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The best bits of my Elden Ring Nightreign hands-on preview session were the moments where my teammates and I pulled off coordinated strategies, and I say that as someone who's always played FromSoftware games solo. It feels like cheating to instantly stagger a world boss with two players on the warrior class Wylder both dumping their ultimate attacks, only for our third member to double-dip that damage with the devastating replay skill of the Duchess and finish the fight with a riposte. In another run, our team's sorceress-like Recluse used their ultimate to brand enemies with a mark that refills your health and mana when you attack them, setting us up for victory in the second half of a long fight. This kind of thing happens all the time, and as you learn more about the items and playable classes, planning out your party's synergy only becomes more engrossing.
You can think of Elden Ring Nightreign as a PvE battle royale boss rush with prescribed classes and roguelike buildcrafting. Each run, you'll drop into a map with procedural loot and points of interest, level and gear up during the day, fight random bosses at night, and repeat for two in-game days to prepare for a big boss on day three. A run takes about 35 to 45 minutes. Now, co-op has been an optional nicety in FromSoftware RPGs for a long time, but playing with friends hasn't really been possible without help from mods or repeatedly fiddling with an arcane matchmaking system. (It seems much better in Nightreign: set a password at the hub and hit join.) Even then, it would probably be spotty and janky. After Elden Ring, in particular, players grew hungry for a fluid, cooperative experience.
Nightreign is built around three-player co-op from the ground up, to the point that playing truly solo is frankly inadvisable, partly because there is no single-player scaling in this game. Worst-case, you'll just want to play with two randoms via matchmaking. Even a two-player run, forced on me and my PC Gamer colleague Morgan Park by technical issues, felt significantly tougher. An actual solo run is entirely possible but probably only for the hardcore. But more importantly, Nightreign delivers an excellent suite of co-op features and interactions that meaningfully change the feel of the game despite it largely rehashing Elden Ring's combat system.
Be the teammate you want to play with
If you've done much summoning in Elden Ring, a lot of this will feel familiar. But there are subtle changes under the hood. Firstly, most normal enemies will get absolutely pummeled when you all three attack them at once. But playing with a group also unlocks tank-and-spank tactics. A class like the greatshield-equipped Guardian can play as a true tank, which is especially valuable against bosses that summon minions. You hold the boss down, I'll kill the minions. Classic. Oppositely, the Duchess can use her ultimate to make the whole team undetectable for several seconds, letting everyone get in some free damage to weaken a boss or quickly clear out a mob of enemies. You could also use this ability defensively to make it easy to revive a downed teammate.
The revive mechanic is a huge incentive to play Nightreign with a group and stick together. If you get downed alone, you'll die and lose a precious level on respawn. But teammates can easily revive you by, well, lovingly hitting you really hard, locking onto your body as they would an enemy. This revive setup gives long-range and AoE attacks more utility in combat. You can pick up your buddy without getting in the face of whatever just killed them, or revive them while cleaving surrounding enemies. This also rewards strong builds: the more damage you deal, the faster you can revive. Plus it creates clutch moments in tense fights. Should I go for the revive, or just finish the boss?
Looking out for your teammates is a recurring theme. Loot in Nightreign is split between shared and instanced drops, so it's important to think about which party member will make best use of each item. If I'm playing Wylder, a melee specialist, and I see a powerful staff as an option in my pick-one boss drops, I might take it just to pass it to my spellcaster friend. Out in the open world, you might find a random silver beetle which drops a talisman that buffs thrusting counterattack damage. Best hand that to the dude with a spear. If three weapons pop out of a chest at the start of a run, I'm not going to take them all myself. Instead, share the love so the whole team can start stacking up passive bonuses which are active for all six equipped weapons, not just the one in your hand right now.
Tons of weapons and spells from Elden Ring feel more powerful in Nightreign. Team-wide buffs like the Commander's Standard attack boost are especially potent. If you thought Elden Ring players spent forever popping buffs before boss fights, wait until you see three people doing it at once. Likewise, you can share consumables like crab meat, status curatives, throwables, and a wider array of buffs.
Further charges are found outside of combat. Everyone can put marks on the map to suggest places to go, or simply to make them easier to find if you're already chatting over Discord or something. If multiple people mark the same area, a bigger mark appears. (I'd still like to see a ping you can fire off while running or fighting without pulling up the map.) It's fun to talk through your plans for the day, weighing up your remaining time with your immediate resource needs. When you reach a ruin or castle, you'll need to work out your plan of attack: will we go in through the dungeon or use the nearby spiritstream to leap to the top? Does everyone have their ultimate? Duchess, do you want to stealth us at the start? And on and on.
The most exciting thing here is that I've only seen four of the eight Nightfarers who'll be playable at launch, to say nothing of the full arsenal of weapons, and there's already DLC in the works which will add more everything. Plenty more strategies and synergies will be discovered once the game is out. I'm looking forward to figuring out what I enjoy most – currently, it's Wylder and Duchess – and practicing combos with friends. There's never been a FromSoftware game like this, and after many years of oddball asynchronous multiplayer, it's nice to finally have co-op take center stage in a proven action sandbox.
Elden Ring Nightreign network test times – here's when you can play the beta yourself.
