Elden Ring Nightreign

Elden Ring Nightreign is probably FromSoftware’s most experimental game to date. It takes the style and formula of Elden Ring and turns it into a co-operative roguelite game. The gap between announcement and release was surprisingly short, with the game being announced during The Game Awards in 2024 being released a little under half a year later. Now, soulslikes have had some form of co-op in the past, mostly with players summoning each other to aid with bosses or stubborn areas but that’s mostly it, so the idea of a game fully focused around it is an interesting concept. Did they manage to make it work however, or is this a game to be sent directly to Blighttown. Elden Ring Nightreign was developed by FromSoftware, published by Bandai Namco and released on 30^th May 2025 for Playstation 4/5, Xbox Series One & X/S and Windows.

Once again, I’m going to be changing this review up a little bit. There’s not really much to talk about when it comes to story as, even by soulslike standards, this game’s story is especially non-existent, and the presentation is essentially the exact same as Elden Ring so I’ll just be repeating myself from there. So instead I’m going to go straight into talking about gameplay and discussing what makes this game tick.

Classes

To start off, all your class options are premade and better suited to certain weapons. Of course, once you have the class you can use any weapon you want – want to use a colossal greatsword with a ranged class? Who am I to stop you? – though each class is better suited to certain weapons that scale better with their predetermined stats. In fact, some weapons are better for classes because they’ll get a unique and better moveset if they specialise in said weapon, Wylder with greatswords or Dutchess with daggers for example.

You start off the game with six classes, with two unlockable once you beat the first expedition, with each one fitting a different playstyle. If you want to be a tank and dual-wield two sword like the Dragonslayer from Berserk, the Raider is best suited for you, if you want to tap into your inner samurai and inflict bleed with a katana, then pick Executor, or if you want to stay at the back and fire arrows like every IGN guide would tell you to, then Ironeye should be an option. Very likely, the class you end up picking will be the kind you play the most often in base Elden Ring, though don’t be afraid to experiment as you may be surprised by how much you enjoy the others – for example, I thought I’d be maining Wylder and Raider because of big damage, but I found myself mostly playing Duchess because I liked her dagger combos and Ironeye partly because he was best for dealing status ailments, partly because no one else would pick a ranged character.

On top of specialising in certain weapons, each character has a selection of skills to be utilised while within the world. Each of them has three skills, a passive skill, a character skill and an ultimate skill. Passive skills are continuous effects that either happen at random or stay active throughout the expedition, these include the Guardian having improved guarding when using a shield, or the Duchess having a much better dodge compared to other characters, or the Wylder being able to automatically dodge a fatal blow once per death. Character skills are smaller abilities that has a different use in battle depending on who you’re playing, such as the Ironeye being able to reveal an enemy’s weak point for a short while, making it more likely for the enemy to stagger, or the Revenant being able to summon spirits to aid her in battle. These skills will have a short cooldown before you can pull them off again. Finally, is the Ultimate Arts, which are massive attacks that will deal a lot of damage to an enemy or a small portion to a boss or heavily aid your allies, like the Executor being able to transform into a primordial beast for a short period of time, or the Duchess being able to turn herself and nearby allies invisible. These skills have a much longer cooldown so you’ll have to be more considerate when you choose to use them.

The Expeditions

Now let’s get into the actual meat of the game. expeditions consist of you and two other players dropping into the Limveld and surviving two days and nights before eventually ending with a fight against a Night Lord. These days are your preparation time, where you run around, fighting enemies and obtaining equipment to get you a better chance of defeating the final boss on day three. You have a number of threats during these days but the main one you have is the Night Rain, a circle of blue fire that will shrink the further into the day you get. If you or your allies are outside of the circle you will progressively lose health. It does shrink slowly however, giving you time to potentially finish off any objectives you have, or even start some new ones if you’re cocky enough.

The world, for the most part, stays the same every time you run through. Ruins, churches, Evergaols and the castle in the centre rarely move, meaning that you can strategize and better learn the world the more you play through it. What does change however, is what you encounter in each of these areas. Each location will contain different enemies each time you run through, often determined by the element symbol next to them on the map, which will also help to dictate the type of reward you’ll receive at the end.

