Elden Ring: Nightreign release live coverage - everything we've discovered in the run-up to launch

Speaking of launch day, that might be the end of it for me. It's creeping up on 1am here in the UK, which means there's still many, many hours to go before the US console launch. As a reminder, that's midnight local time on the east coast, and 21:00 PDT if you're living on the west coast. I know that some timezones exist in between those two, so we're looking at 23:00 Central, or 22:00 Mountain.

We'll be back tomorrow with more launch day coverage. In the meantime, your best source of official news will be the official Elden Ring Twitter account. Good luck out there, Nightreigners!

The good news, however, is that Nightreign keeps climbing the charts, and is now boasting 312,000 concurrents on Steam. Granted, it's slower growth than that first hour offered, but it's good to see players sticking around through launch day.

In fact, I dug into those user reviews, and they paint a very unflattering picture of Nightreign. They're actually one of FromSoftware's lowest-ever user review scores on Steam. Now admittedly, that comes with the caveat that the studio has released its fair share of middling games, but many of them can't be found on Valve's platform, and even those that do don't technically sit under the current 'FromSoftware Inc' banner.

If you want to know what's done worse, you can pick up Dark Souls 3's Ashes of Ariendel DLC, at a 59%, or try and find a let's play of Ninja Blade, which released to 62% scores in 2009, but is no longer available to purchase on the platform.

The user reviews do keep going down, but much of the criticism seems to focus around two or three things. The first is the lack of duo support, which isn't great, granted, but is something FromSoftware warned us about. The second is a lack of ultrawide support, which is one I'm more surprised by - while I'm an ultrawide enjoyer, I'm not too offended by games that don't provide support for it. The 60fps lock is also raising eyebrows, which is a pretty standard issue by now. But there's also several complaints about unenjoyable PC controls - I think I'll be using a controller, but it's an interesting point to note.

Anecdotally, it seems like there might be an early contender for the most popular - or at least most evasive Elden Ring Nightreign class. There seems to be some decent buzz around our guide on how to unlock the Revenant in Elden Ring Nightreign, suggesting there might just be something about her that's making players desperate to get their hands on her skills.

In the interest of helping people out, I've tapped up some context around the Elden Ring Nightreign PS5 matchmaking issues that I've seen some players suffering from. FromSoftware did appear to have put out a fix earlier today that simply involves exiting matchmaking and then requeuing, but it's not immediately clear how effective that's proving to be.

And as we get there, Nightreign is now knocking on the door of 300,000 Steam players.

In the slight chaos of the last hour, I realize that the UK console launch is almost upon us. Sadly, that still means a several-hour wait for my US friends on PlayStation and Xbox, but please take some solace in the fact that I personally won't be able to join you for days yet.

I'm not hugely surprised to see it, but the Steam user reviews have dropped down a bit. Now at a 'Mostly Positive' score of 79%, it's a little closer to the review scores, even if it is a potentially disappointing drop away from the 100% I mentioned earlier (which it was never going to maintain).

I am seeing a few grumbles on the subreddit - mostly around technical issues that will probably be sorted out. But tutorialization, a lack of social features, and some of Fromsoft's asset reuse (a tool that I think it doesn't get enough credit for) are in the firing lines of some players. Those do seem like they can be addressed, mostly in the short to medium-term, but they're worth bearing in mind. It does still sound as though this is a far better game when you're playing it as part of a full-voice trio than at any other time.

Oh, and that number is now 279,000, so it's definitely beating Dark Souls.

If you're interested, some quick maths suggests to me that Nightreign has, in its first 30 minutes, outperformed the concurrent peaks of the entire Dark Souls trilogy combined. Obviously, there are a lot of additional factors at play that make this, as I explained earlier, something we shouldn't take as a gospel measure of the game's success, but it is a very good start for the slightly weird proposal that is Nightreign.

In all my excitement about those reviews, I forgot to check player counts, which have shot to 255,000 players and still appear to be rising. That's more than a quarter of Elden Ring's all-time peak, in just 30 minutes.

