ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN

7/10, Promising with issues that, while definitely real, are being blown out of proportion by people.

50 hours in. First ~30 of those was raw ingame random queues. I beat no bosses besides the first one.

In the first 4-5 hours of playing with randoms in the vc of a dedicated lfg discord, we beat 4 bosses back to back. In the next 20 hours I've beaten every boss (some multiple times) except the last that I'm saving until finishing all remembrances.

(This wasn't me getting carried btw, I typically play the tank so I'm the one taking majority of the aggro and dodging, its just that the game just got so much more efficient when you can actually talk to each other.)

The game at core is good, but for your own sake play with voice chat, otherwise you are in for a miserable time. You don't need actual friends (although that does elevate any experience), but you do DEFINITELY need a way to comm strategy, items and pathing. The vast majority of people understand how this game works believe me, its very easy to find a decent team.

I'm cutting it some slack in the balance and bug department since this is a new venture for Fromsoft, and its only been out for a few days, but there are definitely issues that are hard to ignore:

- Aformentioned lack of even a basic ping wheel, much less voice chat, in a game this diverse and strategic.

- Matchmaking pool is splintered into so many unnecessary subsections that cant match with each other that it really is going to kill the game once the initial spike in players drops and stabilizes.

- Lotta bugs, multiplayer-related and otherwise (e.g I finished a tough sidequest where you had to kill a boss with a specific character but it didn't register??? So there goes a lot of effort for no reason).

- Lots of bosses have Consort Radahn levels of frame-killer moves that can freeze or even crash a pc regardless of specs.

- Loot can be trash, RNG in general gets annoying and repetitive. My latest game we managed to find 4-5 LEGENDARIES and NONE were relevant to any of our characters, all at best used as secondaries/backups.

- What is especially boring this game down for me is I found that there is a surprising lack of actual effective variety to experience once you play this game enough. There's plenty of loot and gacha relics with random effects for builds, but at the end of the day its very limited which ones are actually viable/useful.



Despite all these problems, At the end of the day I actually have fun with the expeditions with vc and especially progressing the characters' stories/remembrances. While I do think though this game could be a smidge cheaper considering how many assets are reused and reliance on multiplayer, and being able to trade or at least borrow relics from each other should be implemented pronto, this game is still worth it if you can cough up the moolah.

Game is good but please add more crossover boss variations
and add randomizer not pre-deterimned bosses/enemies

for more replay value

Fucking amazing game I play it with the wife every night. Since there's no duos yet we are having a child just to play the game with the full team

I've had pretty much no life the last few days, so as someone with all bosses + most achievements done, here are my thoughts (no spoilers):

I personally feel that the online journalism doom and gloom is overblown. This game is sick, and it's some of the most fun I've had playing a game in a while. I am fairly confident that future updates (duos, more content, possibly hard mode) will only reinforce this sentiment. I think it's an 8-9/10 and easily worth the purchase. With that said, here are my pros/cons:

Pros:

• Combat is excellent. Movesets and fighting styles from various games (poise tanking from DS1, Sekiro perfect parry, Bloodborne mobility, etc.) are all available and feel great. The skills/arts are a super interesting addition.
  
• The bosses are very fun and beautifully designed. If you're not targeting their elemental weakness (shown before you queue up on an expedition), prepare for it to feel unfair. This mistake is where a lot of "this game is BS" complaints come from.
  
• One of my biggest Elden Ring complaints was that the "open world" format felt empty when 90%+ of consumables/item drops weren't things I would/could use given my build. This is addressed in this game. Holding weapons in your inventory will give you their passive statuses, and almost every consumable is good. I stumble on a variety of decent loot every minute.
  
• The gameplay loop both in/out of expeditions are great. Each character has "remembrances" (questlines) that you can complete. Completing them gives you rewards. This, along with relic customization, gives you meaningful things to work toward even when you don't succeed in a given expedition. Inside expeditions, it's fast-paced (you're making constant decisions based on RNG) and has plenty of high risk/high reward paths that make it exciting.
  
• Build variety is insane. I've gone bow Raider, colossal Duchess, madness caster, and more (and made it work) using various special relics and run-based drops. Even how you play - which ruins/camps/field bosses you run to in which order - can be dictated by their locations and how you kitted your relics before the game. As you progress, your options will expand.
  
