‘Elden Ring: Nightreign’ Review
Developer: FromSoftware | Platform: PS5 | Playtime and Platinum: 55:13:12 (IGT)
There was a fair amount of confusion about what Nightreign even was before release. In short, Nightreign is Elden Ring if you played in a group of 3, did one off runs like a roguelike but chose Expeditions like Monster Hunter and played in an ever shrinking map like a Battle Royale. Should it work? I’m not sure but I think it does, mostly.
Minor spoilers follow, reader discretion is advised.
Taking place in an alternate branch of the Elden Ring timeline, you play as one of 8 ‘Nightfarers’, warriors brought forth from different walks of life all tasked with fighting back the Night and with it, the eponymous Nightlord. Instead of creating your own build, the player can choose one of the 8 Nightfarers’ to take into the fray. Each of the 8 (6 at the start, two unlockable) play like a regular Elden Ring character but each has a weapon preference (Unique moves when using that weapon class), stat spread and abilities to use. If you’ve ever played a hero shooter, MMO or MOBA, you’ll know what the crack is. Take Wylder for example, the most basic character here. His passive allows him to avoid a killing blow once, his short cooldown is a grapple that pulls small enemies close or himself towards larger enemies and his ultimate is a big explosion from the gadget on his arm that damages and staggers enemies. Each different Nightfarer has different abilities but they all follow the Passive, Ability and Ultimate format. Generally speaking, solo players will benefit from Wylder, Raider, Ironeye and Executor while you may want a group for Duchess, Revenant, Guardian and Recluse. Of course you’re free to mix and match, with any character being able to use any weapon they come across but of course it’s best to play to your character’s strengths.
Rather disappointingly but perhaps looking back not all that surprising, all but the 8 end of run Nightlords (and six Souls bosses) are reused from Elden Ring. To give them their credit, there are some new combinations here such as a Demi Human Queen and Demi Human Swordsman pairing as well as a Crucible Knight and Golden Hippopotamus pairing for example (Coincidentally also concluding all the Shadow of the Erdtree content in the game) and returning bosses have brand new moves at their disposal – I don’t want to spoil anything but Tibia Mariner, Godskin Noble and ‘Grafted Monarch’ are all ones to watch. As for the Dark Souls bosses, of which there’s unfortunately only six, they’re cool to see updated but they were definitely made for easier games than this one. Even Nameless King barely ranks above moderate.
The Nightlords, 8 in total, are for the most part well worth their roughly 40 minute run backs. At the start, your only option is Gladius, Beast of Night – the three headed fire wolf from the trailers. Beating him unlocks a further six Nightlords, but only a total of 4 including Gladius need to be beaten before the final Nightlord is unlocked. There’s a good mix here, at their weakest you’ve got my third least favourite but at their best you have some easy top 5 contenders. Following the patch that made solo easier (read: less unfair), I generally prefer playing these bosses solo. Only two of the 8 seem to be designed for three people (the game’s intended group size) – Gladius splits into 3, a later boss requires coordination between multiple people. As for the rest, health and damage is boosted to be more of a challenge for the three but the age old issue remains of not being able to tell what a boss is doing since it’s attacking another player or worse yet, switches target mid attack. Each Nightlord does have a ‘phase’ where one of the three players is targeted (Symbolised by a red dot on their person) and the boss singles them out for a small period but apart from the aforementioned examples, solo seems better balanced. Of course, whether a boss is easier solo or in co-op depends on player skill, skill of the team and which character you play as.
I mentioned the 40 minute run backs and that’s because yes, Nightreign is a roguelite. To clarify, the Rogue- genre is the one in which the player goes on randomised runs. Roguelikes are harder as all you take away from a run is knowledge and mechanical skill. Rougelite’s however have an extra layer, rewards from runs that can be used in following runs – these being Relics. Each character has 3 relic slots of different colours with the chance to add new arrangements of relics. Relics come in four different colours (and 3 different sizes but I don’t think the sizes matter for anything beyond selling them for Murk, more on that in a little bit). There’s no rhyme or reason for what effects are linked to what colour so I think it’s luck of the draw to see what you have. Relic effects range from useless like spawning with a certain item in your inventory (an item you can find in your first 30 seconds of a run) to more useful things like starting weapon ashes of war and damage type differences. The best kind of relics are the ones obtained from bosses (which are on the level of Great Runes from base Elden Ring) and character specific ones earned from Remembrance Quests. Relics can be bought from the adorable Jar boy in the Roundtable Hold Hub for Murk which is the out of run currency earned from runs. Relics can also be sold for Murk.
