Elden Ring Nightreign Review

When it was released in 2022, Elden Ring instantly became a pop culture sensation. When its massive expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, arrived in 2024, it cultivated passionate conversations surrounding whether or not a piece of DLC could be a game of the year contender. Now, in 2025, a cooperative roguelike approach to the souls-like genre is dropping in with Elden Ring Nightreign. While it retains the same hair-pullingly challenging bosses that the beloved From Software titles are known for, not everything has made the jump as gracefully to the game’s more fast-paced nature.

Nightreign takes the Elden Ring experience and condenses it down to short rogue-like bursts where you will contend with enemies large and small, find gear to power up, and struggle to survive. Each ‘run’, referred to as an expedition, culminates in a confrontation with a fearsome boss, all told taking about 45 minutes or so to complete. At the start, players will have access to five different classes, known as Nightfarers, each with their own unique skills and stat distribution, with two others being unlockable. As a Nightfarer, your job is to undertake expeditions to kill the various Nightlords and push back the Night, which threatens to destroy the world.

Departing on an expedition will drop you onto a small map that is filled with structures to raid for weapons and strong defenders that will drop rewards that will help you prepare for the boss at the end — one of Nightreign’s Nightlords. Each expedition is split into two Days, with time provided to allow you and your party of three to level up and acquire your gear. Time isn’t on your side, however, as a shrinking boundary will force you to the battleground where you will fight that day’s miniboss. Staying outside the boundary will quickly kill you, and if you aren’t careful, it will sneak up on you before you realize it. The whole experience is reminiscent of the approach battle royal games like Fortnite or APEX implement the feature, but for a game like Nightreign that doesn't feature PVP combat, let alone on such a big scale, its inclusion feels a bit out of place. 

When it comes to dying, it's an even bigger setback this time around. Not only do you lose your currency to level up or buy resources from vendors during your run, but now you also lose a level, which can be tough to get back depending on when you go down. Players have some wiggle room, as the remaining players can revive them by hitting their downed ally with friendly attacks (I found the idea of smacking your friends back to life especially funny) without suffering the penalty. If everyone is taken out or a player isn't revived in time, so long as you aren't in the middle of any of the three main boss fights of the expedition, you will respawn ( albeit one level lower and without your Runes) at a nearby site of grace. However, if this occurs during a boss fight, the expedition run will result in a defeat, and you will be sent back to the Roundtable Hold to try again. This team revival mechanic is, of course, lacking in solo play, which I think needs to be touched on.

Although this game offers the option to tackle it solo, it feels as though it is meant to be experienced with a team of three players. Damage numbers and health are adjusted when playing by yourself, but the number of enemies isn’t affected, meaning that solo players should expect to be juggling whittling down two or three large enemies at a time at the end of each day. 

Tackling the challenges is also just more fun when playing with friends and well-rounded party, and those moments when I was playing with friends on a Discord call for this review —  where we discussed our battle plans or called out for assistance when we were in trouble — were by leaps-and-bounds my favorite moments of this game. Playing with random people is serviceable, but Nightreign lacks any sort of meaningful ping system to let players convey much outside of “I want to go here” or “Look at this item”. Nightreign is at its best when you can play with two of your friends, which makes it a shame that the game doesn’t support cross-play. This feels like it would have been the perfect first opportunity for the team at From Software to implement that functionality, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

I vividly remember the difficult task of trying to secure myself an import copy of the original Demon's Souls title for the PlayStation 3, before it had been announced for localization, and have been a devout fan of From Software’s Souls games ever since. For me, the four pillars of these games that attract me to the genre have been the depth of its character builds, the focus on observation and learning patterns of enemies, the sense of exploration inside its worlds, and the lore that seems to have no bottom. It is unfortunate, while not surprising, that the fast-paced and truncated Elden experience came at the detriment of some of those things that I love so much about this genre, to make it fit into this new rogue-like mold.

Starting on character customization, stat allocation has all been removed, with all “customization” coming in the form of randomized items known as Relics that are earned after runs or bought from a shop in the Roundtable Hold area, where you will spend your time in between expeditions. Relics can impart stat bonuses, give your starting weapons unique properties like allowing them to deal poison and fire damage, or set your weapon skills. These relics you then slot into different receptacles that each Nightfarer class has access to; however, only three can ever be equipped at any given time, with further restrictions on the type of Relics that can be used being dictated by what you are slotting them into. Luckily, you are able to save favorites to quickly switch when you want.

