FromSoftware's ambitious new co-op roguelike spin on Elden Ring, Elden Ring Nightreign, is out now on Windows PC and Steam, with its release on consoles just hours away. Its day one patch notes warn you might run into some framerate drops with high-end graphics cards, but for me — having played Nightreign thoroughly throughout the last two weeks for my review — it's run buttery smooth without any framerate issues whatsoever.
Sure, I'll admit I don't love that the new offshoot is locked to 60 FPS like Elden Ring itself was, and while I didn't experience any frame drops, I did run into some stutters here and there. By and large, though, it's been a great experience — certainly a better one than I had with the mainline 2022 game when it launched.
Except...there's one problem. Have a look at the image below, and see if you can figure out what it is:
If you didn't immediately realize what my beef here is when you saw the vertical black bars on either side of the image, me complaining about it in the caption probably tipped you off to the fact that I'm talking about ultrawide support. Or, to be more accurate, Elden Ring Nightreign's vexing lack of it.
Native compatibility with ultrawide aspect ratios and resolutions is something that's missing from nearly every FromSoftware game on PC, including all the Dark Souls titles, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring. The fact it was supported in 2023's Armored Core 6 was a lovely surprise that gave me hope we'd see it come to Elden Ring Nightreign when it was announced last year, but nope — we're back to the usual disappointment in 2025, and I'm tired of it.
I realize that the vast majority of PC gamers aren't in the ultrawide gang, but plenty of us are — and I can't think of a good reason for FromSoftware to continually put this restriction on players. The only thing that even comes to mind is that maybe the developer thinks it gives players an advantage or something, but a little extra peripheral vision would barely even help in third-person action RPGs like these.
Your next thought might be that it's a limitation of the studio's engine or something, but again, Armored Core 6 has ultrawide support and was built on Elden Ring's engine like Nightreign was. Plus, modders came out with ultrawide mods for Elden Ring days after its release (frustratingly, you can't use them online without getting banned since they make detectable changes to the game files), so there's clearly not a huge technical issue here.
The only conclusion I'm left to draw is that FromSoftware simply doesn't consider this a feature worth adding to its Soulsborne RPGs, and that's beyond irritating since all I want to do is look at their gorgeously crafted worlds on a wider screen. It's annoying that we're back here yet again after Armored Core 6 got my hopes up, but who knows — maybe ultrawide support will come in a future patch. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
Elden Ring Nightreign is a bold new experimental spinoff from FromSoftware that spices up the original game's Soulsborne combat with a roguelike, co-op driven twist. Though it has sizable issues like only having one map or underwhelming enemy variety, it's nevertheless going to be one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games for Souls fans craving action. It's $39.99, but you can get it for $33.99 at Newegg with the promo code XVSAVE.
