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Dear FromSoftware, where is King’s Field? You guys have made multiple Dark Souls games, several others in the genre and now a spin-off in Elden Ring Nightreign, but we haven’t gotten us a new King’s Field game. Why is that? Do you hate your old-school fans so much that you wouldn’t grace us with another entry in the King’s Field series?
*Profound sad panda noises*
Elden Ring Nightreign is definitely not King’s Field, but I guess newer fans are delighted that FromSoftware’s latest baby is producing a bumper crop. First came an expansion, and now a spin-off. We might even get a movie in the future if the stars align.
That’s good, right?
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, Elden Ring is a good game and I sure as hell wouldn’t mind more of it. But is Elden Ring Nightreign any good? This isn’t exactly the Elden Ring we all know and love.
Let’s find out.
What is Elden Ring Nightreign?
Elden Ring Nightreign is a third-person rogue-lite Souls-like. It is a multiplayer-centric spinoff of Elden Ring that’s developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco. It is available right now on the PC as well as the Playstation and Xbox consoles.
Our review copy was provided by the awesome folks at Bandai Namco! Thank you so much!
Set in an alternate version of the Elden Ring universe, Elden Ring Nightreign is a multiversal affair. A mysterious being known as the Nightlord has come and is slowly consuming the world. Warriors from the multiverse (Nightfarers) are summoned by the Unseen One, and sent to stop the Nightlord before he accomplishes his mission.
From your base of operations in the Roundtable Hold (which is rather different from the one you remember in Elden Ring), you can buy items and equip stuff to prepare for your excursions into the world proper.
Instead of the huge world seen in the main game, the maps in Elden Ring Nightreign are randomly generated and are meant for quick exploration. You’re always dropped near the outskirts of the map via an ethereal bird and from then on, it’s up to you on how you tackle the area.
You don’t have time to dawdle though, as the game world is constantly shrinking due to the corruption effects of the Nightlord. Staying past the corruption zone (denoted with a bluish fiery glow), is not an option. You constantly lose health and will die if you’re in there too long.
Your goal is to survive three nights (with each night culminating in a boss fight in the center of the map), so that you can take on the Nightlord and stop him/her/it. It really depends on which mission you’re on, as the final boss changes.
The gameplay in Elden Ring Nightreign pretty much falls into two different styles. You either break away from your teammates as soon as you arrive in the location so you can cover as much ground as possible, or you stick together hoping to progress faster.
Both playstyles are valid, though I personally choose to stick with my teammates most times.
Honestly, I’m sick of fighting solo in Elden Ring, so it’s a breath of fresh air to team up. I mostly play ranged classes, so it’s always fun for other people to be targeted by the AI while I hang back and pew, pew, pew!
While the map is randomly generated, there will always be certain locations spawned in it. Churches are one of the most important to visit, because they give you an additional health flask.
Since maps are always changing, naturally you’d want to communicate with your team members to coordinate your progress, right? Weirdly, the game has zero chat options…only a way to mark waypoints on the map that everybody can see and hopefully, head to.
No text chat, no voice chat. You can only communicate with your team with the game’s built in gestures. It’s not a gamebreaker for me (as I opt to never chat anyways) but I guarantee there’ll be people who want some sort of chat implemented.
I’m partial to their plight too, because why not? As long as either voice or text chat is optional, I don’t see harm to it. At the very least, preset phrases (instead of gestures), should’ve been implemented in-game. Even Phantasy Star Online (the very first console online RPG from 2000) used them for quick and easy communication purposes for gamers without a keyboard.
For all of its uniqueness, I feel that Elden Ring Nightreign is filled with dubious design choices that feel out of touch. It makes the game more alienating than user friendly.
That even extends to your player character.
Instead of creating your own avatar, you choose from a handful of different classes. That means if you like casting sorceries, you’re forced to play as the Recluse. If you prefer damage, you’re going to want to pick the Raider.
It’s an unfamiliar bit of restriction in a FromSoftware title, which might put off some fans who are expecting more of the same, at least when it comes to character options. In fact, you can’t even assign stat points however you like here. You do level up at Sites of Grace (like in Elden Ring), but you just use them to go up levels as a whole.