Interestingly, the caveat in even those positive reviews seems to be that you'll need to take Nightreign on its own merits. It's clear from the more serious reviews that this is just as hard, and just as fast-paced as press reviews suggested it would be. It's also pretty clear that this is not just another Dark Souls or Elden Ring multiplayer mod turned into a full game - it's its own beast, and one that you'll have to come to terms with by yourself.

The first few user reviews for Nightreign have started trickling in via Steam. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they're coming in Positive, (almost) universally so. However, also unsurprisingly, there are quite a few Elden Ring 'try finger but hole' references in there, so maybe let's wait for a few extra hours before we take away a definitive verdict.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, but still impressively, some players are already finding success entirely solo. Be warned that the below post contains spoilers, but one player at least has already started showing Nightreign who's boss - though they do say they're a dab hand at Elden Ring itself, so that probably helps.

Zabito boga! Solo from r/Nightreign

I've gotta say: So far, the lack of everything being on fire does seem pretty promising. Granted, this late-night, worldwide rollout with different release times between PC and console probably won't have helped that, but people seem to be getting in.

That matchmaking issue also seems to be rearing its head. This player, who seems to be based in Europe or Asia based on their early console access, says they got stuck in matchmaking for an hour, but found no-one to play with.

To repeat Fromsoft's advice via its Japanese customer support account, if you find this happening, particularly on PS5 (where this person is playing), you should be able to fix it by exiting and re-entering matchmaking.

Interestingly, there's a lot of LFG posts. That's not 'let's f***ing go' (though there are plenty of those too), so much as 'looking for group'. Given that you have to play Nightreign solo or in trios, and there's no duos support, I can see that being a recurring theme, but I thought that day one-ers would mostly have groups locked down.

Pro-tip based on some of what I'm seeing on that subreddit: if Steam's not letting you play, restart it and try again - it's possible you missed the day one patch, which is a regular issue with pre-loading a game. You might still have to wait a few minutes for the game to fully unpack, but hey, at least it's working.

Over on the /new section of the Nightreign subreddit, things are as chaotic as you might imagine. There's an awful lot of 'let me in' and that Eric Andre meme, but as of right now it doesn't seem like there are any widespread faults, as long as your game is fully installed and your internet is properly connected.

One factor I'll be interested to see play out is the community's reaction to Nightreign's DRM and anti-cheat. While the latter is often accepted as a necessary evil, the former is almost always deeply unpopular, yet it's here for FromSoft - but for how long?

There is something very funny about the fact that many of the top replies to that tweet are from console players on the US west coast, who still have several hours to wait until they can actually play.

And that's it, Elden Ring Nightreign is now available - so says the official Elden Ring account.

Well, this is it, gang. In the last minute or so before the PC launch, here's a reminder that you can dress as Solaire in Nightreign. Praise the sun!

We're well under the ten minute mark now, so if you don't have the pre-load sorted, you might want to tell your family to get off the wi-fi.

The official FromSoft account has stayed pretty quite today. There are those tweets about the day one patch, and the Revenant character trailer, but so far it really does feel as though it's waiting out launch day in relative calm.

Of course, it's nearly 7am the day after launch in Japan right now, so perhaps that's part of this particular equation.

By the way, if you don't believe me on the servers thing, we've been talking about this exact phenomenon since before 2019, when we asked a whole bunch of devs why everything seems to go wrong at launch, and what (if anything) can be done to fix it. Hey, it might be a shameless plug, but it could be a good way to fill 15 minutes.

I'd stick with that, but we are genuinely starting to run out of time, with just over 20 minutes to go before launch as I write this. With that in mind, let me give you a sense of how the next couple of hours are likely to play out.

The worldwide PC release is just around the corner, which will likely mean the single biggest influx of players. I'll be keeping an eye on any early performance or connection issues, as well as any substantial error codes. All that said, it's worth bearing in mind that servers almost always fall over for modern launches. And no, it's never as simple as 'just add more, duh'.

I'll also keep an eye on player counts on Steam. Sadly, I don't think I'll make it to the console release on the other side of the Atlantic - we're talking 5am UK time at that point, and I have work in the morning.

