Elden Ring Nightreign Hands-on Preview: A New Trip Through The Lands Between

On paper Elden Ring Nightreign doesn’t make a lot of sense. It takes the name of FromSoftware’s biggest and best-selling game, and then does almost the exact opposite of what From’s games are famous for. Where Elden Ring (and Bloodborne, and the Dark Souls series, and Demon’s Souls before it) is a slow, methodical, and primarily solitary adventure through a massive world, Nightreign teams three online players together, puts them on a tight timer, speeds up everything about how the game plays, and literally drops them on a map that is constantly shrinking. Nightreign feels like an Elden Ring intentionally calling out to players who don’t like Elden Ring—fans of fast-paced, social-minded battle royals like Fortnite. And, in a testament to From’s game design skills, it somehow works excellently, winning over this Elden Ring fan who typically has no interest in ever playing online, especially co-op. 

Nightreign is built out of the same basic materials as Elden Ring. It looks the same, reusing a lot of art assets from the original game, with castles and churches and caverns that are instantly recognizable. The basic controls are mapped the same, although they can be changed, of course. The regular enemies and minibosses me and my two partners faced were pulled straight from Elden Ring, so we were already familiar with how they moved and attacked. Weapons, shields, spells, backstabs, defense, items: all will be second-nature from the start for anybody who’s already done a hitch in The Lands Between. 

Despite all those familiar aspects, Nightreign is fundamentally different in a number of crucial ways. First off, a ring of blue flame is constantly circling in on the map, reducing the space we can safely move in, and rapidly chipping away at our health whenever we’re on the wrong side of it. Most immediately noticeable, though, is the game’s speed: it’s just a lot faster all around. At the very start, no time is spent on character creation; all characters are pre-rolled, with eight total in the final game, each with their own name, visual design, and unique set of strengths and weaknesses. It takes seconds to pick one and start matchmaking. Once I join up with two partners and get dropped onto the map, my character can zip around in a hurry, and although there is a stamina bar, battles move much faster than usual. Enemies also leave more souls when they’re defeated, so between that and the shorter fights I can level up at a pretty hectic clip. Levels for each player character are all determined by the game, so I don’t have to pick which stats to boost; I just have to visit a Site of Lost Grace, hit a button to level up, and suddenly I’m stronger and healthier. There’s also a considerable leap between each level, so it’s crucial to always hit a Lost Grace whenever I have enough souls to move up. We were also strongly encouraged to start every game by clearing out the nearest camp of entry-level enemies we could find, and then immediately powering up to level two, because level two is substantially more powerful than level one—and that’s a tactic everybody should follow once this game is out in the wild. 

No session of Nightreign lasts more than three in-game days, with the first two days split into day and night cycles. Each day lasts about 15 minutes of real-world time, and they all end in climactic battles against bosses pulled from throughout From’s history. During my six or so hours playing Nightreign, these day-ending battles pitted my squads against the Centipede Demon from the original Dark Souls, Margit from Elden Ring, a Tree Sentinel joined by two fellow knights, and a gruesome twosome whose names I forget made up of a large, slow queen and a small, blazingly fast swordsman. If we could take down the main boss at the end of the first day, we’d then have to survive the second day, holding on to all the stats, weapons, and other buffs we acquired during the first day. If we took down the boss of that second day, we’d proceed directly to one of the game’s final bosses, who are all new and only appear on the third day; the only one available in the demo was a giant three-headed dog who frequently split into three different beasts, cutting us off from each other and making it hard to team up against them.

My goal in every run was to level up as much as I could on the first two days, while assembling the strongest possible build of weapons and buffs for the final boss fight. Fortunately fighting in squads makes almost every battle easier than it would be in Elden Ring; even when I mess up and get taken down by the enemy, my teammates can save me by whacking me with their weapons a few times. And even when they don’t save me in time I just die and am instantly reborn, losing one level as punishment, but with the possibility of regaining my lost souls, like in all of From’s Souls games. The only way for a run to actually end is for an entire squad to die during one of the three main boss fights, be it on the first night, the second night, or the final fight. Once that happens, the entire run is done, and we’re all dumped back to the Roundtable Hold that serves as the matchmaking lobby—losing almost everything we acquired that run.

