REVIEW: ‘Elden Ring Nightreign’ Pushes The Genre Forward With A Big Swing

After 16 years of consistent offerings, developer FromSoftware‘s latest release, Elden Ring Nightreign, deviates dramatically from their norm. Since the release of Demon’s Souls in 2009, the studio has honed their craft in creating a unique brand of action RPG.

As a result, we’ve been treated to half a dozen sprawling worlds full of deceptively dangerous enemies and punishing bosses, set within environments that are beautiful as they are hostile. Some entries play with this formula by introducing an open world or changing the gameplay or progression loop, but none of them throw the formula out the window quite like the latest Bandai Namco Entertainment published title.

This title condenses Elden Ring’s hours-long odyssey into a roguelite co-op adventure that can be enjoyed in shorter sessions. Despite this wild swing, FromSoftware has succeeded once again, proving that their adventures can remain mysterious, engaging, and exhilarating no matter what form they take.

From the start of your time with Elden Ring Nightreign, it’s clear that this is a beast of a different nature. Kicking things off with a more direct tutorial than in any of their previous games, you’ll learn the basics of exploring Limveld, the island you’ll be exploring during your matches, known as expeditions. Soon after, you’ll find yourself in the Roundtable Hold, where you’ll return after each expedition, whether you succeed or fail. In addition to setting off for further expeditions, you’ll also be able to switch characters, buy items, set up your relics loadout, and more.

Elden Ring: Nightreign is pushing the genre forward.

Most interestingly, you’ll be able to speak with the other player characters, known as Nightfarers, lending them some personality when you’re not wielding them as a silent protagonist. This, in turn, paves the way for much of the story in Elden Ring: Nightreign. The other story present in the game is fairly pared down and straightforward compared to the usual FromSoftware fare, giving you an introduction and resolution without scores of items with plot details hidden within.

As soon as you return to the hub for the first time, you’ll be able to access the journal, which contains an entry from each Nightfarer. This contains hints about who they are and why they’re part of this journey. As you succeed in your expeditions, you’ll also passively earn further journal entries for the Nightfarers, granting access to remembrances. These missions are specific to each character and occasionally take the form of a specific goal on your next expedition.

It’s possible to seek these out in a solo expedition, but they invariably result in a battle with a mini-boss, so it’s best to gather some friends and make them aware of your goal. In a rare moment of mercy from the developer, you don’t need to complete an expedition successfully to keep the progress on your quest, making solo expeditions a somewhat viable option for completing them.

It’s dangerous to go alone, but you can if you try. 

This is especially true if you spend your days preparing for the relatively easier mini-boss involved in your Nightfarer’s story instead of the Nightlord. As a reward, you’ll receive further journal entries and an additional relic vessel, which grants another method of preparing for expeditions.

Relics are items that can be equipped between expeditions, and they provide passive bonuses. They can be earned after each expedition or purchased from a merchant in the Roundtable Hold, and they come with all manner of bonuses attached, some of which are meant for specific Nightfarers. They also come in different colors, limiting where they can be applied, which is why you’ll need to earn more relic vessels. Each vessel possesses a different array of color slots, allowing you to use drastically different relics depending on the situation.

Aside from creating a path to easier progress, relics also allow players to create different builds. One example I saw was a group of relics that allowed heals and other consumables to apply to the other players in the group, effectively turning the player into a support for the expedition. Other relics affect the skills on your starting equipment or add modifiers to your Nightfarer’s unique skills, presenting many options for customization.

The Nightfarers themselves are another avenue for players to drastically alter their experience. Each of the eight characters fits into some of the archetypes that players are able to play as in Elden Ring or the Dark Souls series. More importantly, they each feature unique passive and active abilities that allow them to help the group in different ways.

The Nightfarers are one of Nightriegn’s strongest features.

The samurai-like Executor can parry and deflect even the heaviest attacks with the proper timing, giving him access to a powerful skill with enough parries. The Wylder, the everyman with his sword and shield, can grapple enemies with his claw shot, closing the gap for follow-up attacks. My personal favorite, the Recluse, is a caster that can absorb three magical elements, creating a Magic Cocktail that can provide over a dozen different effects depending on the combination of elements.

Each Nightfarer has different stats and benefits most from weapons that fit in line with their archetype, but even mismatched weapons can be useful with the right passive effect. One expedition saw my Recluse loaded up with two staves and four heavy melee weapons because their effects made my spells better.

Thankfully, encumbrance is absent from this entry, allowing you to gather gear to your heart’s content in search of the ultimate build. Even leveling is simpler in Elden Ring Nightreign; gone are the days of worrying about which stats you should be raising – a level up is an upgrade across all your stats.