I've tried to thread some trailers into the coverage of the last few hours, for a little visual variety, but it strikes me that I've not given enough over to the fact that Elden Ring was often extremely pretty, and Nightreign is obviously born of that same artistic style. So how about a brief interlude?

It strikes me only now, having been working on this coverage for most of the day, that 'midnight local time' as a console release time could mean that vast swathes of the Eastern hemisphere have been playing Nightreign on console for hours. Such are the perils of working in the global west, all while having to deal with global timezones, I guess.

Either way, if you're in any doubt, I'd stick to the release times pinned above - it was written by people cleverer than me. Either way, the PC release and the UK/North American console release is still upcoming, and with the greatest of respect to my Australian friends, that's most of who I assumed I'd been speaking to this whole time.

And in my defense, anyone who's already in has stayed pretty quiet about things. 30 minutes to go!

I thought it would be worth checking in on FromSoftware itself, but it does seem as though things are going relatively smoothly as we approach launch. There is one note, via the company's Japanese-language player support account, which states that anyone having difficulty with matchmaking on PlayStation should simply quit the queue and then start again. Seems a pretty simple fix, but we'll see if it manifests for Western releases.

Ok, console players you can look back now.

While we're here, it might be worth checking out the full PC specs, and boy do they make me happy. The recommended specs ask for a 10-series Nvidia GPU. An honest-to-goodness Nvidia 1070 is what FromSoft says it recommends you have - that's a card I had when I was a broke student back in 2016, so any fears I personally had about not being able to run Nightreign were clearly unfounded.

Elsewhere, we're talking a relatively standard 16GB of RAM, Windows 11, and an i5 or Ryzen 5 processor. Suffice to say, this should run on most rigs pretty comfortably. Ironically, based on what FromSoft and Bandai have said today, it'll be the cards at the complete opposite end of the pricing scale that will suffer more - suck it, 50-series buyers.

That's that Elden Ring Nightreign is actually pretty small for a major release. Bandai's official system requirements suggest 30GB of available drive space on PC, but it might be even smaller than that - datamined evidence suggests that Nightreign will only take up a little more than 21GB on consoles, which is less than half the size of base Elden Ring, and around a third of what that increases to when you add Shadow of the Erdtree.

That's pretty tiny, especially when you consider the fact that there's a whole roster of Dark Souls bosses shoved in there - enough to (nearly) make the Smash Bros team feel ashamed.

With so little time left, I feel like it's time for a bit of housekeeping I should have done earlier. Pre-load! Yes, you can pre-load Elden Ring Nightreign, and you probably should have started already if you wanted to play at launch.

The good news is that it's not like you're that far behind - pre-load only began on May 28 for console and literally today, May 29, for PC. You still might want to get on it sharp-ish, but there is some more good news on that front.

While I was reasoning those thoughts out, we passed 10pm in the UK, which means there's now less than an hour to go before Elden Ring Nightreign drops.

One question I keep coming back to is that of Nightreign's player count. Now, these are not the be-all and end-all of a game's success story, but they are one of the most effective matrices we have to measure a game's life-force, especially as services like PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass serve to muddy the waters between a 'player' and a 'buyer'.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that Nightreign is an interesting proposition. Elden Ring itself was a far bigger hit than many expected, largely casting off the burden of the Dark Souls games' infamous difficulty to become, as of right now, the ninth most-played game in Steam history. It was an astonishing feat for a game as difficult and beginner-unfriendly as this one, especially when you consider it was a single-player title in a new IP.

Now I normally wouldn't assume a spin-off like Nightreign could catch up to that, but perhaps this time it will. A multiplayer focus obviously means that there's a likelihood for more people to be playing at the same time, driving up the concurrent player counts that are often used to assess a game's success.

These usually take a few games to settle, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Steam's count will clear 500,000 players. Those slightly lower reviews and the alternative genre setup will be felt, but clearly Nightreign is likely to do pretty well.

Crossplay isn't a factor I personally have to worry about - my gaming friends are pretty locked in on PC thanks to a decade of playing League of Legends. That has the double benefit of meaning that there's nothing Nightreign can throw at me that will phase me - I am numb to the pain of existence.