• The OST and visuals are gorgeous.
  

Cons:

• The game seems to have issues with newer graphics cards. Some of my friends have been crashing constantly. You can rejoin, but you lose a level and need to pick up your runes as if you had died. These hardware compatibility issues need some patching.
  
• The choice of passive status effects you get after defeating great enemies would benefit from more variety. Some of the options (I'm talking about you, "flask slowly restores hp") are almost strictly bad, and I think there tend to be too few options in general. I think expanding on this would really polish the game's roguelike elements.
  
• The game could use some scalable content. In previous titles, that was NG+. An endless night/hard mode/etc. is something I would like to see. As of right now, you cannot scale the difficulty unless you handicap yourself.
  
[*]While there is procedural generation that keeps gameplay relatively fresh, there is only one main map. I would love to see new terrains/maps just to mix things up.

There are plenty of things to discuss regarding this game, but I think these hit the main points (in my opinion). Overall, the game is a blast, and I foresee it improving in future updates. I definitely recommend it.

Literal magic game. I was stuck on the dancer in ds3 and encountered it in this one. me and my group were able to beat it and i later went back to ds3 and was able to beat the dancer

After playing it for a bit and getting a better understanding, it's a good game.

This game needs 3 things to be perfect and fix all the most important issues.
1.ADD QUICK CHAT. It doesn't even has to be typing text, just phases to send. ''Please help'', ''Revive'', ''Here!'' etc. THAT WOULD IMPROVE CO-OP SOOOOO MUCH.
2.Fix reviving system, cuz it's awful especially against spamming bosses. It takes TOO much hits to respawn someone, or at least make it impossible to refill the revive bar, that's the dumbest shit ever.
3.Put timer on the screen to know when night ends.

Nightreign Isn’t Your Usual Elden Ring, and That’s the Point

Elden Ring: Nightreign is a bold departure from the original game's formula, shifting the focus from open-world exploration to a more structured, roguelike experience built around teamwork and tension. Set in Limveld, a procedurally generated and darker version of Limgrave, the game introduces players to a new kind of challenge. You play as a Nightfarer, working alone or with up to two other players to survive three in-game days, each ending in a boss fight, before facing a final climactic battle. The map shrinks as time passes, forcing movement and increasing the stakes. While the combat still feels weighty and punishing in the classic FromSoftware style, the game trades freedom and narrative depth for short, high-stakes runs and a focus on replayability.

What really sets Nightreign apart is its emphasis on cooperation and dynamic world structure. Each run is unpredictable—gear, enemies, and even objectives shift with every reset, and teamwork becomes essential if you want to make it through the cycle. The atmosphere remains strong, with haunting visuals and cryptic worldbuilding, but the storytelling takes a backseat to gameplay loops. It’s not trying to be Elden Ring 2, and it’s better to approach it with that in mind. Nightreign isn’t for everyone—it’s faster, tighter, and less grand in scope—but it offers something different for fans willing to try a new kind of journey through the Lands Between. Whether you’ll enjoy it depends on what you’re looking for, but there’s no doubt it’s an intriguing shift for the series.

From the very start, I thought this concept was interesting but I was very cautious. I'm very glad that From Software is experimenting and allowing other devs than Miyazaki to direct. I played the network test on PS5 and thought the first couple of runs were atrocious before the game started clicking with me. Still, by the end I only thought it was okay and would be fun for a bit and had lots of worries. Sadly, basically all of those worries weren't properly addressed in the full game.

Content

I did a few runs with randoms but most of my game time was with two other friends. We've managed to beat every boss and I personally was able to complete two character quests in full. There is only one world event that I haven't managed to do yet so a good chunk of the game has been explored. After all of that, I still think that this game fails at being a proper roguelike.

It isn't full of content as I would like and the map itself and POI's in it feel way too repetitive. So much of our routing felt similar and many of our builds ended up being stuff we'd done maybe even in the very previous run. There's not as many bosses in the game as I thought they would have with it being a roguelike. At the end of each run, it feels like we are largely doing chores by following set plans rather than fully catering to things within the match.

Gameplay

It is mainly Elden Ring but with both improvements and worse elements. There's some neat stuff here that I would love the main games to include like how the Ironeye class redefines ranged weapons in this game and how the Recluse has an interesting magic system. Honestly, every class feels unique and largely good, though I haven't tried much of the more magic based characters.

