Storied action RPG developer FromSoftware has traditionally stuck to making games with more linear and straightforward level designs, with nonlinearity explored through things like Metroidvania-style connecting passages or forks in the road of progression that create branching paths. Its beloved award-winning 2022 title Elden Ring, however, traded that style for a full-fledged open-world approach — a huge departure from the norm for the studio, but one that paid off, with Elden Ring quickly rising to become the most popular and successful ARPG in FromSoftware's gameography.
Three years later, the developer is using its new property to get even more experimentative with Elden Ring Nightreign. The bold new spinoff radically remixes the "Soulsborne" gameplay formula into a co-op multiplayer roguelike, complete with distinct characters with unique skills, new and returning bosses from past FromSoftware experiences, random gear drops, and a mechanic borrowed from — of all things — the battle royale genre.
It's truly a wild and audacious release from the studio, but having played through the game throughout the last week and a half, I'm happy to say that it's proven to be a ton of fun, and an idea I'm glad FromSoftware ended up exploring. Indeed, it's a genius new way to experience the Elden Ring combat and sandbox that fans know and love — though there's one major flaw holding it back from reaching its full potential.
This review was conducted with the Windows PC version of Elden Ring Nightreign, and made possible thanks to a Steam review code provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The company did not see the contents of this review before publication.
What is Elden Ring Nightreign?
- Elden Ring Nightreign is a co-op roguelike spinoff of Elden Ring.
- The game was developed by Elden Ring's FromSoftware.
- Three players team up to hunt minibosses for upgrades and levels, then fight a main boss.
If you've been following Elden Ring Nightreign for a while, watched all of its trailers, or tried it out back in February during the network test, you probably understand its concepts and how it works already. If not, though, give this section a read before getting deeper into the review for a quick overview.
Category |
Elden Ring Nightreign |
|---|---|
Release date |
May 30, 2025 |
Developer |
FromSoftware |
Publisher |
Bandai Namco Entertainment |
Genre |
Action RPG |
Players |
3-player co-op |
Install size |
~21GB (consoles), 30GB (PC) |
Playtime |
30+ hours (all bosses and Remembrances) |
Platforms |
Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, PS5, PS4 |
Xbox Game Pass |
No |
Reviewed on |
Windows PC |
Elden Ring Nightreign is a roguelike spinoff of the mainline Elden Ring experience set in a universe parallel to it, meaning that while many of the same enemies, locations, and concepts (like the Frenzied Flame) exist in it, they have no connection to the original game and Nightreign itself isn't a prequel or sequel. Instead, it tells the story of eight brave Nightfarer warriors that have come to the Lands Between with one goal: to slay the fearsome Nightlords and vanquish the plague of Night that's befallen the realm.
Compared to the usual FromSoftware faire that's primarily played alone unless you summon, Nightreign strongly emphasizes three-player co-op in squads that are either matchmade or formed with friends. Attempts to reach and kill each Nightlord occur during 30-45 minute "Expeditions" in which you blitz through a map with shrinking playable space, defeating enemies and minibosses to get random item drops and upgrades while accruing runes (experience) you can use to level up. Then, at the end of your run, you and your allies challenge the Nightlord with the builds you've put together.
Notably, several of Elden Ring's mechanics have been completely retooled to facilitate fast-paced co-op gameplay; wearable armor, equip load, weapon stat requirements, and fall damage has all been removed, and instead of choosing the stats you improve when leveling, predetermined upgrade paths based on the Nightfarer you're playing as handle that for you. Nightfarers themselves also have unique skills and ultimate abilities that prove to be extremely valuable when used at opportune times, with all of them able to perform a faster Surge Sprint and jump up vertical surfaces (look for white paint on ledges) to quickly traverse the map.
