I enter a dream world with a dagger and two squadmates, all working together to overthrow the Nightlord who controls our dreaded limbo world, but initially, we must succeed. From the deepest mine to the highest snow-capped peaks, we clashed and slew terrible beasts for two in-game days at a rapid pace to keep ahead of the final necklace of blue light. We confront the Nightlord in its nest on the second day, and we come close to defeating it with vicious spells and weapons, but, whether it succeeds or not, we shake and wait until the night to drop once more.

Elden Ring Nightreign is a spin-off of the extremely challenging story action-RPG sport Elden Ring from studio FromSoftware. Rather than spend dozens of hours exploring broad lands in a single trip, Nightreign takes the fight and boss structure to a co-op multiplayer setting where small gameplay may be balanced against speed and strategy to live each trip into the game’s arena. &nbsp,

For its part, Nightreign is a departure from FromSoftware, avoiding the gradual single investigations of its earlier activities and opting for quick-paced, scratch-built heroes that resemble battle royal shooters like Fortnite and Apex Legends. But unlike those PvP-intensive games, each Nightreign round pits the friendly squad against a map full of computer-controlled enemies, leaving players dependent on teammates to survive– or themselves, if they’re bold enough for a solo run. Players can either go it alone or queue up for three-player squads at this time.

Nightreign is focused, repeatable Soulslike action&nbsp,

Nightreign ambitiously examines how to incorporate new gameplay elements from a traditional yet well-known game. Elden Ring is a simple 100-hour or more project, testing out various strategies, updating every detail, and experimenting with new weapons. Nightreign punishes that slow pace, requiring squads to blitz around the map, hitting specific points of interest to get as strong as they can to survive and defeat the big boss at the end of each three-day run. ( If you die along the way, it can take 45 to an hour to complete a run and have to face the Nightlord boss at the end of it. )

Fans of FromSoftware’s signature tough boss combat will be sucked in by this approach because it cuts down Elden Ring’s core combat loop with just enough randomized surprises to slightly refresh each run while maintaining enough of the same to quickly change course and adjust course. That makes sense, as Nightreign is directed by Junya Ishizaki, the person in charge of overseeing the combat for Elden Ring. &nbsp,

Elden Ring appears to have a lot of elements left, but there are many subtle adjustments to make it work with fast-paced multiplayer. Player characters kit themselves out with powerful weapons and spells without worrying about stat requirements or armor. Spirit hawks lift players in aerial routes around the map and there is no fall damage, which allows players to drop from great heights and keep moving. I breeze around the map feeling quick and powerful, a hunter in a forsaken land, as you ascend hundreds of feet in an invigorating ascent with a heavy bass sound effect.

But there is some part of FromSoftware’s spirit that’s lost in Nightreign: that feeling of being dwarfed by an alien world that slowly unfolds its mysterious history as you cut your way through its cursed remains. Nightreign instead heavily draws inspiration from Elden Ring’s mythology and legends, creating a mirror-selected world with its own limited mythology that can be revealed through optional missions. Beyond developing the game around persistent squad multiplayer, many people will stick with the gameplay loop, turning Nightreign into a greatest hits album of fun FromSoftware moments, which doesn’t introduce too much new.

And the multiplayer is a joy, despite rough edges that, in true FromSoftware fashion, are unexplained or buggy in ways that the community will likely fondly rehabilitate as part of the game’s charm. For instance, the game requires a lot of escalating large plateaus by hopping up shoddy steps with shoddy ledge grabs. Although it’s a little iffy, Nightreign does raise the tension when you try to escape death or rush a teammate’s aid. Much like the other FromSoftware games, it’s also very polished elsewhere, so this iffyness or other elements are taken into account and taken care of as part of its difficulty and flavor.

Which is all to say that, for$ 40, Nightreign delivers on its vision of concentrated, easily repeatable FromSoftware action that’s sure to hook the studio’s die-hard fans and potentially lure other difficulty junkies who prefer quick multiplayer romps to lore-heavy solo adventures. Fans of FromSoftware’s tough gameplay can get their fix without having to replay games they already know with rogue-like novelty that encourages replaying.

Due to the limited number of end-run bosses to overcome, players will have a different level of replay value from Nightreign compared to previous FromSoftware games, which highlights the longevity of Elden Ring and its DLC Shadows of the Erdtree. The eight character classes, called Nightfarers, have varying complexity in their ability mechanics and will take players a while to master, but they’ll likely spend most of their time attacking with weapons and dodging enemy blows, as in Elden Ring.