This game feels far more janky than Elden Ring. The mantling system and being able to climb whatever is nice but feels worse than Sekiro. Sometimes, it just doesn't happen. The super sprint is interesting but the stamina drain is intense and overall stamina in this game feels like a tedious amount. The way some bosses hitboxes end up hitting behind them sometimes feels annoying. All of these things could be improved tremendously and I hope they do so.

The controls are even janky too. It's slightly modified from their prior Souls games. The controls all throughout the series have never been particularly great but some stuff here is silly and easy to mess up like scrolling through items with the down key and up to use. A big part of it is also likely because healing flask isn't a hotbar item in this game.

Bosses

There are a ton of annoying bosses in this game. The day 1 and 2 and field bosses are all things we've seen before from Elden Ring and a bit of Souls. I would have loved more from the latter and was disappointed with the small selection. Still, the slightly modified movesets are interesting but still feel like a let down when there could have been many more.

Nearly half the Nightlord bosses are just outright annoying and even various levels of trash. So many just run away nonstop making things extremely tedious. All play out like raidbosses in an MMO and that's perfectly fine. The highlights include the first boss and more of the final ones that just straight up fight you and offer up many chances to attack instead of running. The worst boss in the game has to be a discount Elden Beast fight. The final boss is quite a treat at least.

We ended up doing the worst bosses first and the first half of my playtime at the time of writing was legitimately one of the most average and even annoying experiences I've had gaming. The final runs helped make up for it.

Speed

This is my biggest complaint about the game. The zone is just a bother and the timer with it. I feel like the game would vastly improve without either of those things or both. There is absolutely no time to just explore, take in the sights, collect your thoughts, and celebrate or riff with friends. It's always go here, ping that, route here, fight this boss, over and over until the run is done. It's just terrible and elevates any grievances with the entire game. Even just a five minute increase to the days might do a whole lot help the matter. I would love to let my fingers off the run and sprint buttons please.

Also, why isn't the clock that's in Elden Ring when you pass time in this game's UI somewhere? It would help indicate the time which would also help figure out better routing. It very well just might help make things not feel so damn chaotic all the time.

Story

This has never been a reason to play From Software games but the character quests offer interesting lore. They're all basically glorified fetch quests though but that didn't detract much from the experience. I would still vastly prefer From Software have good lore and good storytelling rather than just the former.

Final Thoughts

Halfway through this game, I would absolutely not have recommended it but I would have commended it for being a good experiment that all game devs should strive for. I don't mean this exact kind of game but it's important to explore different ideas. We don't want anything to be milked and, despite this being an Elden Ring spinoff, this hardly feels like a cashgrab considering it's a roguelike which is already a niche genre.

By the time the credits rolled after defeating each Nightlord including the amazing final one, I do recommend this game but hope that it will be improved drastically. I think it's an overall okay game with tons of terrible stuff but the highs I felt toward the end feel like they made up for it. Maybe it's just because it's the last thing I felt as credits roll but it really did do a lot for me.

For all the solo players, I hope there's patches to help make the experience better. I hope there's a duo mode added since it's silly that it's only solos and trios. I hope that they fix all the jank in the game. Most of all, I hope they realize how many trash bosses are in here and don't do them again in another game but, then again, we had what felt like a million annoying dragons in Elden Ring so we shall see.

Considering all of these thoughts are from veteran players of these games, I feel like any issues would be made worse for newcomers. The tutorial isn't really that great and the game is just so damn overwhelming no matter what. I have no frame of reference for how this game might be for them but I feel like it won't be good.

I recommend just enough.

amazing game but add more maps or something like that for more randomization

Amazing game concept, just feels like its missing about half of content. More bosses, more randomized, more enemy types and weapons to start. New playable characters and some minor bug fixes and you have a great game.

Good to see Fromsoft is taking risks and trying something new, overall the game is fun and it isn't hard to imagine how else it could be expanded in the future. The only real problems are communication, the revive system (for the love of god at least reduce the rate of regen at 3 bars to be somewhat less), the lack of crossplay and also optimisation (frame stutter and gaping jaw, but these will likely be fixed soon anyway); I also feel like they could maybe add 1 or 2 more nights per expedition (and spice up the environment a little more), but other than what I've just said I find the game to be pretty good.

