Elden Ring Nightreign review: "An uncharacteristically frantic and fast-paced ride that boils down the core Elden Ring experience"

Elden Ring Nightreign is a tough sell. Breaking away from the 'soulsborne' formula FromSoftware established with Dark Souls and Bloodborne by forcing it into a roguelike shape with hero shooter-style characters, it's certainly a departure. One that I was sceptical of at first, appearing like an odd attempt to muscle in on the success of games like Hades 2 and the financial gains to be made from the live service scene, dressed up as an elaborate boss rush mod for Elden Ring.

Even in my first couple of hours playing, I wasn't completely sure of Elden Ring Nightreign's premise: team up with two other players, pick from one of eight Nightfarer characters, then run through a three-day Expedition, killing enemies to collect runes, weapons, and boons to help you overcome one big bad boss at the end. But after eventually beating the game's first Night Lord, the three-headed hell-wolf Gladius, by quite literally snatching victory from three sets of jaws of defeat, I was eager to take on the rest.

Elden Ring Nightreign is certainly an odd game, and one that will mainly appeal to only the most hardcore of Elden Ring fans. It's an uncharacteristically frantic and fast-paced ride that boils down and livens up the core Elden Ring experience, still scratching the same itch of narrowly overpowering almighty beasts with swords and sorcery. And the best part is you get to do it all with friends for a definitive soulslike co-op experience.

Heavy reign

Let me get this out there early: Elden Ring Nightreign is hard. It's a soulsborne game after all, but it's tough in ways that you probably weren't expecting. Elden Ring, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and any of its predecessors for that matter let you play at your own pace. You can take your time exploring and power leveling before taking on something big. And if you fail, you can quickly try again or level up some more. To use an overused metaphor, these games are marathons, not sprints.

However, Nightreign literally is a sprint and time is a luxury you do not have. Since you're on the clock against the encroaching tide of Night – a Fortnite-like storm that shrinks the safe area of the Limveld map – every Expedition must be completed at a breakneck pace. To stand any chance of success, you must act like you've supped from the strongest stuff in the Roundtable Hold's secret coffee stash in a mad dash around the map, hoovering up loot and clobbering what you can before the end of each in-game day. It certainly takes some getting used to, but this comparatively speedy, bitesize roguelike "run" format is a surprisingly thrilling and fresh take on the Soulsborne formula. It forces you to improvise and deal with what you're given, which is almost the complete opposite of Elden Ring's relative freedom when it comes to builds.

Moreover, the fact that you get to do it with friends makes it all the sweeter. Foes of all sizes crumble under barrages of coordinated attacks, and it's immensely satisfying when everyone is on the same page about the best locations to hit, charging together to take on the Night. As a result, the most adaptable, efficient, and daring teams that can weather this uncertain storm are often handsomely rewarded, and it's really exciting when those stars align leaving you feeling unstoppable.

But the lightning-fast pace, luck aspects, and jolly co-operation aren't going to be to everyone's taste. Nightreign's Expeditions can be upwards of 45-minutes of brutally relentless, heart-pounding hunting with an incredibly narrow margin for error – after some particularly testing runs, I genuinely needed to walk around for a few minutes to shake off failure or come down from the victory high. Recklessness and indecision are the true enemies in Elden Ring Nightreign, making it a vicious place for new players. Those who can't keep up won't stand a chance of taking on the game's menagerie of monstrous bosses.

Night clubbing

It wouldn't be a FromSoftware party without a whole array of brutal bosses and Nightreign obliges with eight terrifying Nightlords waiting for you at the end of their own Expeditions. The first of these, the aforementioned Gladius, is a terrifying intro to what lies ahead in other Expeditions, using sweeping, flaming sword blows, fireball attacks, and the ability to split into three separate wolves to dominate beginner Nightfarers.

Beyond Gladius, you'll have to face the likes of the Gaping Jaw and Darkdrift Knight. The former is a malformed draconic creature with its mouth on all wrong and the latter is a hulking but wounded centaur, but don't let their looks deceive you. Both are unbelievably strong and frustratingly mobile, capable of killing you in one or two blows that you barely have time to react to – both make Gladius look like a pushover.

Outside of the new Nightlords, series devotees will recognize many of the other bosses ready to send them back to the Roundtable Hold broken and bruised from Elden Ring and even the Dark Souls trilogy. It's a genius form of asset re-use that has allowed FromSoftware to make a sandbox that feels like three Avengers fighting He-Man on the first day, a Bionicle on the next, and a Transformer on the third.