While this might rub some fans the wrong way, you don’t have the time to be worrying about stat distribution during your expeditions, where every second should be spent wiping out enemies and earning rewards. Additionally, this is a handy way to prevent inexperienced players or trolls from dooming an expedition because they poured all their levels into a stat their Nightfarer doesn’t benefit from.

Stats, traversal, and combat help define this genre entry.

There are various other conveniences granted in the name of making Elden Ring Nightreign as fun as possible. Fall damage is not a concern, which makes sense given the verticality of Limveld. Players are free to launch themselves off of cliffs or rocket into the sky using spiritstreams.

You can clamber up the sides of cliffs using a sort of double jump, allowing you to explore more quickly than ever possible. This game even eschews tradition by providing the most useful map in FromSoftware’s history, allowing players to plot out their path across Limveld with information about rewards they can earn in each point of interest.

When players first arrive at the Roundtable Hold, they’ll be limited to a single potential boss, known as a Nightlord. Once this enemy is defeated, they gain access to another six Nightlords, with more to be unlocked eventually. Players can use a password to group with friends, or they can roll the dice and get randomly matched with two other players who are also hunting the same target. Once a player has access to multiple Nightlords, they can queue up for multiple targets, allowing them to jump into the game even faster. After a short cutscene, the expedition starts.

Perks make all the difference when it comes to surviving increasingly difficult enemies.

Once they’ve landed in Limveld, they’re free to go anywhere they want. Perhaps they make a beeline for the nearest church in order to earn an additional flask charge, or they head into the mines for a material to upgrade their weapons. Wherever you and your team go, you can defeat common enemies to earn runes, but points of interest, like a fort or ruins, are home to mini-bosses.

These tougher enemies are already worth the struggle because they grant more runes upon defeat but they also grant a special reward. This can take the form of a weapon, a consumable item, or a passive perk that they’ll retain for the duration of the expedition.

Leveling is important, but collecting these perks can make the difference between victory and defeat, and the mostly random nature of rewards means that even a strong start can be stalled by lackluster rewards. Conversely, a last-minute boss fight can net you a weapon that carries your team to victory.

Eventually, though, night falls upon the land, forcing players to a randomly chosen spot on the map where a boss awaits. These bosses are incredibly varied, testing even the strongest teams with unrelenting and wide-reaching attacks. Once they’re defeated, this cycle repeats once more before whisking a victorious team off to meet their target, the third and final major boss of the expedition.

Nightreign’s bosses are some of FromSoftware’s best.

The two bosses faced at night draw from a large pool of previous bosses in FromSoftware’s history, and they’re not limited to Elden Ring, providing a fun treat for longtime fans. The final bosses, however, are brand new and showcase the studio’s talent for creating memorable and intimidating enemies.

If one of your allies is defeated they collapse, only able to crawl around slowly, but they can be revived with the help of attacks from their team, even spells from your magic casters contribute to reviving a fallen ally. This makes longer duration spells especially effective, allowing the more fragile characters to contribute in a major way. When facing a boss, if all three group members are downed, the expedition ends in failure, sending everyone back to the Roundtable Hold to start again.

Losing even one team member raises the tension, but losing two almost always signals the end, since the boss’s attention is now focused on the sole survivor. It’s not impossible to come back from such an occasion, but it’s best to avoid this scenario whenever possible.

If your team does manage to defeat the boss, you’ll receive various relics, including a boss-specific relic, and you’ll unlock a new modifier: shifting lands. As you defeat more of your targets, you’ll unlock more of these expedition-altering effects. Shifting lands is an accurate name, since they do change the map quite drastically.

Chance is king in Elden Ring: Nightreign, but that drives replayability.

One opens up a massive crater in the northern half of the map, granting access to new challenges and rewards, while another replaces a corner of the map with a snowy mountain, adding new mini-bosses to the region. In addition to these new dangers, there are also hidden elements to be found in each shifting lands modifier, like a special perk hidden at the end of a trail of clues. These bonuses are like a fun scavenger hunt, giving curious fans a reason to keep coming back.

A lot of aspects of Elden Ring Nightreign can be affected by chance. Relics earned, Shifting Lands, the assortment of rewards available in each expedition, and even the effectiveness of your allies can all depend on luck. Watching these factors align for a successful expedition makes defeating bosses even more exciting, and it’s great to share that success with two other people, whether they’re friends or strangers.

One thing that is certain is that it’s a wildly different form of a familiar idea. FromSoftware has stopped hiding the multiplayer experience behind weird finger consumables and glowing summon signs; Elden Ring: Nightreign invites players to familiarize themselves with its locales for repeat playthroughs and lets your characters be more than blank slates.

Ultimately, Elden Ring Nightreign does its best to let players have fun, get stronger, and take down big, bad bosses together. I can’t speak for the greater FromSoftware fanbase, but after these shared triumphs, I’ll have a hard time going back to doing it alone.

Elden Ring Nightreign releases May 30th, 2025 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5