Whether your run is successful or not, you'll earn special randomly rolled Relics you can use to give your character interesting traits in future missions (like, say, a damage boost that activates when you take damage). This is a form of permanent progression that helps you get stronger over time, and allows you to make some foundational buildcrafting decisions so you're not at the complete mercy of RNG during Expeditions. You'll also earn the Murk currency as well, which is used to purchase new combinations of Relic slots as well as character skins back at the Roundtable Hold.
Elden Ring Nightreign review: Gameplay and combat
- Elden Ring Nightreign's combat is largely the same as Elden Ring's with some notable additions.
- Nightfarer character abilities are unique, distinct, and effective, and the game's boss fights are stellar.
- However, there's only one map to play on, and overall environmental and enemy variety is lackluster.
Combat is a core pillar of every FromSoftware game — they're action RPGs, after all — but the focus on it is amplified significantly in Elden Ring Nightreign, with other elements like exploration and story delivery taking a backseat to the carnage. Whereas Elden Ring encourages you to meticulously comb through its map and carefully investigate every location you find, Nightreign wants you to zip from one enemy-filled fort to the next as quickly as possible. Defeating the minibosses within will result in either random weapon drops taken from the original game's gargantuan sandbox or special buffs that can range from simple improvements to things like stamina regeneration speed to weirder upgrades like one that creates fields of raining magic stars whenever you're walking slowly.
To that end, every major point of interest is marked on your map the second your boots hit the ground, and aside from briefly running over to church structures to get more healing flasks or Sites of Grace to refill them and mash the level up button, you should constantly be pinging them on the map, sprinting to them, and leaping into the fray with your allies. The gameplay pace feels a bit rushed and I wish it was just a touch slower, but I got used to it after my first day playing.
With various Elden Ring enemy types encounterable across runs and FromSoftware's excellent stamina-based combat mechanics present, battles in Nightreign are as engaging as any you'd expect from the legendary developer. The absence of stat requirements for weapons, though, results in some extra flavor; it's possible to play around with wacky armament combos you'd never be able to use effectively in regular Elden Ring without steep overleveling, such as power stancing two greatswords that deal different types of elemental damage (and thus, traditionally, would require differing stats).
The unique abilities of each Nightfarer also bring flair to the experience, with most enabling powerful co-op synergies. The Ironeye archer, for example, can slash foes with a dagger to mark them and make them take increased damage from everyone on the team, while the Ultimate Art of the armored bird-man Guardian sees him fly into the air before swooping down — instantly reviving downed teammates (you do this normally by hitting them) and creating a stamina-fueled shield that blocks all damage. Perhaps the most mechanically interesting character of the lot is the Executor, a high-risk, high-reward Nightfarer with a cursed sword capable of deflecting attacks Sekiro-style to stance break foes and a beastly transformation Ultimate Art that's extremely powerful in boss fights.
The process of scavenging the map and leveling up continues until night falls, with a battle royale-style circle encroaching twice throughout the day to funnel you to an arena where you'll square off against a major boss. Defeating that boss will kick off a second "day" where you do it all over again — this time with the locations of extra field minibosses revealed on your map — and fight another big boss; defeat it, and you'll then get your chance to challenge the Nightlord itself.
Bosses from Elden Ring as well as the Dark Souls games can be encountered at the end of each day; the former have been spiced up with cool moves to keep veteran players on their toes, and it's a ton of fun to fight the likes of Dark Souls 2's Smelter Demon or Dark Souls 3's Dancer of the Boreal Valley with Elden Ring's bells and whistles.
The real highlight of Nightreign's boss fights, though, are the ones against the Nightlords. There are eight of these bespoke battles in total, and all eight of them are absolutely fantastic. Not only are their full movesets very fairly telegraphed and learnable with time and effort, but they also have some creative mechanics that facilitate interesting co-op interactions or reward players greatly for mastering them. They exemplify the very best of FromSoftware's "tough, but fair" design ethos.
