Beebom Score
I still remember Hidetaka Miyazaki’s words on an interview after Shadow of the Erdtree’s release, clearly stating that FromSoftware was not working on another Elden Ring DLC or sequel. Only a string of mere words for him, but it stung like thorns for us Soulsborne fans. So, when Elden Ring Nightreign was first teased, nothing could hold back the eruption of joy inside me…until it was revealed to be a multiplayer-focused game. Being an overthinker, I couldn’t help having a hundred different doubts. But one thing still stood strong within me, my trust in FromSoftware. Keeping my doubts and expectations in check, I patiently waited for the release date.
Thanks to Bandai Namco, I finally got my hands on Elden Ring Nightreign earlier than expected and could thoroughly play it before the release. After spending over 60 hours in the game and defeating every boss Nightreign threw at me, I finally grasped the game and its mechanics. Read my complete Elden Ring Nightreign review to find whether the latest multiplayer spinoff is worth standing toe to toe with the greats in the Soulsborne franchise.
A Divergent Story of the Lands Between
Every FromSoftware game is lore and story-heavy, for the most part, but that’s not the case with Nightreign. Yes, it does feature a main story, and each playable character has their individual lore and background that unravels slowly as you progress their “Remembrance,” often crisscrossing between each other. However, it still doesn’t come close to what I expect out of a FromSoftware game.
The events in Elden Ring Nightreign are set in an alternate timeline in the Lands Between. In this timeline, the ‘Night’ has consumed the Erdtree, and it is up to the Roundtable Hold to fight against the Night by defeating the Night Lords. This job has been taken up by eight champions, called upon by the priestess, and they have arrived at the roundtable for that purpose.
Although Nightreign’s story is fairly small, its quality doesn’t disappoint.
Some of the character stories are exceptionally well written, and every one of them adds flavor to the game, dropping small lore bombs that can be pieced together to understand the events of the Lands Between faced with the new predicament. Elden Ring Nightreign also features multiple endings, based on the characters you choose to defeat the final Night Lord, depending on whether you have completed their “Remembrances” or not.
Character Classes Expand Elden Ring’s Combat
Elden Ring Nightreign inherits the same combat and gameplay system of Elden Ring, tweaked to be a tad bit faster with surge sprints, climbing, and spectral hawks. However, the introduction of the eight character classes completely changes the feel of the combat for the better. Each character comes with a character skill and an ultimate ability. Instead of modifying the characters based on your preference, like how most FromSoftware games have always worked, here you are strictly tied to the playstyle of each of these characters, but in a good way.
Even though you are stuck to a playstyle, it feels satisfying to learn how to use the individual strengths of each class properly. This lets you combine abilities with your allies to produce devastating results on the battlefield. And you MUST learn how to use each character’s skill, or you will often find yourself absolutely useless in fights.
There are eight character classes in Elden Ring Nightreign — Guardian (Tank), Raider (Barbarian), Iron Eye (Archer), Recluse (Mage), Duchess (Thief), Wylder (Mercenary), Revenant (Summoner), and Executor (Shape-shifter). Although you can use every weapon on all the classes, the weapons have different attribute scaling, so it’s better to stick to weapons your character scales with in the game.
Each character in the game feels distinctly different, and you must respect their roles during battles to win comfortably. For example, it’s the Guardian and the Raider’s job to take aggro in fights, while characters like Iron Eye, Recluse, and Duchess deal the chunk of the damage, and Revenant provides heals and support from the back.
Now, Wylder and Executor are hybrid characters who can simultaneously act as a DPS, a tank, and a support. Wylder can continuously zip around, both dealing damage and avoiding enemy attacks. His ultimate is also extremely useful for stunning enemies while packing a massive punch of burst damage.
The executor, on the other hand, can deflect enemy attacks without taking damage using his skill, and can also deal with a ton of bleed damage at the same time as he scales with Arcane. The Executor’s Ultimate lets him transform into a giant wolf, allowing him to revive nearby allies easily while also dealing a ton of damage to the enemy.
