Elden Ring Nightreign Review

When Elden Ring: Nightreign was revealed at last year’s Game Awards, it came as a real shock. Not because FromSoftware had something new in the pipeline—everyone loves Elden Ring, but because of what it was. The trailer was cryptic, fast-paced, and oozing with dark energy. Familiar sights from Elden Ring twisted into something new. Three-player co-op? Roguelike structure? Pre-built characters? What even was this thing? I wasn’t sure, but it had everyone intrigued.

But after playing it, I can confidently say it’s one of the boldest things FromSoftware has done. It’s a remix of Elden Ring, sure, but it’s more than just reused assets and clever map tweaks. It’s a calculated reinvention, laser-focused on speed, urgency, and cooperation. It’s still brutal. It’s still punishing. But it never tries to be Elden Ring 2. And that’s exactly why it works.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Nightreign borrows heavily from Elden Ring. The world of Limveld is stitched from familiar architecture, environmental textures, and enemy models—but don’t mistake this for laziness. This isn’t just a reskin. The team has recontextualized everything. The pacing, the systems, the goals—all different.

The world layout changes every run. Churches, castles, dungeon entrances, and enemy camps are procedurally shuffled. You never really know what direction will bring safety or slaughter. The landmarks are recognizable, but their relationships and positions are totally unpredictable. Combine that with shifting weather, enemy raids, and dynamic world events, and it keeps the experience surprisingly fresh.

Every time I dropped into a new run, I had to plan differently. That unpredictability—combined with the sheer pace of the game—meant I was constantly adapting, reevaluating, and pivoting strategies with my team.

Nightreign isn’t just a roguelike slapped onto a Souls engine. It’s fast. Everything—from traversal to combat to character progression—is tuned for tempo. You get dropped into Limveld with two other players and a three-day timer begins.

Each day ends with a boss fight. If you’re not ready by nightfall, you’re screwed. No slow grinding. No aimless wandering. The clock’s ticking. You plan your route, hunt down elite enemies for runes, hit dungeons for gear, and pray the RNG gods are kind to your loadout. All while a ring of blue flame slowly shrinks the map, pushing you toward that day’s boss battle.

Combat is still meaty and punishing, but your toolkit’s been upgraded for speed. You can surge sprint for quick getaways or gap closers. Wall jumping gives platforming real verticality. You can use spirit springs without Torrent, which makes navigating cliffs feel more like Sekiro than Elden Ring. And perhaps best of all, fall damage is gone. Toss yourself off a tower to escape a mob. It’s liberating.

This momentum-first philosophy extends into character progression. You no longer build your character from scratch. Instead, you choose from eight pre-built Nightfarers at the Roundtable Hold before each run. Each has their own specialties, strengths, and limitations. I gravitated toward Wylder, a bruiser built around Strength and Dexterity. He hits hard up close, but has almost no FP, so forget about flashy skills. Other Nightfarers lean into ranged magic, mobility, or team support.

This choice—combined with randomized gear pickups—means builds are fluid and improvisational. You’re not crafting a godlike hero over 100 hours. You’re adapting, run by run, to whatever the game throws at you.

Leveling is streamlined, too. Find a Site of Grace, spend your runes, and your stats increase based on your Nightfarer’s specialties. No stat micromanagement. It keeps things moving, which is the core design philosophy of the whole game.

The structure of each run is tight and focused. Day 1, you drop in. Scout. Kill. Loot. Level. Survive the first boss. Day 2, rinse and repeat—only now the world is meaner, and time is tighter. Day 3 is a full-scale showdown with the Nightlord you selected at the start. That final boss fights are tough and put the skills of your whole team to the test. But if you win, you extract with earned rewards, cosmetics, and bragging rights.

I had doubts during the beta. Would it get repetitive? Could procedural elements carry the game long-term? Surprisingly, yes. The map randomization, enemy placements, loot tables, and ever-escalating tension help Nightreign avoid the usual roguelike fatigue. Runs are short enough (usually under an hour) that even a failed attempt doesn’t feel like a waste of time. Instead, you reset, reselect your Nightfarer, and drop back in, hopefully wiser.

Though, the experience isn’t quite perfect, yet. Nightreign was advertised as being playable solo. And technically, it is. But just barely. It’s obvious that the entire structure was designed around three-player squads. If you go in alone, you’re signing up for pain.

In co-op, if you fall in battle, teammates can revive you by striking your corpse. If all three players go down, it’s game over. But in solo play, there’s no revive system. You fall, you lose. That’s it. Combine that with tougher boss fights and zero backup, and solo runs become punishing in a way that feels more frustrating than fun. It’s not balanced for solo players, and I think that’s a real shame.

A lot of Elden Ring fans are lone wolves. The original game let you go it alone, carve your own path, and tackle the world at your own pace. Nightreign strips that away. I would’ve loved a tweaked solo mode—maybe with AI companions or boss scaling. Something to make the experience viable outside of multiplayer.

The other issue is the randomness. Most of the time, it works in the game’s favor. But sometimes, it just ruins a run. Bad weapon drops, no flask upgrade sites, terrible rune yields—it can all snowball fast. When time is constantly pushing you forward, there’s little room to correct a bad start. And by the time you hit the boss, you’re underleveled and underprepared.

It’s the nature of roguelikes, but I think Nightreign could use a few quality-of-life additions. The ability to vote on a run restart would be huge. Or a system to bail early without penalties. Sometimes you know a run is doomed ten minutes in. Being forced to slog through anyway just kills momentum.

Final Thoughts

Despite its issues, Elden Ring: Nightreign is an exhilarating experiment. It’s not just more Elden Ring, and it’s not trying to be. It repurposes a world we already know and remixes it into something fast, chaotic, and strangely addicting. It trims the fat, strips away the lore-heavy open world, and drops you into a fight for survival that demands tight coordination, smart planning, and adaptability.

It won’t be for everyone. If you loved the slow burn and solitary exploration of Elden Ring, Nightreign might feel too aggressive, too focused, too multiplayer-dependent. But if you’re open to seeing that world through a new lens—one that favors intensity over introspection—you’ll find a lot to love here.

FromSoftware took a risk with Nightreign. It could’ve felt like a cheap spin-off. But instead, it’s a bold evolution—an unrelenting, co-op roguelike that understands what made the original great, and dares to reimagine it at breakneck speed.

A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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