It’s the game that assigns your stats automatically.
While I initially balked at this massive change, in practice it wasn’t really as bad as I thought. The game’s so fast paced that even slowing down to think of where to allocate your stats, bogs it down. You’re almost always on the move, because the map is constantly constricting.
Since the game’s a rogue-lite, you always start out with the same gear. The only modifications you can make to your character comes in the form of Relics. Even then, you’re restricted in their usage. Characters can only equip like colored relics, with each of the characters having different color slots. Some have red slots, some have blue or orange. Likewise the relics.
Being color-coded severely restricts their usefulness. Since you mostly get relics after a completed expedition, you might not get one that you need for your favourite class. It’s a gatcha system that’s made all the more frustrating because you can’t just willy nilly equip them to your liking.
FromSoftware’s thankfully made concessions to the gameplay mechanics.
Now you can sprint forever, there’s no fall damage and you can run up walls (to a certain degree). You might think these changes are relatively minor (and they do sound minimal), but in practice it makes gameplay super fast paced.
You’re running like the Flash everywhere, jumping off cliffs and clambering up sheer walls that would’ve been impassable in the main game!
Even the battles are rapid. When you have three players coming down on a single target, it sure as hell doesn’t last long. That unfortunately can mean some slower classes (like the Recluse) can seem underutilized. You’ll rarely manage to do damage to a target (because of your casting animation) before the faster melee classes kill them off.
Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay is super fun with the right team…well unless you’re using the Revenant.
The Revenant is a class so damn bad, nobody should be using her.
On paper, she sounds great!
A necromancer who can summon three different ghosts to help out.
One is fast and agile (Helen), another (Frederick) is strong and tanky, while the last is a giant skeleton (Sebastian) that’s slow but can deal stun enemies easily, deal AOE damage but is immobile.
The problem here is that the AI sucks.
I’ve had Helen run in place without moving after being summoned. I’ve had Frederick run around in circles ignoring targets. I’ve even had Sebastian fade in and out of existence after being summoned, like he can’t decide if he wants to materialize or not.
FromSoftware needs to really buff the damage from the AI and make them more aggressive and less buggy to even be useful. If not, there’s really no reason to pick her, even with her ability to heal and invulnerability.
The AI is just plain dumb, standing in the way of attacks from bosses or enemies. All they’re good for is distracting enemies so that your team can attack unimpeded. Even that is a coin toss though, because none of the spirits seem to be able to draw aggro well.
In fact, none of the classes draw aggro well. The tankier classes don’t have anything to make enemies target them first, which makes it a tossup on who gets to run around being chased by bosses. What’s the point of having different classes if there’s no way for the tankier classes to get enmity away from the ranged or caster classes?
The only way to even get close to having an aggro skill is to find one of the Relics that allows you to draw enemy attention while you’re defending with a shield. Why is it not a default skill?!
Even with the character classes, I still think there should be a custom avatar option.
Why not let players play how they like? This isn’t Overwatch or Marvel Rivals, you don’t need to have tanks, offensive characters and healers! Hell, it’s not like FromSoftware’s even taken the time to make the in-game classes more in line with those.
Sure, each of the Nightfarers have their own plot and motivations, but I ask you this – When has plot ever been the focus of a FromSoftware game?
Plot in Elden Ring is about as important as a torch in the game.
It’s nice to have, but it’s hardly required, except in extreme circumstances. FromSoftware’s method of storytelling is mostly done though in-world item descriptions and from NPCs you encounter. You rarely get direct exposition that’s not supremely essential to the story.
So why shackle players to prebuilt classes in that case? I’m sure making all the Nightfarers NPCs you encounter in the world or at the Roundtable Hold would’ve gotten the same effect, just like in the Elden Ring.
Unlike Elden Ring though, the PC version of Elden Ring Nightreign is supremely unstable.
I get crashes every 10 – 20 minutes of gameplay.
It’s so bad that I’ve never even completed a multiplayer mission on the first try. I will always get a crash to desktop and have to rejoin a match in progress, losing out on any XP my team gained while I was away. Hell, sometimes it even crashes while I’m idling at the Roundtable Hold.