The Shrouded Roundtable Hold is your main hub location, the place where you spend your time when not on runs. It’s based on the one seen in Elden Ring but is expanded and different in places to that one. For starters, a training arena outside that let’s you test each characters abilities under different settings as well as every weapon in the game. There’s more places to explore too which is mostly for set dressing but there are things that happen here. Defeating two Nightlords unlocks character skins, which can be bought with Murk.
So the main game takes place in Limveld, an island that takes a lot of its visual design and layout from base Elden Ring’s Limgrave. This is the only map the game has, which was a worry the community had before launch. The topography of the map itself changes though. While the central castle always remains in the same location (its inhabitants change), the camps/ruins/forts change locations as do the Churches where the player upgrades their Estus. As far as I can tell these aren’t part of any templates, like I don’t think I’ve seen the exact same layout twice but I’ve also not been actively searching for it. Each Point of Interest that has a boss also has a little elemental symbol next to it on the map to show what kind of area it is and whether it’s worth going to or not. While there’s a few different types, it becomes very easy to figure out what is what. For example, a Frenzy Camp will only ever have a Frenzied Troll as a boss. The deathblight ruins? A Wormface. Even if the rest have two options, it’s only ever going to be one of the two. Lacking boss variety also applies to the Night 1 and 2 bosses. I’m not quite sure if each Night has a pool of bosses to pull from or if it’s also diluted between expedition but you’ll see many of the same Night bosses on the same run. There’s a total 27 Night Bosses, if you got a unique boss encounter on each of the two nights across all 8 expeditions, there wouldn’t be enough for two full character runs. I’m not saying refighting bosses is bad but at present each Night has an option of like two or three bosses, that should be closer to five or six and the variation should carry on throughout.
To change up the map and keep things a bit fresher, there are events known as the Shifting Earth. There are four of these, unlocked sequentially, that alter a quarter or so of the map to a whole new biome type. These are the firey Crater, the frostbitten Mountaintops, the putrid Rotten Woods and finally the Nox themed Noklotea Hidden City. Admittedly, they’re all of a mixed bag. The only one with a unique boss is Nok but even then it’s just an Astel. The Crater is certainly the most useful, letting the player upgrade any weapon to maximum. The Mountaintops is only worth it if the player is fighting the 7th Nightlord and the Rotten Woods offers no real benefit as its reward is immunity to Scarlet Rot, which is only relevant in the Woods. I suppose it’s interesting that it becomes a requirement since the circle on Night 2 always ends in a Shifting Earth zone but your opinion on that might differ. I think each Nightlord needed their own Shifting Earth map as well as having random ones like the Rotten Woods. If not, each Shifting Earth needs a better unique boss – Astel is a good start but the rest needed similar scale bosses – a Magma Wyrm isn’t going to cut it.
Outside of dramatic map changes, there are also random events that can occur out in the world, both major and minor. Minor ones include minor map alterations, adding to the existing landscape whereas the four major ones involve Boss encounters. A recent patch has made these more common but in my experience, I’ve never had the Walking Mausoleums, Frenzy Flame Tower or double night bosses. I’ve seen the meteorite a couple times, had the Augur and Sentient Pest Raid a couple of times. Fell Omen I’ve had a handful of times but I didn’t see Equilibrious Beast until my runs in the mid 70’s.
Outside of expedition progression, there is also the Remembrance Quests. Accessed by a large book in the Roundtable Hld, each character has 8 or so chapters of backstory the player can explore. Sometimes this is just text, sometimes it’s dialogue around the Hold and sometimes it’s a unique (Unique in massive ““““ ““““““) boss encounter within the world. They’re nothing special for the most part but content is content.
I suppose this is the closest FromSoftware has come to a misstep in their Soulslike series but thankfully I reckon this one is still a win. Post launch patches have done a great job in bringing the game to a good place. As as a side project, it’s a perfect way to keep Elden Ring fans in the loop. There’s defintely some lessons that can be learnt here and applied to the next game. If you’re on the fence, give it a try. It’s different but I still think it’s worth it.