If this game gets regular free updates like new nightfarers, bosses, weapons, skins, enemies and all that, it CAN be one of the greatest games of all time. Right now it's really good, but it can be so much better, and I hope it does.

add duo/communication and cross play and it will be perfect

the moment i beat the 3 dawgs it was all over my monitor
10/10
i love gambling relics too
wish there were more relic slots tho

Man, I’ve sunk like 500 hours into Elden Ring, and as a fan, I’m pretty satisfied. Yeah, there are some flaws, but if they fix those up down the road and keep the content fresh long-term, I’d say the game’s doing great.

The game is a blast amazing combat, beautiful music, and stunning environments. It captures the Souls vibe perfectly. If you’ve got two friends and voice chat, you’ll have a great time tackling challenges together. But without a coordinated team, the experience can get frustrating fast. It really needs better solo balance and communication tools.
Rating: 8/10

Booted up the game, full of confidence
"Tutorial? Easy. I'm basically a Souls veteran."
Faced the first boss. He sneezed. I died. Twice.
Realized the real enemy… was hope.

After playing for a few hours, this game sounds like a nightmare to play with strangers.

Edit: I'm coming back at 30 hours to write about a serious lack of content
There is a fantastic game underneath everything, with really really solid gameplay. But there are so many poor design decisions, and ESPECIALLY a HUGE lack of content, even while recycling base game Elden Ring. If you're trying to get into souls games, go play DS3 or Elden Ring. If you're a die hard Souls fan, this is *probably*? worth it only for the novelty.
This isn't a live service game either, so its unlikely we're going to get much of anything in the future to fix all this. Maybe the DLC will make it recommendable.

Having beaten the last boss now at 30 hours, and gotten most of the remembrance sets (Most of which are basically indistinguishable from the default set, but some being totally different outfits), where the hell is the content? I paid 40$ for 8 bosses, a mildly different multiplayer mode that's already gotten repetitive and doesn't feel that off from Elden Ring Randomizer, and a few characters whose outfits are mostly reskins and Dark Souls armor from 10 years ago??



-No new weaponry, very little new content
Nightreign is an 'asset flip' of Elden Ring, which was expected and FromSoft didn't try to hide that. However, you would expect at least some new gear and enemies. So far, only some starting weapons for characters are new-ish (IE a different looking greatsword, ect), meaning there are no new weapons, spells, incantations, or weapon arts to pick up in the world. There isn't even the new weapons and very few enemies from Elden Ring DLC.
The only new enemies are the day 3 Night Lord bosses, so the other 80% of the game can get repetitive.
Again, I don't think anyone was expecting everything to be 'new', its an asset flip. But some new stuff was expected.
Although the new Night Lord bosses are brilliant, beautiful, and function fantastically in multiplayer, the bulk of the rest of the game is pretty 'samey'.


-Extremely poor communication tools
Most PvE group games like this have pinging, voice lines, ect to facilitate communicating with randoms. Elden ring has almost nothing. You can put a marker down on the map, and that's about the limitation of your communication.
Even something as minor as seeing your party members in the hub is missing.

-Overly strong 'encouragement' for group play
You can queue solo or with 3 randoms. However, the game is pretty difficult and balanced towards 3 players, especially Night Lords. Going at it solo, you'll need to be experienced and pretty skilled to make any progress. Even with 3 legacy players, all of us playing for 5-10+ years of souls games, it was difficult to beat the first Night Lord.
Meaning without a dedicated group of friends, you're likely at the mercy of randoms to progress. People disconnecting, trolling, leaving at inopportune times, or just being new or less skilled is just what you're going to have to put up with. We had two randoms leave/disconnect before the second night finished and the game does not auto-adjust, making the final boss rush nigh impossible with inflated pinata healthpools.
There is no 2-player queuing, though they've said it'll be implemented at some point.

-Rough experience for new players
The lack of progression, and the game's difficulty - hard even for the first boss set - is going to be a serious barrier of entry to new players. We're all here for difficulty, but for a healthy multiplayer-only game to survive, it needs to be able to ease players in. The game very much expects you to already be familiar with enemies and weapons from Elden Ring, and the UI is struggles to properly show what spells, buffs, and weapon arts do.
If you're new to Souls games, I'm sorry, you're going to have a really rough time starting with Nightreign.