There are many randomized factors that can mix up a run, from shifting terrain opening up new areas to “invasions” of powerful enemy computer-controlled Nightfarers. The single map eventually faded into obscurity as nothing more than a race course to avoid it on the way to my next task, but in the 20 hours it took me to defeat half the end-run bosses and kill the final boss.

Where Elden Ring Nightreign triumphs and falters

Nightreign is a relief for a FromSoftware fan who can muck his way through its games in ways that nobody would describe as “dominant,” as my two permanent teammates can assist a lot in a lot of distracting bosses and picking me up when I make mistakes. &nbsp,

Thanks to previewing the game earlier this year, I hit the ground running, pairing up with CNET teammates to try taking on big bosses– and failing. However, we defeated some of the biggest and worst Nightreign has to offer by pairing up with a very skilled Bandai Namco employee ( one of many who volunteered to help reviewers like me take on bosses and finish the game ). &nbsp,

There’s no mistaking that I was carried by more skilled teammates, and that has me concerned for a bit of the game’s flow and player skill growth. While my more experienced teammates flung us outbound on a quick tour of the map zones we needed to hit to get as strong as we could, while I was used to cautiously and slowly going through FromSoftware games. When I fell, they attacked bosses and evaded attacks to save me. When the map’s Shifting Earth conditions led to a new area, my expert teammate took us to the exact right spot to take full advantage of it– something that might have taken plenty more runs to figure out on my own.

I certainly got better over the years, but it was only during the rounds. In the Roundtable hub, players can return to between missions, and a Sparring Grounds area allows you to practice each of the eight ( six starting, two unlockable ) Nightfarers ‘ regular and ultimate skills as well as using every weapon in the game. However, it’s a far cry from the high-pressure situations of the original game, which include boss fights, enemy groups, and more. Players will improve only by trial and error in the field, sometimes letting down their teammates in the process.

There’s no thrill like eking out a win over a monstrous boss, though, when you and your team are firing on all cylinders. After killing three end-run bosses, Bandai Namco employee Micah (team Cat Password in all of its forms ), and I locked up to defeat the game’s final boss. Shouting out congratulations over team chat, my body shaking with adrenaline, I felt like I’d completed a gaming feat– something not unknown to many Elden Ring players after surmounting one of that game’s many challenging bosses. &nbsp,

I felt successful. I wanted to tell everyone, and when the game comes out, bring my friends in to play Nightreign with them, guiding as I was guided. Would I, however, suggest playing to my newcomer FromSoftware friends?

Who is Elden Ring Nightreign for?

My dozens of hours in Elden Ring were crucial to keeping Nightreign strong, and even then, it took 20 hours in Nightreign to feel like I had a good grasp of the best way to play. Knowing the extensive arsenal of weapons and spells used by Elden Ring made it necessary to pick up Nightreign and start playing the game right away.

New players who don’t have baked-in knowledge of Elden Ring or the combat flow of FromSoftware games will probably be left in the cold. Nightreign lacks the expertly crafted early chapters of the studio’s other games, aside from a tutorial section that teaches players basic mechanics and instructs them in a run and commands them to get killed. &nbsp,

The virtue of FromSoftware’s single-player adventures ‘ difficulties is that players could approach them at their own pace, in Nightreign, they must rapidly adapt to the studio’s particular flavor of tough combat while also figuring out a largely unexplained world. The studio’s renowned minimalist storytelling will likely do a disservice to new players who pass away too quickly to learn.

Every FromSoftware player must go through a classic trial to decide whether to keep playing the game after a humiliating defeat. But it sure seems like new players have a high hill to climb picking up on the game’s subtly conveyed details– map flow, enemy camps, bosses, weapons, churches, strategies– while also figuring out how to play Soulslikes from scratch. &nbsp,

Even so, Nightreign is so different from every other game out there that its sheer novelty might tempt both FromSoftware veterans and newcomers. It’s polished, is easy to get into the action and has a very high skill ceiling. If players stick with its lack of direction and difficulty, they’ll discover a multiplayer game that rewards victories in a way that few other games do. And when they lose, they may find themselves like I did, fumbling in frustration but eager to drop in one more time with their trusted squad.