My frustration with these Relics has less to do with how they are implemented; in fact, I like the combinations they can offer and just how much they can impact a run. What I’m not a fan of, however, is the random nature of the bonuses they provide. This randomized aspect meant that, after a run, I would often earn new Relics that the character I had been using couldn’t fully benefit from, or worse, couldn’t use at all. Luckily, the restriction on types of relics that can be equipped does go away as you progress, and you become able to buy new relic vessels that the characters use that allow different combinations of relics to be equipped.

The emphasis on making sure you are always moving and always rushing to get stronger also removes much of your ability to do much in the way of exploring, a staple of Soulslike games. The map you are dropped into comes in a few different flavors - referred to as Earth Shift events - that may see a fiery lava crater appear or a menacing frigid mountain looming in the distance, but the surrounding area largely is the same from run to run. You will see identical churches that hold flask upgrades, ruins with the same hole leading to the underground crypt where a miniboss waits, the same castle in the middle of the map, etc. This game’s sense of discovery quickly turns into finding out what enemy type is at a place, what mini-boss will appear, or whether or not this spot is where I will find the item I desperately need to make me stand a chance against the Nightlord at the end. By the 10-hour mark, I found myself simply going through the motions; I felt apathetic and detached. I was bored, and random relics were all I had waiting for me at the end.

If you're keeping track, Nightreign has currently knocked out some support from two of the main pillars my love of this genre stands on, wobbling a bit. However, the remaining two - the bosses and the lore - remain solid. The new Nightlord bosses that you face at the end of each run, are just as wonderfully complex and infuriating as one can expect from a Souls boss, with each one ranging from frustrating or annoying to rage-inducing and making you want to pull out your hair (looking at you, Gaping Jaw…). It’s the good stuff, and I think that fans will find a few new favorites here in Nightreign, and tackling them still provides that same cathartic end and sense of accomplishment, filling that dopamine quota.

Bosses and creatures from other games will appear out of nowhere, which is exciting and will undoubtedly put a smile on your face, before it smacks you back to reality, and you try to remember their battle patterns. Doing battle with the Nameless King for the first time took me right back to 2016 when I was playing through Dark Souls 3 for the first time. Whenever another returning boss showed up, it felt like a ‘90s television show where that one popular actor or guest star makes a cameo appearance to applause and surprise by the studio audience. 

The bosses and the nature of the Soul’s formula of learning patterns and contending with these creatures also don’t take to the format of the roguelike approach, however. As I’ve said, I’m someone who has been a fan of these games for a long time, and having also just come off of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I am no stranger to beating my face into a boss wall until I finally bust through. However, unlike in those games where you can relatively quickly get back to the boss fight to try again, be it with a quick save or a nearby bonfire, in Nightreign, you can expect a 40-minute or so trek before you can make another attempt. That little mistake you made, or going in without that item you wanted? Sorry, you have to do it all over before you can try again. I think having a practice area where you can specially try out bosses you have encountered at least once before, letting you learn without this in-between time, would not only keep it inline with what From Software has done with previous games and being able to retry bosses quickly, but also alow that more analytical and experimental process players love about these encounters, without that 40 minute punishment looming over them. 

The aspect that fares the best in this new style is the approach to lore and story elements. Instead of the voiceless and unknown custom character you create in the other games, each of the Nightfarers you can play as has distinct personalities and histories for you to discover. Referred to as Rememberences, as you play as the different characters, you will unlock journal entries that elaborate and flesh out events that transpired with them, before they wind up in the Roundtable Hold at the end of the world. Occasionally, these will also require you to undertake a special side objective during an expedition, which will progress these Remembrance tales, resulting in class-specific rewards in addition to learning more about that character. For as much as I may like the open-ended nature of the character customization of the other games, I really enjoy and got invested in discovering details about these characters. It feels very reminiscent of the mini storylines that NPCs normally have, and you can follow through with. You never have to do it, but it's there if you want to know more. I foresee many late nights spent watching new VaatiVidya lore videos in my future.

During my time with Elden Ring Nightreign, I was waiting for something to jump out and amaze me like the original game and Erdtree had, but that sensation never came. Nightreign delivers glimpses of what I love about the previous games, but the jump to this new format just never quite landed as well as I had hoped. When I played with my friends or when I finally tackled that Nightlord I had been stuck on, it hit with that same exhilarating sense of accomplishment that I love, but so much else left me wanting. With so many reused enemies and guest bosses, Nightreign feels more like an impressive expansion than a whole new release, and perhaps that is a better way to look at it: an experiment in something new. This first drop into the roguelike genre with the Souls series is intriguing enough to make me consider exploring future explorations into it, but beyond that, I will happily stick with my exploration-heavy and deep character customization options instead.