So what are these new locations and what do you receive by beating them. For starters, the ruins, enemy camps, great churches and forts are areas that contain a number of enemies and a boss for you to defeat. The types of enemies will depend on which type of location you enter as well as other obstacles you’ll have to conquer. The tunnels are all entrances to mines where you’ll find upgrade materials to make your weapons stronger. Churches are the locations where you get more flasks. And the Castle in the middle is a big dungeon-like area, where you’ll face a number of really strong enemies and even stronger bosses. There are obviously more map icons than these, but these are the main ones you’ll encounter and likely will find yourself running to.

Now let’s get onto the rewards and weapons. You can get weapons by buying them from merchants or looting chests, but the best way to get the stronger ones is from bosses. When you defeat a boss, you get to pick from a selection of drops, them being either weapons or passive abilities. The rarity of these rewards will be indicated by the colour of them, from blue to purple to gold. These will range from standard weapons that can be dropped from any enemy in Elden Ring to some insane boss weapons that will make you drop your jaw, such as Maliketh’s Black Blade, or even the Hand of Malenia, each with their accompanying weapons skills. Though the weapons may not work with the class you’re playing as, as you could end up with a greatsword as Ironeye or a staff as Raider. This isn’t terrible, as these weapons could work really well with your allies, but there’s nothing worse than only finding two or three weapons that work with your class because in an entire run (fellow Ironeye mains will likely understand my pain).

Death works quite differently in this game. Usually, in soulslikes, after getting the YOU DIED message on screen, you respawn from your last resting point, in the case of Elden Ring the last Site of Grace you rested at. In Nightreign, you instead linger there for a few seconds before respawning, giving your allies a chance to revive you by beating the ever loving crap out of you. If they don’t get to you in time then you respawn just outside of the area you died with a level missing – though don’t worry, as you get back the runes needed to regain that lost level once you pick them back up, so you’re not going to be at a disadvantage. When fighting against a Night boss or Night Lord on the other hand, you don’t respawn no matter how long you lie there, requiring a friend to revive you for you to re-enter the fray. If everyone goes down in these fights, your raid comes to an end.

One thing that does on occasion happen are the Earth Shifts. These are where the world will be changed in a major way, adding a new area to explore while adding in new challenges for you to conquer. Within each of these shifts is an objective for you to complete to receive an award, these are optional if you just want to spend the time fighting bosses, though they are very much recommended because the rewards you get are really useful, such as the crater level reward being the only way to upgrade a weapon from purple to gold, or the rotted woods essentially forcing you to find the objective so you stop being affected by the scarlet rot in the air. I really like these parts, as they add more challenges to the levels and ensure that each run doesn’t just feel the same every time.

Bosses

Now the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the bosses. Let’s start off with the ones you’ll fight while exploring Limveld. These bosses are all repeats that you’ve likely fought plenty of times throughout Elden Ring, from the very common Tree Sentinels, to the absolute pains that are the Death Rite Birds. These bosses can pose a challenge however, possibly being able to one-shot you if you’re playing a class with a small health pool. Of course, the stronger the boss, the better reward you’ll receive.

The Night Bosses are the bosses you fight at the end of the day, when the circle is especially tiny. The bosses you fight are completely random though they all only appear during certain expeditions. As you’ve likely seen in the trailer, it’s not only Elden Ring bosses that you’re fighting this time, as there are six bosses from the Dark Souls series that will try to put an end to your run, from the fairly easy Duke’s Dear Freja, to the absolute horror that is the Nameless King. As I said before, if your entire party dies in this run, then it’s back to the Roundtable Hold for you. Defeating these bosses will reward you with a purple passive skill.

Finally, there’s the Night Lords. Entirely unique bosses that you fight on the third day. To say that these bosses are difficult is an understatement, as there are plenty that will absolutely decimate you if you’re not careful. They have combos that specialise in group encounters as well as really powerful second phases that can change up the fight dramatically. There are even event versions of these bosses called Everdark Sovereigns, these ones are especially powerful, starting off with the second phase from the moment you enter the boss room and having new attacks that will annihilate you if you’re not prepared for them.