Gameplay Core: Fight, Loot, Level Up, and Repeat
Elden Ring Nightreign follows a 3-day cycle, with two main bosses appearing at the end of the first and second day, and the Night Lord appearing on the third day. The core gameplay of Nightreign is as follows: head to POIs > fight bosses and enemies > loot the boss > level up > repeat. The entire gameplay is about getting ready to fight the Night Lord on the third day. The POI you must target on days one and two should ideally drop a weapon of the alignment against which the Night Lord is weak, and level you up enough for the final challenge.
The first two days are to prepare for the Night Lord, while the main battle ensues on the third day. During the first two days, you will have to chart a path on the map to ideally get the rewards you need for the Night Lord, like more flask charges, picking bosses that are easier to defeat and drop more souls, or finding weapons to increase your strength.
The normal bosses are mostly carried over from the original Elden Ring. However, many of the old Soulsborne bosses also return to the game, like the Nameless King, The Duke’s Dear Freja, Smelter Demon, and many more.
The Night Lords, however, are entirely new, excluding the Gaping Jaw. All the Night Lords have a distinct feel, and most of the fights are extremely well executed. Yes, I do hate a couple of Night Lord fights, but they have a distinct enough feel that I cannot honestly criticize the design, but more so complain about what a chore they are — I am talking about you, Augur.
Some of the Night Lord fights are etched into my memories, and it is very satisfying to fight them constantly without needing a mod or starting the entire game like in Elden Ring. Other than that, I can confirm that the final boss fight in Elden Ring Nightreign is by far one of the best-designed bosses in the entire Soulsborne series. I am talking about Slave Knight Gael level of brilliance, so you better gear up for it.
Relics Add a New Dimension to Nightreign’s Combat
Elden Ring Nightreign is very much a roguelike. You pick your characters and jump into Limveld, exploring, looting, and slaying. At the end of your run, you have to leave all your gear behind and again start from scratch…well, almost from scratch.
The new relics are the permanent passive buffs that can be equipped on characters before a run begins. Each run will reward a certain number of relics at the end, based on the success of the run, each featuring different attributes.
The attributes can add elemental affinities to the starting weapon, increase base stats, provide resistances, or even improve the skills of characters. These attributes completely change how you play your character in the game. For example, a relic attribute heals nearby allies when the equipping character uses a flask. This allows players to save a ton of resources while healing and surviving much longer fights.
Similarly, I found another relic that shares the buffs gained from items and skills to allies, which essentially lets you share buffs or pull off other crazy tactics. One of the tactics we often used during our runs was buffing up at the start of boss fights using items while staying close to each other to save resources. As a Raider, I have often healed my allies by using a flask near them. This creates a certain dependency among allies, showing its true power when playing alongside friends while equipping Relics to enhance each other’s strengths and hiding weaknesses.
Events: Twists You May Not Always Love
To tackle the sameness of the game, Nightreign features five different Shifting Earth events and some different World Raids and minor events. The Shifting Earth events add a new area to the map that has different mechanics and unique bosses. For example, the Rotted Woods event changes an entire part of the map into a Rot Blighted area. Just being in that area would constantly build up rot, making it extremely hard to explore until you grab the power-up that grants immunity to it.
Once you have immunity to rot, you can explore the area and obtain an incredible amount of runes, as it is packed with four to five bosses. Usually, you won’t find so many bosses together at a place as they are spread apart. Although this may sound awful at low levels, it can be a massive rune farm on day 2.
Other than the Shifting Earth events, there are World Raids, which can be hilarious or nerve-racking, depending on who you ask. Personally, I find them hilarious. These events vary from Margit invading randomly and chasing the targeted player until he is defeated to black locusts stealing your levels and meteorite strikes that come bundled with a Fallingstar Beast.
Defeating these enemies doesn’t drop loot; instead, they provide power to all allies. For example, defeating Margit during the Fell Omen raid rewards players with a buff that boosts attack near the site of graces.
Overall, these events offer a decent variety in each run, but I felt they were lacking somewhat. Hopefully, we will get more events after the release, as it is such a cool mechanic that feels very underutilized at the current state of the game.
