Like a prize fighter, Elden Ring Nightreign seems to be making a fantastic comeback – its Mixed Steam reviews have started crawling back to a 75% Mostly Positive rating after developer FromSoftware began rolling out useful patches this week.
Before Nightreign even came out, FromSoftware seemed to have been worried about what players would think about the co-op roguelike – it isn't quite like anything else the 39-year-old developer has released up until now. Producer Yasuhiro Kitao even went out of his way to thank players for "bravely" picking up Nightreign, despite the fact that it "has some peculiar aspects to its game design and is different from our recent titles in various ways."
So patch 1.01 self-consciously issued some vague balance changes and bug fixes ahead of Nightreign's release, and, more recently, patch 1.01.1 made it so heroes going solo could revive up to three times per night-time boss battle run.
This took care of people on Steam grumbling about Nightreign's single-player difficulty (though, it's not like that stopped determined Nightfarers from completing the game alone), and FromSoftware also now promises duo support to those who are, instead, feeling lonely all by themselves.
"We will continue to provide post-launch support, including DLC scheduled for later this year, as well as adding a two-player mode," FromSoftware explained on Twitter. Originally, director Junya Ishizaki told IGN that duos were "simply something that was overlooked during development [...], so we're very sorry about that."
Now that FromSoftware has plans to rectify the situation, everyone must be happy, right? Everyone's getting their needs met?
"Hardest boss in the game is called 'Friendless, The Loner Player,'" says a positive review with over 1,300 "helpful" ratings as of writing. I'm not sure FromSoftware can help with that.
Elden Ring Nightreign director has soloed every boss "without relics," and he wants fans "to know that this is very possible" despite concerns over difficulty.