Nevertheless, I won't be diving in this week. While the trio is willing, one of us is attending a family wedding, and won't be here for launch. Which means that I can sit by and watch the potential chaos of server issues and day one (two?) updates from relative safety. What did I just say about silver linings?

With now less than 80 minutes until the PC launch, I do have another bit of housekeeping that feels like it'll be particularly relevant to anyone trying to jump into Nightreign straight away.

The answer to 'Is Elden Ring Nightreign crossplay?' is a resounding no. If you want to play with friends, you'll need to be on the same platform to make that happen. We've known this since the beta, but it means that if you're on PlayStation, you can only play with other PS4 or PS5 players. Same goes for PC and Xbox.

The slight silver lining is that there is cross-gen support. You can play with your friends on Xbox One or PS4, even if you yourself are playing on a modern-gen console.

Personally, I think that's a little odd. Crossplay has become an increasingly important part of modern gaming, but we're now comfortably into the fifth year of this console generation, and I personally don't know how much longer we're going to be getting games that come out across both the current and last-gen machines. For FromSoft to be taking up that banner, but leaving crossplay behind, feels like a strange decision.

To take a brief step back, I do want it on record that when I wrote about knowing nothing about the Revenant, that last character trailer was yet to drop. I did say that it felt Bandai and FromSoft were leaving it a little late to show her off though, so perhaps you have me to thank for that trailer showing up.

If you'd like to celebrate (and perhaps help kill nearly two of those remaining minutes), then I can certainly help with that, because Bandai Namco US has come up with a celebratory drone show to make Nightreign's release. This is the kind of marketing stunt you can pull off if you've got Elden Ring money, folks - enough that you can recreate Sites of Grace and various battle scenes with a bunch of flying robots.

Honestly, I'm just happy that my boy Ironeye got a moment to shine.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | "We Rise" Drone Show - YouTube

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With that, we're now t-minus 90 minutes out from the launch of Elden Ring Nightreign (on PC at least). It's getting closer!

We also have a new, extended interview with Nightreign director Junya Ishizaki.

Ishizaki discussed the experimental nature of the project within FromSoftware, as well as how the studio's design philosophy is shaping its plans during the abrupt multiplayer-focused arc started by Nightreign and affirmed by The Duskbloods.

Hi, esteemed colleague speaking. I'd like to welcome you officially to the day the Revenant class becomes very clear – despite what some other people may have told you about mystery.

While the Revenant character has indeed stay hidden for longer than Nightreign's other seven classes, FromSoftware has now truly introduced the vengeful spirit with both a character trailer and some new gameplay.

"Born of sorrow, shaped by the Night," says the former's video description. "When vengeance stirs, the dead rise in answer."

The videos demonstrate how Revenant uses necromancy as her passive skill, making it so there's a chance downed enemies will resurrect as allies. But there's icing on her powers: using her sharp nails to pluck her lyre, the Revenant can use the Summon Spirit character skill to more strategically summon three different spirits, too.

Meanwhile, the Revenant's ultimate ability, Immortal March, takes her necromancy to another level, allowing her to revive allies in a near-death state and imbue living allies with immortality for a limited time. You don't want to mess with this doll.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Revenant Character Gameplay Reveal - YouTube

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With that roster of classes complete, I'm going to take a break, but my esteemed colleagues will be on hand to keep the Nightreign info coming for the next couple of hours. I'll be back before launch though, so don't dive in without me!

Finally, there's the Executor. This remains Nightreign's most enigmatic character, who we've had to piece together details about thanks to their appearance in gameplay trailers - but there's really not much to go on. A glowing golden katana certainly lends a certain something to their aesthetic, but beyond the idea that they've got an empowered attack setup, I've really got nothing left to tell you. Sorry!

Let's start with the Revenant, a character whose very name remained something of a mystery for quite some time. We did get a look at them in a recent trailer, however, revealing a pale woman playing what appears to be a lyre.

That didn't give us much concrete information, but we've managed to glean a little from elsewhere. There's no sense of stats, but director Junnta Ishizaki described a character who can command their own Spirit Ash, suggesting that there's a strong summoning focus to the Revenant's build. Add to that their apparent ability (as interpreted by the community, at least) to resurrect allies, and you've certainly got a full skill-set starting to come together.

