Elden Ring Nightreign - Review

Elden Ring Nightreign – Review

Reviewed by Karan Parmar | May 30, 2025

Elden Ring: Nightreign is a bold departure from the open-world exploration of its predecessor, introducing a roguelike, co-op-focused experience. Set in a procedurally generated version of Limgrave called Limveld, players engage in three in-game days of escalating challenges, culminating in a climactic boss battle against the Nightlord Avatar. The game emphasizes team synergy, rapid decision-making, and replayability, offering a fresh yet familiar experience for fans of the Soulsborne genre.

Gameplay Loop & Core Mechanics

Elden Ring: Nightreign introduces a significant shift from the expansive open-world exploration of its predecessor to a more structured, roguelike experience. Players embark on three-day in-game cycles, each lasting approximately 15 minutes, set in the procedurally generated realm of Limveld. The primary objective is to gather resources, defeat increasingly challenging enemies, and culminate each cycle with a formidable boss battle, leading up to the ultimate confrontation with the Nightlord Avatar on the third day.

This cyclical structure fosters a sense of urgency and replayability but the constant pressure to progress within the time constraints can sometimes overshadow the depth of exploration and strategic planning that fans have come to appreciate in FromSoftware titles.

Combat System & Class Design

At its heart, the combat stays true to the Soulsborne formula—players manage stamina carefully while balancing light and heavy attacks, dodges, blocks, and parries. These fundamentals maintain a satisfying rhythm, where reckless aggression is punished and measured attacks rewarded.

Nightreign speeds up the pace compared to the original Elden Ring, forcing quicker decision-making amid waves of enemies and environmental hazards. This shift transforms combat into a more frantic, intense experience without sacrificing the depth and weight of each hit.

Players choose from a roster of eight predefined classes, each offering unique abilities and playstyles:

Wylder: A balanced melee class equipped with a grappling hook and arm cannon, providing both mobility and explosive offense.
Duchess: An agile assassin capable of cloning herself and cloaking allies, facilitating surprise attacks and evasive maneuvers.
Recluse: A complex sorcerer class that manipulates elemental essences for powerful spellcasting.
Guardian: A defensive class capable of generating protective barriers and whirlwinds to control the battlefield.
Seer: A support class that enhances team abilities and provides strategic advantages.
Ravager: A heavy-hitting class specializing in area-of-effect damage.
Sentinel: A balanced class with a focus on crowd control.
Warden: A healing class that ensures team sustainability during prolonged engagements.

The synergy between classes encourages strategic team compositions, although the lack of restrictions on duplicate classes can lead to unbalanced setups.

AI Teammates & Solo Play

For those going solo, Nightreign can be a punishing experience. While AI companions are present in some areas, their poor pathfinding and slow reactions often make them more of a hindrance than help. They struggle to keep up in combat, frequently getting stuck or failing to support when it matters most. The game doesn’t scale enemy difficulty for solo players—encounters remain just as aggressive and densely packed as they are in co-op. Combined with the lack of a reliable revive mechanic, solo runs feel unbalanced and unforgiving. It’s clear the game was designed with multiplayer in mind, and lone players may find the experience more frustrating than rewarding.

World Design & Procedural Environments

Limveld, the reimagined version of Limgrave, offers a procedurally generated landscape that changes with each run. This dynamic environment includes varying weather conditions, enemy placements, and dungeon layouts, ensuring that no two runs are identical but the procedural nature sometimes results in less cohesive and memorable environments compared to the meticulously crafted areas in the original Elden Ring.

Multiplayer & Co-op Systems

Nightreign is fundamentally designed for cooperative play, supporting teams of up to three players. The multiplayer experience is enriched by unique mechanics:

Revival System: Downed teammates can be revived by attacking them, adding a layer of urgency and strategy to combat scenarios.
Shared Rewards: Loot and experience are distributed among team members, fostering a collaborative atmosphere.
Class Synergy: Combining different classes can unlock powerful team dynamics, such as the Guardian’s protective abilities complementing the Duchess’s stealth tactics.

However, the multiplayer experience is hindered by the absence of essential features:

Lack of in-game voice or text chat, making communication challenging.
Minimal ping system, reducing the ability to coordinate effectively.
No matchmaking filters, leading to potential mismatches in team composition.

