A Spinoff that Became One of My Favorite FromSoft Games - Elden Ring Nightreign

Preface

You might've noticed that my release cadence on the website/substack has slowed down considerably! That's because my move back from Japan took so much time that I decided to slow down so that it doesn't add too much time pressure to my (unfortunately) busy life! I'll probably stick to the video scripts here for now, but I'll be working on the extras if I have time!

Introduction

Before we start, for clarity’s sake, I’m going to refer to Elden Ring Nightreign as just Nightreign, and any time I mention Elden Ring, it’s about the main game.

So, what is Nightreign? Nightreign is actually a really weird game to describe, but I would say that it’s a Coop Souls Roguelike game. Now, that’s a bit of a weird combination, but I genuinely think that it is far more than the sum of its parts. As you probably know by now, I’m a huge Souls game nerd, and I’m a longtime fan of FromSoftware even before they made Souls games. I also got into Roguelikes (or Roguelites, however they’re categorised these days), through Hades after a friend recommended it to me. Since I am a big fan of both, I thought that this game would be something I adore.

And I do. I thought this was going to be a game I played to finish, then just moved on from. However, I’ve actually caught up to the number of hours I have in Elden Ring, and I am still having a ton of fun every time I play. This is probably one of my favorite FromSoft games, between the surprisingly interesting stories of the characters and the gameplay improvements that (in my opinion) retroactively improves Elden Ring’s bosses. The game is actually really fast paced, with very little time to actually look around and explore since there’s always a constantly ticking timer pushing you towards the Night bosses. I’ll explain more about that later.

For my group of friends, we were actually super excited for this game. We had so many people actually, that we ended up having to make multiple rooms in my Discord so that we didn’t mess each other up with callouts from different runs we’re doing. The rooms have been quietly gathering dust after people started to fall off from the game, but the game itself is still quite active and you can find matches relatively easily and quickly. The game’s really fun and has a lot of interesting mechanics, though surprisingly little RNG when it comes to map variations and possible enemies.

The footage I’ve used for this game is from a run my friends and I did specifically for the footage! True to the real experience, we had the player whose name was Player, the player whose name is a generic fantasy name, and the player whose name is fully censored. Gee, I wonder which one was which.

Story and Presentation

Let’s talk about the story and presentation. Nightreign’s main story is actually quite simple and not super interesting. The story is actually split from Elden Ring at some unspecified point in the timeline, which led to the Nightlord’s rise. This rise has been catastrophic, leading to everything going haywire and the likely end of the world. However, the Nightfarers have been called in to defeat the Nightlord and end the Night so that the world can continue to exist. The lore implication is that if you succeed, then the timeline goes back into Elden Ring’s normal timeline.

The Nightfarers are a group of people whose ancestors have sinned in some way. They are obligated to fight the Nightlord and defeat him in order to redeem themselves. Each Nightfarer actually has their own story and personal objectives, which you can learn more about in the Journal. The Journal is a set of entries from each character’s perspective, detailing what they remember of their past and what they’re currently doing. In some segments while you’re reading, you will get a prompt to “Start Remembrance” which works basically as a story quest.

I actually really like it for what it is. It’s quite light as far as stories go, but I think that the character’s stories are quite interesting. I really enjoy that when you’re doing the Remembrances, other playable characters take on the role of NPCs, and you get to see their dynamics. Each character tends to have a link to another in some way, which works really well here. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I adore the Wylder and Duchess’s stories a lot especially with how they link together. Wylder’s story in particular feels very main-story questy, and I really enjoyed it. Each character contributes to the lore and background, and I think that it exceeded my expectations for the story I was expecting from this game. Admittedly I was not expecting a whole lot, but I would invite you to give it a fair shot if you do play the game. I know that even many of my friends didn’t really pay attention and were interested once I explained the backstory to them.

Visual and Sound

Let’s move on to the visuals and sounds. Quite honestly, there’s very little to say on this front. The game is visually and audibly very similar to Elden Ring, which is great because Elden Ring is a visually and audibly very pleasing game. The visual and audio direction is as fantastic as always, and there were a few improvements made on the enemy telegraphing side, specifically on grabs, which is fantastic. The music is also generally quite nice, but as usual I don’t have too much to say on it.