Do I really need to say how detrimental that is to gameplay?
I’m not using a dinky machine either.
An AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, a MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim X 24G (thanks MSI!) and 64GB RAM makes our rig above and beyond the recommended specs for the game. I’m not even using WiFi for the desktop, but an ethernet cable that’s connected to a 10Gbps line.
I have tried all sorts of ‘fixes’ – I’ve undervolted my GPU, I’ve tried switching to 1080p, I’ve reverted to older NVIDIA drivers.
Yet it still has issues.
I check Reddit and the Steam community for Elden Ring Nightreign and it seems like others are having the same problems too.
At this point, it’s honestly fine to question FromSoftware and their capabilities. The game had a closed beta test for goodness’ sakes! Shouldn’t issues like this been identified and fixed before release? It’s not like my GPU is from the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5000 series!
Even more perplexing is the game’s lack of support for DLSS, XeSS or even FSR. There’s no way to run the game without brute forcing it, which means older graphics cards that rely on those tech get screwed bad. Everything depends on your GPU now, which means if it’s not able to do the heavy lifting, you’re FUBAR.
That’s compounded with the game’s lack of cross-play. In this day and age, Elden Ring Nightreign ships without cross-play. This isn’t an indie or even a AA game, it’s a AAA title. Yet, we don’t have cross-play for all the platforms the game’s on.
It’d be fine if this was a single player game with multiplayer elements, like Elden Ring or the Dark Souls games. Elden Ring Nightreign however, is a multiplayer game first and foremost. One that’s also playable in single player.
Why fragment the player base unnecessarily? What about the future when most of the game’s userbase as moved on? How do you play a multiplayer game when the handful of players left are walled off by their platforms and can’t connect to each other because there’s no cross-play?
The game also doesn’t allow new players to join if somebody from your team left or is disconnected. You’re left with two players and it’s unlikely you can successfully complete the expedition. The game is balanced for three or one, not two.
You can’t even start an expedition with two players. The developers casually admitted that they didn’t think about it while they were planning the game. Wut?
Even single player expeditions are problematic.
You’re not only hampered by the ever-constricting Night’s Tide, you’re held back by spongy enemies that absorb massive amounts of damage and bosses who are even more spongey then their Elden Ring counterparts. You won’t be able to kill enough in the time allotted to gain levels like in multiplayer mode.
That means you’ll be at a severe disadvantage when fighting the Night Lords. You’re weaker, potentially equipped with crappy gear and alone against bosses that can absorb insane amounts of damage.
On the ROG Ally X, the game…runs. That’s the best I can describe the situation. It doesn’t run well and I would never pick it as an option to play the game. Without FSR or any sort, there is really no feasible way it would run well. I regularly get stuttering and slowdown, and that’s on 720p with everything on lowest.
It is not a pleasant experience. Can you play it? Sure. Should you play it? Not really. Just get it on a console if you don’t have a PC that can run Elden Ring Nightreign well.
The Bottom Line.
There’s fun to be had in Elden Ring Nightreign. When it all comes together, it’s a brilliant take on the solo Souls-like gameplay. The classes (most of them at least) are fun, the enemies are tough and the gameplay loop rewarding enough to keep you coming back.
The issue here is that…well…there are lots of issues.
The crashing is the paramount thing here. Even with a beta, the game is still not stable enough for me and other people. Then we have the lack of a two player mode, in-game communication tools and a single player mode that punishes you for playing solo. Compound it with a lack of cross-play and it’s a recipe for disaster.
There are so many issues here that can take away from your enjoyment that it’s surprising that Elden Ring Nightreign was released at the state that it is. Perhaps FromSoftware can tweak it down the road to make it much better, but as it stands, definitely wait and see if you can.
TLDR:
Buggy, missing features and unfun single player. The game’s great when it’s played with a good team but horrendous otherwise.
The Good:
- Fun with a good team.
- Gameplay loop is satisfying and addictive.
- Most classes are fun to play as.
The Bad:
- No replacement for missing players.
- Crashing issues.
- Single player balancing problems.
- No cross-play.
- No in-game chat.
- No two player mode.
- No FSR/ DLSS/ XeSS support.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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