For example, one Nightlord can infect you with a poisonous parasite that steadily grows and can't be removed without a few smacks from an ally, and another rewards you with a ton of time to do free damage if you listen closely to directional audio to figure out where they are in a thick haze. It's also worth noting that the designs of each of these bosses are quite distinct and varied, so moving from one to the next in your runs is never monotonous.
Tragically, though, I can't say the same for the map you'll be playing through in each run. Every single Expedition takes place on the exact same map — a heavily tweaked version of Elden Ring's Limgrave called Limveld — and none of the structures in it ever get a layout change. Further, enemy camp types are sorely lacking in variety. If you go to a fort marked with a sorcery magic icon, it can only ever have a Crystillian or a pair of Battlemages as its boss. If you go to a camp that has a holy damage icon, it can only ever have Albinaurics or Oracle Envoys as its boss. And so on and so forth.
To its credit, the game tries to jazz things up with a "Shifting Earth" mechanic that can transform a chunk of your next run's map into a volcanic crater, a snowy mountaintop, a Scarlet Rot forest, or a walled city — each containing some exclusive boss fights and a special reward. It also has some world events, such as surprise invasions by hostile reflections of Nightfarers or mid-mission raids where you can choose to fight a weaker variant of a Nightlord to earn a useful power.
But while this is all appreciated, but it's not enough. There are only four Shifting Earth variations and they only affect a small part of Limveld itself, and even with the variety they bring, you can only run into a castle the exact same way and fight the exact same boss within so many times before it gets pretty dull. I really, really wish that FromSoftware would have included remixed versions of other Elden Ring maps like Caelid, Liurnia of the Lakes, or the Altus Plateau, too, or that a wider variety of structures and foes were used at the very least.
This is one of my only issues with Nightreign, but it's a huge one, and the tedium of clearing out identical points of interest on an identical map again and again and again like this is the sole reason it's not going to completely take over my life like new FromSoftware titles usually do. Despite how much I've enjoyed my time with the game, I'm not going to grind it long-term like I probably would otherwise with this repetitiveness curtailing its replayability.
I didn't touch on it much, but the aforementioned Relic system that gives you some permanent progression over the course of your playtime also feels fairly underwhelming. The upgrades they provide are very minor overall, and while I've been able to come up with a few decent combinations, I expected to have them to feel more impactful than they have been for me after dozens of hours of play.
Elden Ring Nightreign review: Story (no spoilers)
- The plot of Elden Ring Nightreign is very simple compared to other FromSoftware titles.
- Narrative depth comes from side stories of Nightfarers that you unlock as you play as them.
- Remembrance quests are short but sweet with varied objectives, fun cutscenes, and good writing.
On the whole, Elden Ring Nightreign is light on lore and story, and there's very little to the plot beyond "kill the Nightlords so the curse of Night is lifted." Instead, most of the game's narrative substance lies with its playable Nightfarers, as each one has a backstory that unfolds as you use them in gameplay.
Each time you complete a run with a character, you'll unlock a new entry for them in the journal item you can interact with back at the Roundtable Hold. These pages are well written and do a good job of conveying who the Nightfarers are, what motivates them, and why they ultimately came to the Lands Between — and once you've unlocked three or four entries for a character, you'll gain a Remembrance quest for them.
Each of these has cutscenes, along with objectives to accomplish in solo instances or in Expeditions such as hunting down a Remembrance-exclusive miniboss or searching for a specific item in a marked location. Doing this will allow you to progress the character's questline, revealing more about them and eventually bringing an end to their story.
Nothing here is as deep as, say, the heaping mountains of character-driven lore you can dig up from Elden Ring or Dark Souls, but the side stories of the Nightfarers are enjoyable and engaging nevertheless — something only bolstered by the great voice acting I've come to expect from FromSoftware characters. I'm glad they're in the game, even if they're only a small part of it in the end.
Elden Ring Nightreign review: Visuals and audio
- Visually, Elden Ring Nightreign is identical to the original 2022 game (and that means it looks great).