Obviously, much of this is just guess-work for now, but the name 'Revenant' does obviously imply a character based around rising from the dead. But as fans of Leonardo DiCaprio's 2015 Oscar-winning performance, you'd already know that, right?

Which brings us all the way back around to the Revenant, and her equally mysterious friend the Executor. Neither of these two classes have had their character trailers released by FromSoft or Bandai (who are cutting it a bit fine with less than four hours until launch), so while we've been able to gather some information about them, it's not as clear-cut as it is for the other six classes.

That brings us to the last Elden Ring Nightreign class I can tell you anything about definitively. The Raider, like the Ironeye, is yet to reveal his stats, but suffice to say he's a hefty barbarian, so that means he probably comes with plenty of HP and a beefy sword arm to boot.

His skill is Retaliate, which allows him to deal one massive punch, and synergizes with his passive, that prevents him from being knocked down while he's winding up for that massive haymaker. The ultimate pulls a giant tombstone from the earth, dealing AoE damage to foes and helping out nearby allies. It's a slightly gothic twist on an otherwise pretty 'route one' character, but I'm not complaining.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Raider Character Trailer - YouTube

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Now we come to the Elden ring Nightreign class that might actually be my jam. I do love a bit of archery, and while I wouldn't normally build a Dark Souls or Elden Ring run around it, with a couple of allies at my side it does sound as though it'll be more viable than normal. Enter the Ironeye.

We're lacking on the exact details for now, so perhaps they'll be too squishy to really work, but with increased loot drops, the ability to mark enemies to create a temporary weak point, and finally a huge magic arrow to fire at the real big bads, I do very much like the sound of them. For now, however, all we have to go on is their character trailer.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Ironeye Character Trailer - YouTube

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Next up is Duchess, who's a high-risk, high-reward glass cannon melee character. The big change here is that a roly-poly is apparently beneath Her Grace, who quicksteps, Bloodborne-style, rather than throwing herself in the dirt. That makes her very agile, which should help account for her reduced HP.

Her DPS can shoot up thanks to her Restage skill, which repeats any instance of damage dealt to an enemy, presumably making any backstabs doubly effective. And those should be easy to pull off, thanks to an ultimate that makes both the Duchess and her nearby allies invisible for a brief time. And what makes that even more powerful is that you're not revealed when dealing damage, allowing for some impressive setup.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Duchess Character Trailer - YouTube

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Next up is the class I'm almost certain to not play. The years have proven to me that I am not a soulslike spellcaster, and as such the Recluse just does not seem my jam. There's plenty of FP on offer to help sling those spells, but almost no HP to speak of. Add to that an Ultimate that offers lifesteal and a a passive/skill combo that seems somewhat 'feast or famine', and I'm pretty sure that this is not the class for me.

You Ranni sickos, though, you might be well catered to.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Recluse Character Trailer - YouTube

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Beyond that, there's the Guardian, who one of our colleagues has referred to as an "eagle man." To be fair, their spot on, since Guardian bears a striking resemblance to Sam from The Muppets. Putting aside his presumably hollow bones, he functions as a tank, with a shield that lets you brace for certain attacks.

Those wings do come into use, with the ability create whirlwinds that should scatter smaller foes, or to leap into the air before crashing down with his ultimate. Adding to that tank archetype is the fact that you'll create a protective area when you land, making it sound as though Guardian is a helpful pick in case of massive, hard-to-dodge area attacks.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | GUARDIAN Character Trailer - YouTube

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Let's start with Wylder. A relatively standard knight character archetype, his stats are decent across the board. One trick he's got up his sleeve, however, is the ability to cheat death once, which seems particularly handy if you can make it all the way to the final boss without having been knocked yet.

Also, he's pimped out with a grappling hook, which is always good news, and while you might think you'd build him with a standard sword and shield, his ultimate puts some gunpowder into a wrist-mounted crossbow. He might be a pretty standard fit for FromSoft's classical medieval fantasy, but he's got some style with it.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Wylder Character Gameplay Reveal - YouTube

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Touching on the Revenant makes me think it's time for a quick run-down of the Elden Ring Nightreign classes. There are eight in total, and while we don't know all that much about the Revenant or the Executor, FromSoftware and publisher Bandai have been busy offering us a rundown of the other half-dozen over the past few weeks. Let's dive in, shall we?