Roundtable Hold

Finally, before we get into my issues with the game, let’s talk about your general hub area. The Roundtable Hold from Elden Ring is back and looking a lot more dilapidated this time around. This is where you prepare your characters for each of your runs, powering them up more and helping you to get the builds you want. The main way of doing this is with the relics (yes I too am ashamed that it took me this long to bring them up). Relics are what you receive at the end of every run or you can buy them from the Pot Merchant, you can equip three of them at a time and the types you’re allowed to equip depends on the class you’re choosing. These relics have up to three abilities that will power up your characters and give them different power-ups, such as their starting weapon dealing a certain type of damage or be able to inflict a status ailment with each hit, an increase when using certain weapons or items, or regaining HP or FP with successive attacks. These abilities will really dictate how you play and the kind of character you want, for example I equipped a relic to Duchess that lets her regain HP if she hits an enemy just after taking damage, with that and her speed and dodges I’ve essentially turned her into a Bloodborne character.

It’s also here that you can talk to your fellow Nightfarers, change the look of your characters (and can we just reel over the fact that FromSoftware aren’t charging anything for cosmetics, it’s all in game), as well as practice and test out characters to see if they are a good fit for you.

Flaws

Now, I will say right now, that I do really like this game, though there are some definite flaws with them that I feel are worth mentioning. To start off, at this point in time, the game relies very heavily on multiplayer, which can be the make or break for you. Personally, most of my experiences with playing with other players have been fairly pleasant and when you get those golden teams you have a brilliant time, but there’s nothing worse than having a team of players that either refuse to do what you suggest, go off on their own constantly, or are just terrible at the game – which according to Reece is about 80% of his teammates. The main reason why this is bad is because the game really isn’t scaled for single player or even two players, three is a necessity, which makes it even worse when a player leaves a session early or you’re having internet issues requiring you play solo. Now, at time of writing, FromSoftware have said that they are working on it and are planning on updates to make things better, but at the minute it definitely leaves much to be desired.

The second one is with the nature of this game. Each session can go on for a long time, each day is around fourteen minutes, and seeing as the Night Lord can take a while to beat, it could easily take about forty minutes to do a single run. And unlike other roguelites, where you can improve to a good enough point and become so powerful that you’re breezing through each run in record time, the time in Nightreign’s runs have a set amount of time, meaning that it’s still going to take a lot of time before you reach the end no matter how good you get. Which can make it especially demoralising when you reach the end of a run and are destroyed by a boss in less than a minute, knowing that you have to go through all that again for a second attempt. I’ve found myself only doing a couple of runs at a time because of the amount of time it took to get through them and if I had a bad session I might not want to do another one, which I don’t often feel with roguelites as I’m often raring to go again.

My last issue is with the PC version of the game, and I’m certain it will get fixed in the future but it’s still worth mentioning. While this game runs perfectly fine for the most part, it has a tendency to crash… a lot. It hasn’t happened every time I’ve played it but it’s been at least a good 40%, and it’s been almost always when I was right in the middle of a run. The game will punish you as well, as not only do you not receive any of the runes the other players obtained while you were rebooting the game up, you also lose a level and all your runes which you have to run and collect. It’s not just my PC either, as this thing runs Elden Ring perfectly and others have been reporting on this problem. This is a problem that I’m certain will be fixed in the future, but the fact that it’s here to begin with is still bad.

Conclusion

I’ll freely admit, I’ve been somewhat addicted to this game. Booting it up when I’m watching something in the background or when I have an hour to kill. It’s something that I’ve loved getting the hang of and brings back that satisfaction of perfecting a soulslike over the course of multiple playthroughs. If you’re a fan of soulslikes and are wanting something different then I recommend it. Admittedly it wouldn’t be a good idea to play it if you’re not already a fan of the genre, but for those who are, I think you’ll find yourself having a very good time with this.

8.4/10