These omissions can detract from the cooperative experience, especially when playing with random teammates.

Loot, Buildcrafting & Replayability

The game introduces a streamlined progression system:

Relics: These are permanent upgrades that enhance your character’s abilities in meaningful ways, such as increasing health, stamina, or unlocking new skills. Relics provide a satisfying sense of long-term progression, rewarding players for repeated runs and encouraging them to tackle tougher challenges as they accumulate more power.

Marks: Serving as the game’s currency, Marks allow players to purchase cosmetic items, unlock new character customization options, and sometimes acquire minor quality-of-life upgrades. While they don’t directly impact combat, Marks help personalize the player’s experience and add a layer of motivation for exploration and combat encounters.

Randomized Loot: Each run offers a fresh selection of weapons, armor, and magical gear, with different rarities and stat variations. This system encourages players to experiment with new builds and playstyles, keeping the gameplay dynamic and preventing stagnation. The unpredictability of loot drops also adds excitement and surprise to each new session.

Despite these systems adding depth and replay value, the overall sense of progression between runs can feel limited for some players. The permanent upgrades, while impactful, may not be enough to fully offset the challenge spikes or the procedural world’s randomness. This could lead to a feeling of grinding rather than meaningful advancement, potentially affecting long-term engagement for those who prefer more substantial character growth or story-driven progression. Still, for players who enjoy mastering mechanics and adapting to new setups, the system offers plenty of incentives to keep coming back.

Graphics & Visual Fidelity

Visually, Nightreign uses many of the original Elden Ring’s assets, giving players a world that feels familiar but with some noticeable changes. The procedural generation brings in new twists like meteor showers, volcanic eruptions, and shifting weather, which make each run feel alive and unpredictable. These environmental changes don’t just look impressive—they also affect how you approach exploration and combat. At the same time, because a lot of textures and locations are reused, players who know the original game well might find the world less surprising or fresh. Still, the mix of old and new keeps things interesting enough to stay engaging for most runs.

Sound Design & Music

The audio design really pulls you into the game’s world, featuring a haunting soundtrack that sets the mood perfectly. Sound effects feel weighty and sharp, making every encounter more tense and immersive. When you face bosses, the orchestral music ramps up, adding a powerful sense of drama and intensity that makes those fights feel even more epic. Overall, the sound work does a great job of matching the game’s dark and mysterious atmosphere.

AI & Enemy Design

Enemy encounters in Nightreign are tough and diverse, pushing players to constantly change up their strategies. The boss fights stand out, with intricate mechanics that demand careful timing and good teamwork to overcome. Because enemy placements and behaviors shift with each run thanks to procedural generation, you never quite know what to expect. This keeps every encounter feeling fresh and full of surprises, so players always need to stay on their toes.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

Innovative cooperative gameplay that redefines the Soulsborne experience.
Diverse class system offering varied playstyles and strategic depth.
Procedurally generated environments that enhance replayability.
Intense boss battles that demand teamwork and coordination.

Cons:

Lack of essential multiplayer features, such as in-game communication tools.
Time constraints that may feel restrictive to some players.
Limited solo play viability, with difficulty not scaling appropriately.
Reused assets that may diminish the sense of novelty.

Final Verdict

Elden Ring: Nightreign is a bold experiment that successfully introduces cooperative roguelike elements into the Soulsborne formula. Its emphasis on teamwork and strategic class synergy offers a fresh and engaging experience, but the game’s potential is hampered by missing multiplayer features and pacing issues that may deter some players.

Best enjoyed with a coordinated team, Nightreign offers a thrilling yet imperfect journey through the treacherous lands of Limveld.

Rating: 7.5/10

Special thanks to Bandai Namco Entertainment for providing the review code.
© Images and screenshots used in this review are courtesy of Bandai Namco Entertainment / FromSoftware Inc.

Buy the Game

You can purchase Elden Ring Nightreign from the following official platforms:

Support the developers and dive into an all-new chapter of the Lands Between—master the cycle, forge your legend, and confront the darkness of the Nightreign firsthand.

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