Elden Ring Drip Is the Fanservice I Needed
One of the coolest parts of Elden Ring Nightreign is Garbs, or costumes. Every character in the game can equip six different garbs, each meticulously crafted with stunning designs. However, the best garbs unlock only after defeating the final boss for the first time. These unlocked costumes are basically popular character skins from the Dark Souls universe.
From Solair’s skin to the Knights of Catarina, the game stirs up every Souls veteran’s nostalgia perfectly. The game also features an Artorius skin for the Wylder and a Sister Friede skin for the Revenant. These skins can be purchased with the in-game currency ‘Murk,’ which is rewarded at the end of each expedition run. Overall, these skins themselves are a good enough reason to continue playing the game.
Elden Ring Nightreign Is a True Team Game
Every FromSoftware game to date is heavily based on individual skills, even during PvP fights. Individual brilliance has always been the cornerstone of FromSoftware games, but that tradition has changed dramatically in Nightreign.
Elden Ring Nightreign is a true co-op game, built entirely around three players. Proper team play is essential in Nightreign, similar to how multiplayer battle royale tends to go. Although Elden Ring Nightreign is not a battle royale, it can be more punishing if you don’t play together. Every character has their strengths and weaknesses, and only in proper team-play can you enhance each other’s abilities and win fights.
During the testing, some teams I played in allowed us to completely decimate every Night Lord we came across, even going on a 5 Night Lord win streak. Meanwhile, other teams, which were less coordinated, fell apart at the last battle. The relevance to team fight is heavy in Elden Ring Nightreign, and while it may sound great for those who have designated teams, it won’t provide the best experience for solo players.
Playing Solo Is a Chore
With all the praises given, it’s time to talk about some of the bad parts of Nightreign. Elden Ring Nightreign has a solo mode that can be played offline. The mode decreases the damage dealt by enemies while also decreasing their health pools. In theory, it sounds like solo play should work properly in the game, but it was far from the truth in my experience.
Playing solo in Elden Ring Nightreign felt dissatisfying and incredibly hard. Every enemy encounter felt like a chore as some characters dealt very little damage early on, while others died incredibly quickly.
The variety in characters, which acts as a strength in the multiplayer, felt like a noose around the neck in solo play. The worst part about it all was the constant worry of death, which I barely ever experienced in other FromSoftware games.
As someone who never summons in Souls games and who nonchalantly takes on the Tree Sentinel each time at the start, I was fairly confident about playing solo in Nightreign. Sadly, all that confidence was shattered into a million pieces just after a couple of solo runs.
Contrary to popular opinion, I have never felt death to be a major issue in Souls games. It is the essence of returning again and again when fighting a hard boss that I genuinely enjoy. However, that is impossible in Nightreign as death against the Night bosses or Night Lord equates to ending the entire run.
So you start back at square one if you want to take revenge on the boss you lost against, redoing all the 20 minutes of grinding. Sounds like the longest runback in Souls history, right? It definitely felt like it!
Random Matchmaking Has a ‘Comms’ Issue
Another major qualm I have about Elden Ring Nightreign is the matchmaking system. It is overly complicated. Even forming parties through Steam invites is pretty difficult to figure out, while the in-game party system is equally weird. But all of these can be figured out with some simple research and shouldn’t be a long-term issue for players.
What can be a long-term issue is the absolute lack of communication in random matchmaking. The game has no voice channel, which can be respected to a certain degree. However, the game also lacks any text or pre-added comms. The only way to communicate with randoms during an online multiplayer is by viciously pinging something you want done before others actually follow you to that objective.
I remember picking up a Rivers of Blood for our ‘random’ Executor, only for him to ignore it the entire game. It took some vigorous jumping to draw his attention to the epic drop right before the Night Lord fight. Finally, he saw and accepted the gift, bowed politely, and we went on to destroy the Night Lord with him spamming the weapon art the entire fight.