That said, there does appear to be at least one other, slightly less-violent way to resurrect your teammates. Discussion on Reddit suggests that one of Elden Ring Nightreign's eight classes does it for you - the ultimate ability of the Revenant class appears to bring downed allies back to their feet.

Exactly how this works alongside the summons that make up the rest of the Revenant's kit, or how much health it grants your newly-refreshed teammates, remains to be seen. But at least you don't have to thwack your bad and naughty allies to get them back in the fight.

Revenant's ultimate revives fallen companions instantly from r/Nightreign

So I've touched on team wipes, and on juggling aggro, which brings me to potentially the weirdest aspect of Nightreign that I've seen so far - revives. If your ally's health is reduced to 0, they'll be knocked, left in a state where they're crawling along the floor akin to the downed state that you'll likely have seen in battle royales - Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, and Warzone all feature their own take on that idea.

But how do you bring them back? Easy - just absolutely whale on them in their weakened state. As you can see from the Tiktok below, you need to damage your allies to revive them, whether that be by whacking them with a sword, impaling them with a spear, or apparently by shooting them in the butt with multiple arrows.

@spectrexgaming

♬ Le Monde - From Talk to Me - Richard Carter

One thing I think it's important to point out, however, is that if you do thing you're jumping into Nightreign on your own, you're likely to have your work cut out for you. Feedback from the reviews suggests that while the game will let you do it, you'll find it very difficult.

Partly, that's because Nightreign's bosses are balanced around three players all attacking them at once, so they've probably got triple the HP you might expect. Partly, it's because juggling aggro is an important part of the game, and if there are no other jugglers juggling, you're gonna take every hit they have to throw at you. And partly, it's because time is of the essence - you've only got so long to get the best loot, and if there's only one of you, you've covering a third of the ground you're supposed to.

It's possible, and there'll probably be players who smash through the game solo in no time at all - I know these Souls sickos and what they get up to - but I don't think it's a challenge for the faint-hearted.

Now, while you won't be able to only play with your one true bestie right at launch, that might come along in future. Ishizaki did admit that FromSoftware "kind of overlooked and neglected the duos aspect" of Nightreign. That's not likely to help you right now, but you can at least take some solace in the knowledge that the team is considering adding it as a feature for "post-launch support."

One thing I touched on earlier but feel might bear repeating before we all get to dive in is the fact that Elden Ring Nightreign can only be played in two configurations. While the answer to can you play Elden Ring Nightreign solo is a pretty firm yes (although with a major 'but' that I'll get into shortly), the game is primarily balanced around playing in trios. so that's a yes to one player, and a yes to three players, but confusingly a no to two players - right now, that's not an option.

Elsewhere, Ishizaki discussed why Dark Souls bosses have been showing up all through Nightreign's trailers. If you're wondering, it's because when he and the team started to experiment with the idea of pulling creatures back into the Lands Between, they asked why it couldn't extend to a different universe.

"As Nightreign was an offshoot of that world, we wanted to really embrace this aspect, this feeling of characters being summoned from all corners of of this more expansive world, and being brought in from these different areas and these different times and places. So this is something where we felt, well, why don't we extend that a little bit to the Dark Souls series as well? We thought that that would be a fun fit."

Anyway, back to the programming that I had roughly scheduled out before FromSoftware decided to drop a patch for a game that isn't out yet. We've been speaking to Elden Ring Nightreign's director, and I'm here to tell you what he told us.

First up, you probably don't need to worry about Bleed builds running rampant over Nightreign. True, they were crazy strong during Elden Ring's launch, and true, they caused their fair share of issues during the Nightreign network test, but Ishizaki acknowledges that they were "way too strong" back then, so it's already nerfed them, along with Frost builds. I don't think that was in the 1.01 patch, however, as it sounds as though the team has known that these builds were overtuned for a while, and it's already taken appropriate action.