-Limited sense of progression
There is no real 'progression' without beating Night Lord bosses. Initially, you have access to very little until your first kill. Night Lords are difficult to kill, so if you're a new player and not able to reliably down them, or even if you're struggling as a veteran, you're going to be spinning your wheels without feeling any sense of progression for a while. To compare to Helldivers, you always at gain levels which shows time played to give some sense of progress, and currency to spend on permanent upgrades - even if you fail. Nightreign does not have anything equivalent.
There is a shop that lets you spend some currency at for small upgrades (+2 dex, start with a Lightning residue ect), but its easy to buy it all and the upgrades you can get are pretty minor - at least until you kill Night Lord bosses. All progression is tied to downing Night Lord bosses.

-Limited customization for runs
Runs are repetitive right off the bat being 99.9% recycled Elden Ring gear and enemies, but I expected to be able to select different starting weapons, spells, and/or abilities to give runs more variation and as progression. Maybe try out a greathammer on Wyld, or a crossbow on Ironeye ect.
At time of writing, there's only minor changes you can make with Relics. Start with this buff, start with fire damage on your weapon, or that consumable, and that's about it. I'd expect some options to swap out character skills or starting weapons.

-Massively inflated healthpools mixed with weird pacing
Nightreign wants you to GO GO GO - enhanced movement and speed mixed with limited time makes you feel the need to constantly rush around and gear up.
Enemies healthpools are inflated to balance for 3 players. Night bosses can take annoyingly long to down, and some roaming bosses take most of a day to kill.
This makes you feel the need to go faster faster in the world, to stack as much damage as you can so bosses aren't taking annoyingly long to kill. It leads to a mixed pacing of feeling rushed, but things taking awkwardly long to kill.

-Poor multiplayer choices that already are leading to long queues
Nightreign is not cross-platform, there are 8 bosses to queue for, and having a quest active only queues you with people without a quest. The first weekend isn't over and people are already having 5-10m queues to get 3 people. In a few months, it could be nightmarish to find other players and it's going to hurt this game's longevity - if it has any to begin with.


To me, these are some glaring issues for a brand new Multiplayer game.

From Software has never done a game like this before and they've stated this is not a live service game, so it's unclear just how much content and support the game will get going forward.
Maybe these are going to be permanent issues forever, or maybe they'll be good about patching and content and have plans down the road that'll erase these problems. Or maybe not. From Software has a history of not communicating. The future is unclear for Nightreign.

As always, remember this is a Steam review. I'm just a player like you, and I'm writing a stream of consciousness and my own opinions. I'm not a professional being paid to review and manipulate you into agreeing with me. Just my own thoughts and some of what I think and have put here is probably just wrong or a bad take.
Nothing I've said here invalidates your own opinions of the game, and as you can see from my playtime, I'm still playing Nightreign - even if I think it has problems.

If the idea of Risk of Rain but it's Elden Ring strikes you as an absolutely deranged concept for a Fromsoft spin-off title, then you'd be right because it absolutely is but honestly it works and it works really, really well.

I don't really understand why people are acting like they're disappointed this isn't the next Shadow of the Erdtree, so many of the negative reviews early on are just "WAAAH GAME IS WHAT DEVS SAID IT WOULD BE INSTEAD OF WHAT I WANTED IT TO BE" which is useless as feedback. Fromsoft is allowed to try other things and experiment, they are not your Dark Souls slaves where they are only allowed to make one game forever.

Nightreign has a few issues, duo queuing for a matchmade 3rd is broken at time of writing, performance is a bit ass at times, the game renders at fully usable ultrawide but arbitrarily puts black bars on the sides and then EAC's you out of removing them with .ini edits, and the progression of the game is really stale until you've seen everything at which points your runs will start randomizing properly, but as a core concept it's incredibly fun.

Pick from a really well-rounded selection of characters with their own abilities and starting gear and distinct appearances, select the end-boss you want to hunt like you would Monster Hunter, then fly in, drop on to the map and run around doing Elden Ring open world content and clearing strongholds and killing mini bosses while levelling up and gathering gear to fight 2 random bosses from Elden Ring before getting to your chosen final boss which is entirely unique to this game.