- The score, however, has many entirely new themes along with a few from Elden Ring.
- The new tracks are mostly for the Nightlord boss fights, and all of them are excellent.
While Elden Ring Nightreign is coming out three years after Elden Ring's 2022 release, it's virtually identical to the original ARPG in terms of graphical quality — and if you ask me, that's absolutely fine. Elden Ring is far from having the best visual fidelity out there, but it (and most FromSoftware games in general) significantly makes up for that with its beautiful mythology-inspired fantasy art direction that's rich with colorful vibrance, yet tinged with a darker gloominess. All of that carries over to Nightreign, and it's just as pleasing to the eyes now as it was then.
What isn't the same is the soundtrack, which borrows a few themes from Elden Ring, but largely features a new score comprised of tracks for each of the Nightlord bosses. Like the encounters with the Nightlords themselves, these themes are grandiose, striking, and diverse, with orchestral performances that rise to match the crescendos of battle. All of them are great, with a few instantly becoming some of my favorite Soulsborne tracks.
Elden Ring Nightreign review: Performance
- In my experience, Elden Ring Nightreign ran near-perfectly on my high-end gaming PC.
- Its requirements are almost the exact same as Elden Ring's, so if you can play the 2022 game, Nightreign should run fine for you.
- I did encounter some stutters in my playtime, but these were both short and rare.
Performance-wise, Elden Ring Nightreign ran excellently for me; at Maximum settings at 2560x1440p resolution (technically, I play on ultrawide, but FromSoftware still doesn't support it, so there are black bars) on my Intel i5-12600K, NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and 32GB DDR4 RAM rig, I had zero problems maintaining a rock-solid framerate of 60 FPS (that's what Nightreign, like Elden Ring before it, caps at). Admittedly, that hardware is far more powerful than what the Elden Ring Nightreign PC specs and requirements recommend, but given that those requirements are almost the exact same as Elden Ring's, you shouldn't have any trouble playing the new offshoot if you can run the 2022 game well.
The only stability issue I came across was the occasional short stutter, but these were ultimately few and far between and thankfully never happened at particularly bad times (such as in the middle of a heavy-hitting boss attack). As always, though, your mileage may vary depending on your system specs; I also can't speak to the experience on console, as I only had access to the PC build for this review.
Elden Ring Nightreign review: Conclusion
✅You should buy this if ...
- You like the sound of Elden Ring with a roguelike twist.
Even with the aforementioned lack of more maps and more enemy variety, Elden Ring Nightreign's roguelike spin on the Soulsborne gameplay formula has been a ton of fun to experience. If you think it sounds fun, you should definitely play.
❌You should not buy this if ...
- You'd prefer a more traditional Soulslike RPG.
Elden Ring Nightreign is an ambitious side project from FromSoftware, and while I would argue that it's a good game, it's one that won't appeal to everyone. It's very different compared to the studio's usual releases, and if that's what you're looking for, you won't find it here.
Elden Ring Nightreign is an even bigger experiment for FromSoftware than Elden Ring itself was, and overall, it was a worthwhile one. Speaking as a colossal fan of the studio's action RPGs and especially Elden Ring, I've had a blast playing through this creative co-op roguelike remix of it that distills it down to its core combat mechanics while allowing us to play with them in unique ways and giving us incredible new and returning boss fights to master.
Despite this, though, I can't help but feel disappointed that Nightreign's full potential hasn't been met — the game hamstrung by key problems like the availability of only one map or poor enemy and miniboss variety within several of its locations. Perhaps these are things that will improve with updates over time, but at launch? It's holding Nightreign back from true greatness, and that's a bummer.
With that said, it's absolutely still worth playing if you're a big Soulsborne fan, or simply enjoy action RPGs in general. The Nightlord battles alone are worth the price of admission, and I'm looking forward to overcoming them with my friends.
Elden Ring Nightreign releases on May 30, 2025 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, PS5, and PS4 for $39.99.