Elsewhere, we've got a slightly more in-depth rundown of those PC comments. While Nightreign looks like it could be queuing up to join the ranks of the last few years' dodgy PC ports, it's worth remembering that FromSoftware has always had a few issues with getting Windows working properly. That might be a little alarming right now, but it does seem like it's been getting better over recent years. But yeah, maybe keep an eye on those drivers.

Our resident FromSoft expert has cast his eye over the Elden Ring Nightreign patch 1.01 notes, and he's about as baffled as I am. Suffice to say, unless you're rocking one of those fancy 50-series cards, there's really not a lot here in the way of specifics. And there probably won't be, at least not from FromSoftware themselves - I'd hazard a guess that we'll be waiting for the dataminers to help work out what Nightreign 1.0 might have looked like.

The one specific that we do have from those patch notes is some details on PC troubleshooting. FromSoftware is warning that if you're not able to start the game properly, you should verify your game files on Steam. There might also be issues with frame rate drops on PCs using "the latest graphics cards." Presumably that's a problem limited to Nvidia's 50-series cards or their AMD equivalents, though the devs don't make that clear.

What they do say is that they're "investigating the cause" of the drops, and that if you do find yourself having problems, you should consider dropping your graphics settings and lowering the screen resolution, and then make sure you've got the latest graphics card drivers installed.

Now, sometimes, running this live coverage of a game's launch can be a matter of managing hype, and making sure players have access to as much information about a game's release as possible. Not so with Nightreign, apparently, which just got its first patch, hours before it actually comes out.

Bandai just rolled out Elden Ring: Nightreign patch 1.01, approximately nine hours before the game actually launches. Our take on those patch notes is on its way, but suffice to say that the devs are keeping their changes under wraps with this early update. There are actual notes, but they're pretty generic. We're talking 'bug fixes' and 'balance adjustments' rather than anything specific.

What does interest me is the line "improved handling of playable characters." That reads to me as being quite relevant to the player happiness and comfort that Ishizaki was referring to in our interview.

Now, there is an interesting bit in that particular section of our conversation with Ishizaki that I'm interested in focusing in on. Specifically, it's the bit where he ways that FromSoft "really tries to tweak things until the last minute. We're busy fine-tuning, getting the most out of any single session. We want players to feel happy and comfortable in each session, so we're really trying to get that player comfort and that play feel just really fine-tuned until the very end."

Now, that's all mostly fine, but there's a specific sentence that always raises an eyebrow: "happy and comfortable," he says, about an Elden Ring game. I get what he's going for in terms of overall player satisfaction, but perhaps those weren't exactly the words he meant to use.

Ok, lunch procured, and I am replenished as though by the finest Estus (I know, I know, it's Crimson Tears in Elden Ring, but it didn't fit as well).

Sticking with Junya Ishizaki, he also gave us some insight as to what his team is likely feeling in the run-up to release. "It's equal parts nerves and excitement," he revealed, outlining the fact that he's keen to see just what the community makes of this new take on Elden Ring. He also explained that FromSoftware will be focusing on two specific things all the way up to launch - balance is key, obviously, but so is player-feel. The team will be tightening those up right up until launch, and probably beyond.

Right now at GamesRadar+, we're preparing ourselves for Nightreign's release by having a hearty lunch. Gotta fuel up, right? We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, you can feast your eyes on this new Elden Ring Nightreign trailer which features none other than Bring Me to Life from Evanescence, for some reason. I feel like I'm back on YouTube in the 2000s, in the best way possible.

And if connection issues do happen? Well, in that same aforementioned interview, director Junya Ishizaki also tells us that even in a "worst case" scenario, the devs "want players to be able to keep playing," and "don't want them to just get kicked out."

He explains: "We want them to be able to keep playing in their own world, for players to reconnect. We're also looking at matchmaking, not just using a password system like in our previous titles, but looking at ways that players can pool and matchmake together in terms of progression and what they have available to them.

"These are things that are taken for granted in the multiplayer gaming sphere, and so we're trying to incorporate as many of these as possible and improve our multiplayer game."

Fingers crossed we won't be running into too many issues, then.