It's fast paced, fun, and feels like they took that "jolly co-operation" feeling of the old Sunbros covenants and bottled it in to its own spin off game.

Like I said above, Risk of Rain but it's Elden Ring. If that sounds fun to you, you'll love this. If you are JUST here because you want the next Shadow of the Erdtree then Do Not Bother. This game is not for you and it was never made with you in mind.

This is the closest we'll ever get to an Elden Ring-style co-op PvE experience—and it's amazing.

Let’s get the most important thing out of the way first:
✅ No battle pass
✅ No microtransactions
✅ No Paid BS

Everything is included, and some content is even hidden in a way that many players won’t ever find. I guarantee a ton of people haven’t even unlocked the Revenant class yet. If this were EA, Ubisoft, or Activision, they’d be selling that class for $40.

People complaining about the lack of duo mode? It’s already solved with a mod. And FromSoft isn’t trying to block it. They even let you disable Easy Anti-Cheat and mod the game freely—or just play offline solo. What other multiplayer game lets you do that these days?

This is a rare chance to support a game that isn’t built around greed or FOMO. That alone is worth something.

Now for the real talk:
If you have two friends, this game is a blast. Communicate on Discord, plan your route, take on the night together—it feels like a full campaign co-op experience.
If you have one friend, grab the duo mod and you're still set.
If you're solo... That’s where things get rough.

Yes, there are good runs with randoms who "get it," and those moments shine. But most of the time, it’s chaos. One guy is running off to fight a level 10 boss solo for no reason while the rest of the team is halfway across the map. You’ll spend more time confused than progressing.

There's no in-game voice chat (Souls tradition), just emotes(gestures), talk items, and pin drops. It works in its own cryptic way, but for random matchmaking, it’s far from ideal.
Luckily, I play with friends now—so this isn't a problem for me anymore. But if you’re going in alone, you really need to love Souls-style gameplay to stick with it.

Gameplay?
Smooth as butter. You’re not supposed to clear the whole map. You choose what to tackle, who to fight, where to go. Make strategic decisions, scale your power, survive the night, and fight the Nightlord.
Some say the night cycle is too fast, but no, it’s perfect. This isn’t a slow, scenic open-world. You need to move, adapt, and level up quickly.

Bosses hard? Of course. It's a Souls-like. They’re supposed to be hard. You’ll get smacked, but it’s fair. There’s a revive system, and if you play smart—aggro, revive, coordinate—you’ll get your fair shot at each fight.

Some folks hate the revive system. They’re wrong. It’s genius. Your attack opportunities are a resource, and spending them to bring a teammate back creates high-stakes moments that feel earned.

First revive: 3–4 hits

Second: 6–7 hits

Third? Let’s just say… good luck.
But characters like Guardian, Executor, Recluse, and especially Revenant can turn the tide and revive the whole squad like heroes.

In conclusion:
If you’ve got a friend or two, get it. You’ll have a hell of a time.
If you’re solo… tread carefully unless you’re a hardcore Souls fan.

I was skeptical before launch, but now I’m fully satisfied with what we got. This is exactly the kind of game I want to support.

Now please... give us Bloodbo—
Oh, right. That’s in Sony's jail. Never mind.

Hello :)
I've only tried the game on the Steam Deck so far, and for those who are worried, EAC isn't a problem :)
Here's a video of it on the Steam Deck:
https://youtu.be/VDWJj2SsXjU

Started up the game.

Killed a few easy mobs.

Felt good about myself.

Immediately got crushed by Fell Omen in under a minute.

10/10 Elden Ring experience.

I swear, FromSoftware’s lore is like trying to read IKEA instructions written in Latin while blindfolded. And yet, I’d still equip it instantly if the passive effect reads

FromSoftware wrote:

“The sword once wielded by the forgotten heir, forged in the screams of the cursed moon geese.”

FromSoftware dropping the hardest boss ever: HAVING FRIENDS... Very bold of Miyazaki to think I have two friends to play with... I loved Elden Ring and FromSoft games in general but No Duos, crossplay, and voice chat is unacceptable in a game that really requires working together. This is a complete nightmare to play with randoms.

All the returning bosses got me concerned but thankfully there is no Soldier of Godrick this time, I can at least get past the tutorial now