There are some tricky design choices that take a little bit of time to get used to. For example: treasure chests found on the map are for the entire squad, and whatever’s inside can only be taken by one squad member. So, you know, choose wisely—if there’s a staff, a magic-user like the character known as The Recluse should take it; a sword should go to somebody like Wylder, a classic warrior type. But after boss fights—both the day-ending battles and the smaller boss fights that happen throughout a session, and are crucial for leveling up—every player in a squad will get their own individual drops; a few options appear on my screen, and I can pick one, from weapons or armor, to passive perks, to unique buffs like the ability to cast lightning against enemies whenever I roll or to add frost damage to every attack. (That lightning strike power-up, by the way, is absolutely amazing, and can almost single-handedly make the difference between a good run and a great one.) Some careful consideration and cooperation is needed to maximize those chests found throughout the map, but that isn’t a factor after a boss battle. Trust me: you don’t want to be the selfish teammate who grabs every item out of every chest, leaving nothing for your teammates. 

This is how a standard run would go during our demo. We’d be dropped onto the map by giant blue spectral eagles, which can also be used to traverse the map during a round. We’d head to the nearest basic enemies so we could quickly level up. We’d then try to find a church to get an extra Estus flask charge, and next head for a castle or cavern in order to fight a boss and get stronger weapons and a big level boost. And then we’d repeat, trying to avoid the ethereal blue flame constantly enclosing upon us, and survive long enough to fight the boss at the end of the first night. We’d repeat the process on day two, and if we were good enough we’d wind up taking on that final boss on the third day. Despite playing with two different squads on two different days, I was never able to beat that Cerberus-looking asshole, but at least that gives me something to look forward to when Nightreign comes out late this Spring.

Despite depending entirely on online multiplayer co-op, From’s still gotta be From, so there’s no in-game voice chat. The main way teammates will communicate is by placing visible waypoints on the map; when I saw a thin red beam of light off in the distance, I knew one of my partners wanted us to head in that direction. Without the ability to talk to each other, it’s a little easy to get split up, to lose track of each other, and to wind up far apart on the map. Fortunately it’s also easy to quickly move around the map. There’s no fall damage at all, so I could just dive off a cliff if my partners were below me. Conversely, if they were above me, I could jump up the side of a cliff without too much difficulty. Those spectral birds are also always summonable at certain glowing trees that can be found across the map. 

Given how much Nightreign changes about Elden Ring and From’s general design philosophy, it’s a little surprising that there’s no way to directly communicate with partners in-game. It’s one of the most faithful parts of this game, though, and helps preserve a bit of the mystery that From games are known for. We were a little spoiled during our demo; I was always sitting within a few feet of my team and so we could talk to each other without voice chat. That won’t be an option once the game is actually released, and I look forward to seeing how that lack of conversation impacts my ability to work with a team. 

Our demo didn’t include every playable character or every boss that will be in the final game, but based on the hours I’ve spent on it Nightreign is about as unusual as it sounds. It is emphatically not the Elden Ring we know, and yet it still looks and often feels like that game. It’s legitimately impressive how From has been able to preserve the spirit of Elden Ring within a type of game that’s largely antithetical to the original. I can’t imagine Nightreign eclipsing Elden Ring in the hearts and minds of anybody who fell hard for that game, but I can certainly see people who didn’t get hooked on the original, and people who enjoy shorter, faster, less complex action games, feeling more comfortable with this curious spinoff. Ultimately the two games are trying to accomplish vastly different goals using some of the same tool kit; no matter which direction any given player might prefer, there’s absolutely room for both of them.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.