Anyway, as we get closer to Nightreign's launch, we also have to hope that the servers will be able to handle the flurry of players who'll inevitably descend on the game all at once. Thankfully, it sounds like the devs have been doing their best to make sure this won't be a problem, as we spoke to director Junya Ishizaki about how FromSoftware has prepared the way for the multiplayer-focused game.

"There are, of course, some areas to the infrastructure and the network systems that we are looking at again, in terms of Nightreign being a multiplayer-focused title," Ishizaki told us via interpreter.

"One area, in particular, is each session being roughly 40 minutes or so, 30 to 40-minute sessions, so making sure that the infrastructure is robust enough to support that, at the very least, is something that we're looking at. But also incorporating safety measures as well."

I do really think it's worth putting that score in perspective. Granted, this might be the lowest-scored FromSoftware game since 2018's little-known VR exclusive Deracine, but elsewhere it's been hit after hit.

Elden Ring scored 96. Shadow of the Erdtree wasn't far off. Armored Core 6 boasts a mid-80s score, with Sekiro a few points above. Elsewhere, the lowest score of a mainline Soulsborne release is 85 (even if there were some duds among the Dark Souls DLCs). Nightreign might have stumbled slightly, but it only really did so while chasing the legacies of gaming's equivalent of Olympic champions.

That review seems to have roughly been matched across the board - as of yesterday, the Elden Ring: Nightreign Metacritic score was sitting at a respectable 78. It's not the highest score that FromSoft has achieved over recent years by any stretch, but then this is a studio that's been on an almost generational run of form since Dark Souls in 2011, and even this rare outlier is still a result of substantial critical acclaim.

If you want to know the last time the studio hit on a score of 78 exactly, however, you'll be looking back a long way. It did so twice in quick succession in 2000 - once with Armored Core 2, and once with The Adventures of Cookie and Cream. If that latter doesn't sound much like a FromSoft game, it's because it isn't - in fact, it's a couch co-op platformer that appears to have been the studio's answer to Crash Bandicoot. They contain multitudes, you know?

The Adventures of Cookie & Cream - Gameplay PS2 HD 720P - YouTube

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I'm able to give something of an inside track on how Elden Ring: Nightreign is likely to feel, because press have had their hands on the game over the past couple of weeks. If you want to get a full run-down of exactly what we thought, you can check out our Elden Ring: Nightreign review, in which Will Sawyer scored the game 3.5 stars out of a possible five.

For a little more detail right here and now, here's how Will summed up:

"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."

To give you a slightly better sense of what that actually looks like, you can check out the reveal trailer at the top of the blog, from Elden Ring: Nightreign's original announcement. However, if you want an even closer look, it's worth checking out FromSoft's official Nightreign launch trailer, which dropped yesterday to herald the upcoming release.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | Official Launch Trailer - YouTube

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First things first: What exactly is Elden Ring: Nightreign? It might sound like a silly question this close to launch, but it's worth acknowledging that this is going to feel like a very different game, even for those of us who've played multiple FromSoftware games in the past. That's because Nightreign is a multiplayer-focused, roguelike twist on the traditional soulslike formula that the studio is best known for.

That does mean that you'll be dealing with extremely punishing combat, massive boss fights, and probably plenty of dodge-rolling. What it also means, however, is that you'll probably want to be playing with two friends - Nightreign is a three-player game, and while it can be played solo (if you're looking for a real punishment), it doesn't support two-player squads at the moment.

It's also permadeath - if your whole team is wiped at any point during its three-day cycle, you'll be starting from scratch, all the way from the beginning. And when I say 'the beginning', I meant it - you'll be right back to the character select screen, and any loot you gathered on your previous attempt will be lost.

That's where Nightreign's final twist comes from. At the start of each game, you'll be seeking out the best loot you can find, running through the map to develop a new build on the fly every time. That's a staple of the roguelike genre, but it's also got a touch of the battle royale to it, especially when you discover that the map shrinks over time, pushing you towards Nightreign's final showdown at the end of its third in-game day. It's only if you can beat that final boss that you'll be declared victorious, and you'll have to do it on your first try - remember, if you wipe, you're starting from scratch, and who knows how long it'll be before you reach that particular boss again?