There is no space for discussion, no space for clutch comms, and no space for mistakes. This can often lead to the entire run being over, as comms are essential in this game. Playing with the same team with and without comms will make a big difference in the team’s compatibility. The gap becomes further when playing with completely unknown people around the world. Even asking whether someone wants a weapon that has dropped among your loot can be difficult without comms.
I don’t know whether FromSoftware plans to add more pre-determined comms, or simply a voice channel in the game, but either is needed. Comms have saved our entire team more than once from death during brutal fights. A simple shout of using an ultimate at a specific time can be hugely beneficial for the entire run.
Graphics and Performance
Elden Ring Nightreign looks stunning, very similar to Elden Ring, as most of the assets come straight from it. Like Elden Ring, the graphical fidelity may not be that high, but the design direction is spot-on. Some of the boss fights are visually breathtaking, often leaving me stunned in real life. Before we begin talking about the numbers, here’s our test setup:
My Setup:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900x
CPU Cooler: CORSAIR H150 RGB
Motherboard: GIGABYTE B650M Gaming X AX
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
RAM: 32GB (32GB x 1) ADATA XPG DDR5 5600FSB LANCER
SSD: 1TB AORUS Gen 4 5000E NVMe storage
Monitor: 1080p@144hz
Network: 100 Mbps
The game itself is locked to 60 FPS, which is a bummer. But it ran pretty well on my RTX 5060 Ti rig, giving a consistent 60 FPS without fail at High settings. The multiplayer also worked without any hiccups with my 100 Mbps broadband connection, only showing minimal latency that did not harm the game’s experience.
However, the game often froze for a couple of seconds, and running it at max settings made it crash. This could have been due to a lack of supported drivers, and it is nothing that a day 1 patch shouldn’t be able to fix. Overall, the game ran crisp and smooth, only hiccupping occasionally.
Nightreign’s Future May Have a Lot More to Offer
Elden Ring Nightreign has much more to offer in the long run, only if FromSoftware updates it regularly with content. The game at its current state has around 50-60 hours of gameplay at max, which is pretty good. However, I feel the game could be alive for a lot longer than that if only FromSoftware adds more events, bosses, and major map changes monthly or quarterly.
The game also lacks many of the Soulsborne bosses I hoped to find, one of which is Artorius, which was a massive disappointment. The game also didn’t feature some of the highly anticipated bosses, like Godwyn, another boss I was looking forward to fighting.
However, you cannot truly criticize a game for what it didn’t promise to offer in the first place, so take this as more of a fan’s musing and not a reviewer’s criticism.
Still, I feel Nightreign can continue to add new content over time, which will retain its player base. This is also the only game I trust with a live service model, even if it’s through paid DLCs—and hopefully not through a battle pass!
Elden Ring Nightreign is planned to have a DLC for Q4 2025, which promises two new characters at the bare minimum. Hopefully, this DLC will also add more bosses and events because I really want to see this game prosper for a long time.
Verdict: Worth Another Trip into The Lands Between?
Elden Ring Nightreign is 100% worth buying if you are a Soulsborne fan. It is the perfect blend of nostalgia every Souls fan wants. The game features the best co-op system in a FromSoftware game, running almost flawlessly even when playing with players worldwide. The character classes add a new twist to the familiar combat, making the game dependent on proper teamwork.
Elden Ring Nightreign is undoubtedly the perfect game for Soulsborne fans who have always wanted a proper co-op playthrough. The game’s pace is fast, each complete match lasting 20 to 30 minutes, making it perfect for those multiplayer fans who love squeezing in a couple of games with their friends on a busy day.
However, the game also has its fair share of issues. The solo experience is extremely challenging, and the random matchmaking may frustrate many players. The game also lacks proper text or voice comms, making it nearly impossible to communicate your desire with other randoms in the match.
Furthermore, during the review, I faced some performance issues, with the game crashing at max settings and freezing for 4 to 5 seconds at times. These can be fixed with a day-one patch and a driver update. Other than that, there was a slight latency while playing with others, but it did not hamper the experience. So, I shall maintain that you must get this game right now.
So, what’s your opinion on Elden Ring Nightreign? Tell us whether you plan to get your hands on the game in the comments below!
