Elden Ring Nightreign Review
Elden Ring is one of my favourite games ever, so a new multiplayer focused title using many of the same systems should be an easy layup, right? Unfortunately, some surprising issues make the generally fun experience a lot more frustrating than it needs to be.
All FromSoft games are known for having a high bar for entry and a steep learning curve, but I honestly think Elden Ring Nightreign takes the cake. Teaming up in groups of three players, you are dropped onto a randomly generated map of Limgrave. Your task is to level up, find weapons, items, and flasks as quickly as possible, in order to become strong enough to take down various bosses. However the clock is ticking as the map will shrink over time, and eventually funnel you towards those boss fights.
Each run can take upwards of 45 minutes if you make it all the way to the final fight. Of course, I’ve had matches where we don’t even make it past 15 minutes before getting wiped. The run is broken up into 3 days, with the third day being the final fight. Each day you have about 15 minutes total to explore, before ending the day with a boss fight. The cycle repeats for the second day, and if you survive you’ll get to face off against your target.
In some ways, each run feels like the walk back to a boss fight. You spend all your time playing for one specific purpose, beating the boss. Sometimes along the way, you know you’ve messed up, that your chances of victory are slim to none, but there isn’t any way to quit the run without penalty. So instead you carry on your death march, and that can make for some pretty frustrating runs.
Like many FromSoft games, this frustration makes the victory all the sweeter, but you didn’t have to engage with other players online unless you felt like it. I’ve had players disconnect 5 minutes into a run, and I’ve been stuck seeing it through to the end. The only ways to communicate with other players online is the ping system, marking various locations. There is no voice chat, and it really makes for some frustrating moments.
I’ve been mid boss fight when the map begins to shrink. I glance at the boss’ health and know there’s no way we’ll make it in time. We should cut our losses and run to safety, but I have no way to communicate this with my team. Do I just leave them? If they die they’ll lose levels, which puts the whole team at a disadvantage for future fights. So instead, I stay and fight, and as the map shrinks over our team, making us lose health until we perish, I know we’ve lost our run.
Now, as much as there are plenty of unnecessary pain points to this experience, I still find myself coming back. Am I a glutton for punishment? Perhaps, I like FromSoft games after all, but when the experience clicks, it can really feel great.
The new character classes are fun to play, and each feel distinct, with their own weapon preferences, skills, and playstyles. Do I want to play the Revenant, summoning various spirits while slinging spells and supporting my team? Or do I want to play the Duchess, a sneaky spellblade who can reapply damage done by myself and my teammates? It all scratches such a satisfying itch in my brain.
In about 18 hours of playtime, I’ve had 5 successful runs. More than half my playtime has ended in failure. In FromSoft games, knowledge is power, but given the random nature of what might drop, what bosses show up, what teammates I get, there’s only so much you can plan for. Relics, equipable items you get after each run, should bridge the gap here, and help me feel some kind of overall progress, but these really fall short.
The bonuses they give often feel inconsequential, and the combination of effects is random, so even if one effect is useful for one character, the next effect might have no bearing at all. You can’t adjust your starting equipment at all, other than with some relic effects, so overall progression feels little to non-existent.
It’s a solid foundation for a game, but there are far too many areas of friction that really muddle the experience. There’s enough randomness that not being able to communicate with other players really hurts the gameplay. The runs are difficult and long enough that even small mistakes can make nearly an hour of your time feel wasted.
Even if my team isn’t able to beat the boss, if I felt like we were on the same page, and making the best with what we were given, it’s a fun, frantic experience. But too many baffling decisions make a good, enjoyable run more of a rarity than the norm, and that’s really a shame. The highs are high, but the lows are all too frequent.
The missteps, a lack of cross-play, no voice chat, a poor metagame progression, almost feel so obvious I can’t believe they’re present in a modern online focused game. Once beating all the bosses, I’m not sure the replayability will be present either, at least not without future updates. The core experience is quite enjoyable, I like having defined character classes with unique playstyles. The game feels much faster than any other title, but still retains the crunchiness that makes Elden Ring so satisfying.
It’s an interesting experiment, and if I had two friends to play with, we’d probably be in for the time of our lives. As a solo player matching with random players, there’s too many things standing in the way of making it a consistently enjoyable experience. There’s enough here for me to want to start another match and see what happens, but I’d have a tough time recommending it without a long list of caveats.
