When Elden Ring: NightReign was first revealed at The Game Awards, it was certainly unexpected to say the least. It feels incredibly odd for a studio like FromSoftware to follow recent gaming trends. After all, one of the most-prominent words in gaming nowadays - Soulslike - comes from developers and publishers hoping they can recreate even a hint of the outstanding formula that turned this studio into a household name and everything it creates into a title you can't help but check out. So, to see it adopt roguelike elements and a battle royale-like drop system on a map that also features a storm closing around you. Well, it just seemed unnecessary for a studio that has found such great success following its own path.
However, instead of reading like a desperate attempt for a studio to connect with another audience, Elden Ring: NeightReign instead came across as FromSoftware experimenting with its formula. Pushing a boundary to see how successful it is in a different format. NightReign - a roguelike taking place in an alternate universe to Elden Ring - is the result of that, and it is a lot of fun.
NightReign takes the exploration and combat of Elden Ring and condenses it into an experience that can be completed in around 45 mins to an hour. There are two exploration phases, in which you go around the map gathering Runes to level up, weapons that can help you against the enemies and bosses you find, and upgrades to your flask before the storm closes around you and you have to face a boss at the point of the map it settles at. You face two bosses of increasing difficulty at the end of each exploration phase, before having one final chance to upgrade your character, weapons, and buy consumables before you face a ridiculous final boss.
The exploration phases are called Days, and when Night falls the boss appears, with the final boss being your Lord of Night. Something that comes across immediately in Elden Ring: NightReign is just how quick it is. You've only got 15 minutes to grab as much as you can in each day, and while you can plan your route between the two days as the map doesn't change after you fight your first boss, you will want to go in with a plan as soon as you drop into the map, something that my team and I managed to work out with solid communication, but it did take time. For the Elden Ring player who loved being able to go out into the world and build up their character before taking on a boss, you won't find any of the free time to do that here.
This speed and streamlined nature also applies to the way you can interact with the game, though. A dedicated sprint button has been added; you can wall jump and parkour your way up cliffs, and even use spirit springs by yourself, essentially acting as your own version of Torrent. Moreover, the levelling has been really condensed, as each time you level up you'll get a bonus to each of your stats. This means that while you might not have the time to go off and farm for your build, you instead get to focus primarily on the more fun elements like fighting and picking which weapons you want to use.
Your attributes, build, and play style largely come down to the character you play as. In our build, we had four characters to choose from, the poster boy and all-rounder Wylder, the quick and agile Duchess, the tanky Guardian, and the de-facto mage Recluse. Each character has its own unique passive, such as Wylder dodging the first instance of damage he takes automatically, and Guardian being able to hunker down with a shield, as well as an active ability and ultimate. These abilities range from largely useless, such as Wylder's grappling hook, to absolutely broken such as Duchess' ability to force an enemy to retake the last lot of damage they took, resulting in serious amounts of burst damage. The ultimates are all pretty strong. Wylder blasts enemies with the Sekiro Flame Vent, Guardian flies up into the air before slamming the ground, Duchess turns your team invisible, and Recluse marks an enemy so each time they're hit you and your team restore HP and FP.
Weirdly enough, Wylder was the only character with a traditional dodge roll. The rest of the characters all just sidestepped enemy attacks. They had invincibility frames, but it seems odd that only one character has the Soulsborne series' most-iconic move. There are eight characters in total, each with their own questline, too, which means we're not just playing this for the pride of beating the bosses, and there will be a story, however loose it feels in a map that's apparently randomly generated.
I say apparently because in our time with the game, we were only given two different spawn points, which we started to understand gave us a certain map layout and set of bosses. Each final boss will allegedly cover its own biome, but rather than be entirely randomly generated, it seems you will begin to know what you're facing and what you can do the more you play in a map. This is a bit of a double-edged sword, as while it means you can strategize increasingly in your attempts as you learn the map layout, it means there's not much that feels fresh. The map we played itself didn't feel unique, from the enemies populating it to the environment itself, which looked like a jumbled up version of Limgrave. The reuse of past assets is nothing new for FromSoftware, but as so many of them come from Elden Ring, it feels particularly blatant. The same is true for your weapons, but at the same time it's quite exciting to be able to simply just pick up a weapon and wield it so long as you're of a high enough level. You don't need to map out your abilities nor respec at any point, and so you can go from a massive hammer to a tiny dagger within the span of a few minutes. Weapons also have buffs which stack on your character even if you're not wielding them, which stops the extras from just gathering dust in your inventory.
My biggest question regarding this game after playing it is for how long will it be enjoyable? Elden Ring: NightReign relies a lot on old material, and while the new is fun, it's not going to be as widely accessible as Elden Ring. The game is hard, with the challenge being essentially impossible for a single player and rough for a team of three. As far as we could tell, the only rewards you get after each run are a few Relics, which give your characters a variety of buffs, and a mysterious, unusable currency called Murk, which we imagine ties into the Relics. Upon inspection of some Relics, it seems you can change your starting equipment, although we couldn't. But, you can't change armour, and it seems largely the point of the game is to beat the next boss over and over until you've defeated all eight. Of course, there are the character quests to explore as well, but we defeated the final boss - a three-headed hellhound with a sword on a chain - twice in our time with the game, which then sort of leaves you feeling purposeless.
FromSoftware does not want this title to have live-service elements, so perhaps once you're done, that's just it, but for someone who might not be able to beat a final boss, it does make you question why they would keep playing, when each run will put them back at square one. Also, there's the question of prolonged enjoyability. It's easy to get wrapped up in the experience when you're all sitting next to each other in one big LAN party, and your teammate shows you his shaking hand when you finally get that first victory. But, online, or with random players, it might be less impactful.
Still, I played Elden Ring: NightReign for seven hours. Seven hours. And at the end of it, if you'd asked me if I wanted to play some more, I would have said yes. It's a slimmer, faster Elden Ring experience, that might borrow a little more than it should, but it's worth remembering we played the network test build, and if we compare it to the test of Elden Ring's base game, we are in for an experience way, way larger. I've gone on and on in this preview, trying to explain as much as I can while also giving opinions, but the word count should show that this is more than just a quick cash grab for the Elden Ring IP, and is so far a really fun experience.