However, like these action figures with their worn joints, the older Dark Souls-era bosses haven't aged well, seemingly not receiving the tune-up that I expected. As an example, I was pleasantly surprised to see Dark Souls' Gaping Dragon materialize to cap off Day 2 of a solo run, mainly because I remembered this boss being quite easy to fight, and the same is certainly the case in Nightreign – it wandered awkwardly around the arena, crashing into the arena perimeter, acting like I wasn't there, but was frustratingly arduous to fight because of its boosted health pool.

Broadly, all the end-of-day bosses in Nightreign can be a slog to take down due to their robustness. And when they employ attacks that can tear chunks out of your health bar or even one-shot you, they can start to feel unfair. Failing to kill a Nightlord after spending over half an hour fighting for your life to get there can be crushing.

But when you do beat them, there is almost no greater feeling. The Nightlords are arguably some of the mightiest bosses ever seen in a FromSoftware game, and getting to revel in victory with other players is unmatched. Whether its coming in clutch to defeat Gladius with both teammates down, overcoming the watery Augur with just one other player, or spending 10-minutes chipping away at the frosty Fissure in the Fog with a flaming sword in an epic clash of fire and ice, Nightreign might be the best game in FromSoftware's repertoire for spectacle.

Nocturnal hunters

As I've hopefully made clear, reaching any of the Nightlords is difficult, and beating any of them is even tougher. While each one has a clearly signposted weakness to a particular damage type – fire, poison, or holy, for example – success can also hinge massively on the characters you and your teammates choose and how you outfit them.

Each of the eight Nightfarer characters feel exceptionally unique, even in the context of Elden Ring's entire sandbox – FromSoftware has crafted each character with some truly novel abilities that cater to a range of common playstyles, from melee might and defensive approaches to summoners and spell snipers. Duchess and Wylder are without a doubt my favorites – the former being extremely nimble and optimized for Dexterity weapons, and the latter being an all-rounder swordsman with a fun grappling hook and punchy explosive crossbow.

While adding sets of hero-shooter-like powers to a series renowned for its build flexibility seems highly restrictive, I think it's a necessary sacrifice to accommodate the roguelike format. The game taking key leveling and gear decisions out of your hands means you can get on with facing the Night, otherwise an Expedition would grind to a halt every time you needed to assign attributes.

Besides, it's not like the game has no answer to build-crafting. Every Nightfarer can equip a few Relics, each granting one to three minor or major upgrades to your character. Defeating Nightlords and completing Remembrances (the personal quests of each Nightfarer) lead you to some of the best Relics too, so you'll only become more powerful the deeper you take Elden Ring Nightreign. It's still quite a limited permanent upgrade system, but it's enough to help you feel like you're min-maxing your characters for certain scenarios.

Although, while Elden Ring Nightreign is an excellent co-op experience where co-ordination is encouraged and rewarded, solo play is an option. The reason I've mentioned it once in passing is because the solo experience is, frankly, miserable. There is apparently some level of solo scaling, but it certainly didn't feel like it from my attempts. Going alone necessitates a more methodical approach that severely limits how much ground can be covered. Some players will relish this challenge, but I found myself often massively underleveled for every boss fight, making true progress almost impossible – solo players will be far better off sticking to New Game+ in Elden Ring.

It's also disappointing that the game's matchmaking system restricts you to playing alone or as part of a trio. Skipping a two-player option feels like a bizarre oversight, and game director Junya Ishizaki has even admitted as much in an interview with IGN, saying duos was "overlooked and neglected" but will be considered for post-launch support. The even more disappointing aspect is that there is no crossplay – something which really should be standard for multiplayer games that are looking to stick around in 2025 and beyond. While I don't doubt that Elden Ring Nightreign will be a success at launch, I can't help but feel like these scaling and multiplayer blunders will impact the game's long-term health, though I hope to be proven wrong with future updates.

Despite gutting a lot of elements that are core to soulslike games and its questionable longevity, Elden Ring Nightreign is truly for the sickos. The gaps left by what has been cut out have been filled carefully with surprisingly competent roguelike components, making it feel both familiar and refreshingly new. After that initial hump, it proves to be a relentless sprint that can be both exhilarating and excruciating and, depending on your skill and ability to persevere, you may find it swings more so in one direction than the other. Nightreign is Elden Ring at arguably its most brutal but at least you can suffer with friends.

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