, to counter that limitation, the developers introduced 8 different classes to play from. Each class has their own unique strengths and weaknesses accompanied with scaling in certain attributes. The classes are well rounded with playstyles attuned to any particular role you like to play. I won’t breakdown all of them but I will note some of my favourites. Wylder is a great introductory character mainly because of his well-rounded distribution on scaling. He’s primarily a physical fighter but you don’t have to conform to one sole weapon class. His ability to grapple and pull enemies as well as his Onslaught Stake attack make him a really versatile power house. My other favourite is the Duchess. While not as bulky as the Wylder, she has the ability to deal fast damage with her daggers and Restage ability. Add that with her ability to turn the whole team invisible, she is a great support/DPS role if you know how to use her. There’s so much depth to each character class that they all present a lot of variation to appreciate with how they are placed in certain fights. One of the biggest impressions this game sets for me though is the boss fights. I won’t praise too much the reuse of already existing Elden Ring bosses, though I will point out it’s nice to see how they retuned some old Dark Souls bosses and retuned them to fit within the faster combat engine. No, what I want to talk about are the Nightlords themselves. Each of the 8 bosses are designed in such a way that they each leave a distinct impression that separates them from one another. Despite the fact there likely 3 of you taking on these bosses, they show in their size and abilities just how up against it you really are. The fact that I really came to appreciate the design of every Nightlord encounter in this game is a testament to just how brilliantly designed they all are. My favourite fights have to be the Equilibrious Beast and the Night Aspect, these two really push you and your team to the absolute limit and really require you to be as reactive as possible. The general gameplay loop of this game is genuinely addictive. With a varied cast of classes to associate to and a randomized design to each run, there’s a clearly extensive amount of replayability to be found in the gameplay of this game. While it’s a solid start, I just hope FromSoftware realize that the game needs and deserves a steady number of updates and support. There’s enough content here to appreciate but with the need to replay over and over, the content will burn out eventually. This needs to be treated like a live service game in the sense that it will only stay alive if it’s regularly supported. I’m talking new maps, new bosses, new classes. There’s so much potential behind the scope of this game, it would be a shame to not expand on it consistently. From a presentation end, the game arguably benefits a lot from the original game on that front. The reuse of a lot of assets has to be held against it in this category, though that takes nothing away from the original games presentation to begin with. Elden Ring and by extension Elden Ring Nightreign is the best any FromSoftware game has ever looked. The scale of the environments, the depth of colour behind the skybox, the visual beauty and animations behind the bosses, everything feels reflective of a core quality that you’ll always find in these games. Once again, the score deserves a substantial bit of praise as well. Shoi Miyazawa, Tai Tomisawa, Soma Tanizaki, Yoshikazu Takayama and Yuka Kitamura followed their work on the base game excellently by incorporating a new variation on some original tracks while also hitting it out of the park with each of the Nightlord boss tracks. My favourite tracks are a tie between Fulghor, Chanpion of Nightglow and Libra, Creature of the Night. When I look at Elden Ring Nightreign as a full product, I genuinely feel there’s so much value here that it feels like robbery to buy this game it’s full listed price. Okay I can acknowledge there’s a ton of reused assets here, but again that means nothing when you consider it within the context of why it’s being reused. What I do know is I’ve lost so many hours to his game doing run after run, regardless of whether I win or lose, I know I’m enjoying every facet of this games content to its fullest. What is here is without a doubt genuinely worth your time and money if you consider yourself a FromSoftware fan. I am a bit annoyed it took FromSoftware this long to realize the co-operative potential behind their games, but it’s better late than never. Let’s just hope this game get’s a decent run of support before they move on to whatever their next game is.