Elden Ring: Nightreign

For many people, the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring are synonymous with bulky knights and methodical combat that involves studying enemy attack patterns and looking for openings to counterattack. Bloodborne took the Souls gameplay in a more aggressive direction by introducing faster dodging and the ability to regain lost life through attacks, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice bet the farm on a combat system that can only be mastered through aggression. In Elden Ring: Nightreign, FromSoftware's Elden Ring spinoff and multiplayer instalment, aggression is back, albeit a very different kind...

Nightreign's roguelike-inspired gameplay loop rewards smart planning and prioritisation, and aggressive time management is a prerequisite for getting through an expedition in one piece. An expedition takes place over three days, the first two of which (roughly 15 to 20 minutes each) are spent exploring and farming until a toxic rain, in true Fortnite fashion, shrinks the map and initiates a boss fight. The third and final day consists entirely of a nail-biting battle against one of eight super bosses called Nightlords. At the start of each expedition, you and two other players choose one of eight predefined classes, the Nightfarers, to play as (more on them in a moment), and then you're dropped into Limveld, an alternate version of the Limgrave area from the main game, made up of a series of randomised locations.

There will be small fortresses, larger castles, churches, tunnels, camps, arenas, mysterious weather phenomena, and other landmarks to navigate. At first, it will feel confusing to figure out where to go (or rather sprint) and in what order because the map is littered with small icons that are hard to distinguish from each other. If you're playing with random players, your primary way of communicating will be to place pins on the map. It's not a very elegant system, partly because the map is visually cluttered, but also because there will usually be several pins active at the same time, and it's hard to agree on the order in which to seek them out when you can't talk to each other.

It also takes some time to figure out what the different locations reward you with, and this is where knowledge of the Elden Ring world and broader design language will give players an immediate advantage. For example, veterans will quickly realise that the small churches with Marika statues reward you with an extra bottle charge, tunnels lead to smithing stones to upgrade weapons, and the puzzles provide powerful gear.

Most of the weapons and items are taken directly from Elden Ring, but even as a veteran who has spent well over 100 hours on the main game, I had to scrutinise certain items to find out that they provide damage mitigation and increased stamina recovery, for example. It made me wonder if Elden Ring's deliberately obscure design language would be too illogical for newcomers and might not be suitable for this type of game, where time utilisation is paramount and there is no room for ambiguity. Maybe a weapon should just be called a weapon, not an "armament" or some fancy word like that.

Fortunately, certain aspects of Elden Ring's gameplay have been streamlined considerably. For example, stats are automatically allocated when the game's XP, runes, are redeemed at the familiar golden sites of grace. And when you pick up a new weapon - ahem, armament - a simple green up or red down arrow indicates whether it will be an upgrade or downgrade from your current one, without having to deal with the underlying scaling system. And while we're on the subject of weapons, a colour indicates how powerful and rare they are, as we know from MMO games like World of Warcraft. As a seasoned Elden Ring player, it's fun to see which weapons from that game FromSoftware considers the most "epic" and "legendary".

Nightreign being an Elden Ring spinoff also means that the vast majority of enemies and bosses you'll encounter are repeats, albeit many of them with updated and more aggressive move sets. Thankfully, the eight Nightlords are original creations, and while Elden Ring has a huge - and largely excellent - catalogue of enemies to draw from, I miss new additions that aren't just call-backs to the developer's previous games. These undeniably give the game a feeling of being a "FromSoftware greatest hits" collection, and this feeling ends up being a double-edged sword that on the one hand gives rise to some cool fan-service moments (good to see you again, Nameless King!), but also makes the game world and lore hard to take seriously. The story is more of an afterthought here than ever, and while it's fun enough to learn a bit about the various Nightfarers' backgrounds, reading descriptions of weapons and other objects to piece together a narrative has never been less appealing.

Where Nightreign differs from Elden Ring in particular is in the aforementioned gameplay loop and predefined classes. The eight Nightfarers all have excellent visual design and equally excellent combat mechanics. At first glance, the classes fulfil various traditional RPG and MMO roles. For example, it seems obvious that the Guardian, a humanoid eagle with a huge shield in one hand and a spear in the other, should act as a tank, while the lightning-fast Duchess should deal heavy damage with her two knives, and the mage Recluse or archer Ironeye ditto from a distance. And while I'd recommend a diverse team composition at the start, it's not a requirement; there's nothing to stop you and your friends from all three playing the same class.

I'm a simple man. I see a character with bulging arms and a big bonkstick and quickly forget all about magic, bows, and dexterity-based weapons. That's why Raider, a pumped-up pirate with a colossal two-handed axe, quickly became my favourite. His unique Character Skill, "retaliate", causes him to take less damage while throwing hands that inflict high stance damage. And his Ultimate Art, "Totem Stela", causes a stone pillar to shoot up from the ground and damage surrounding enemies, while also utilising it as cover or a safe platform to shoot a bow or cast spells from. Another melee-orientated Nightfarer, Wylder, the game's poster boy, can use his grappling hook to pull enemies towards him or himself against them, and the eagle Guardian can dive from the sky to revive fallen Nightfarers in a wide radius. All classes are immune to fall damage, can sprint and jump up walls, making it liberatingly easy to cross great distances and move quickly from one landmark to another.

Utilising the passive and active abilities of the different classes is crucial against bosses, especially the fearsome Nightlords. Elden Ring and its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree offered some very challenging bosses with almost continuous attack patterns requiring lightning fast reflexes, and that controversial design philosophy is taken to extremes in Nightreign. In this game, however, it is a necessity that bosses are extremely agile, have huge life bars and deal almost exclusively AoE attacks, otherwise three players could easily overwhelm them. The demonic three-headed dog, Gladius, conjures pillars of fire, swings a giant sword wide with a chain, and splits itself into three smaller dogs, while the giant ice dragon, Caligo, rains icicles from the sky and spews icy winds. It takes careful coordination and utilisation of Ultimate Arts and consumables to take down these beasts, but it's a great feeling when you succeed.

At least the first time. Whether the motivation to take them down over and over again will continue to be there, I dare not predict. I think eight Nightlords and Nightfarers is a solid selection at launch, but I think it's crucial that FromSoftware quickly adds new content to the game to ensure its long-term survival. Most importantly, new maps are being added. I was already sick of Limgrave in Elden Ring, so it was a bit of a gut punch to realise that Nightreign takes place almost entirely in a randomly generated version of it. Other environments do appear in the form of the so-called "Shifting Earth" events, where a defined area of Limveld is transformed into a snow mountain or a lava crater with separate enemies and targets, but they don't offer the variety I expected when the main game has so many beautiful environments to draw from. Adding new maps quickly after launch should be the developers' top priority in my opinion.

As someone who loves big, sprawling single-player games and was quick to condemn FromSoftware's new multiplayer focus, I am quite pleasantly surprised by Nightreign. I honestly had a blast with the game and can easily see myself returning again and again, provided the developers manage to add new content to the game regularly. Nightreign is, in my opinion, a highly successful experiment at a fair price, and while there are some obvious kinks to iron out - the lack of new enemies and maps other than Limveld being the most acute - the gameplay foundation is rock solid, and that's what matters most. However, I was lucky enough to play alongside my brother and Gamereactor's own Ketil Skotte during the review period, and to be honest, I don't know if I would recommend the game to those without friends or family to play with. Being able to communicate properly is a prerequisite for having fun in Nightreign, which is why it's a shame that the game doesn't support crossplay. Adding this as soon as possible after launch should actually be the developer's top priority.