On character customization, we actually have a bunch of skins for each character. Initially they’re all original skins which do look fantastic, but once you finish the game the first time, you unlock the ability to buy a bunch of Dark Souls skins as well. As someone who prefers the art direction of Dark Souls over Elden Ring, I do quite enjoy that these skins exist.

Gameplay

Basic Changes

To give a rough overview of the basics, the game is built off the same bones as Elden Ring, and they’re great bones so it generally feels great to play. There are a few specific changes however:

First up is the ability to Surge Sprint. This doesn’t replace the normal sprint, being a faster sprint that eats more stamina. Surge Sprint gives you the speed that Torrent provided in Elden Ring, but it’s baked into the characters so you can use it quickly without having to take the time to summon, go through the mounting animation, then get the speed. This helps you deal with the large area attacks that the bosses do, and lets you get back into range quickly. I think that this, in addition to the character skill, passive and ult (I’ll dive into more detail later), really improves the Elden Ring bosses in hindsight. Having all these tools to counteract the bosses’ improved mobility and combos feels significantly better than having to wait for their twenty two hit combo with a fakeout before we manage to hit the boss once, then having to repeat the dance again til the boss is dead. Continuing with the theme of mobility, we also have the ability to wall jump and climb, as well as no fall damage. This is a massive change from Elden Ring, and allows you to get to places quickly and save a lot of time.

Next up, there are no more stat requirements for gear, so anything you find during your run can be used. Instead, gear is actually limited by your current level. White gear can be used at any level, blue gear can be used at level 3, purple gear at level 7, and gold gear at level 10. This one I think is just a change they made due to the different format of the game. The lack of stat requirements helps you avoid dead runs if the RNG provides you with only stuff you genuinely can’t use, but using stuff your character isn’t statted for will still make the run significantly harder than it needs to be.

Since this is a team game, there are mechanics for you to save each other from death if you happen to go down. Funnily, this is in the form of bonking your downed body, or skills that specifically resurrect. The more times you are downed, the more hits it takes for your teammates to get you back on your feet, up to three bars where it’s extremely time consuming to bring someone up. Another nice change they made with coop in mind is that enemies are able to now be damaged during the critical attack animation. This change allows for you and your teammates to keep contributing damage, which is fantastic considering the time pressure.

Nightfarers

There are eight Nightfarers that you can play as in each run, each with their own passive, skill, ult, statline and preferred weapons. This lends itself to all the Nightfarers having a very unique identity and playstyle. Side note since I wanted to include this but wasn’t sure where to put it in, preferred weapons means that they have a unique moveset while using that weapon type, and they are more likely to drop during the runs. With the team size being three Nightfarers, this allows for different synergies and strategies to be used based on character picks for each run. You can actually all pick the same character if you so wish, which can lead to hilarious results whether it’s good or bad.

The initial characters available are Wylder, Ironeye, Raider, Guardian, Executor, and Recluse, with Duchess and Revenant becoming unlockable after defeating the first boss. There are two more DLC Nightfarers but I’ll leave them for the DLC segment.

Wylder is the first character in our list and fits a Quality build in Souls terms. He’s the resident aurafarmer whose preferred weapon is a greatsword. His skill is a grappling hook that will pull smaller enemies to him or pull him to bigger enemies, with an optional follow up attack. You can also use the skill on the ground to pull yourself there, making Wylder the most mobile character in the game. His ult is an arm canon, which does a lot of damage and staggers most enemies. This ult can also be charged to do an even bigger hit for more damage and stagger. His passive auto dodges a fatal blow once, pretty simple but extremely useful. Wylder is extremely easy to pick up and use, and is always an easy recommendation if you’re not quite sure what kind of player you are yet.

Ironeye is the Dex focused character. While his preferred weapon is a bow, his statline and skill actually lends itself quite well to using melee weapons too. His skill is a slash dash that marks enemies, so they take more damage. After enough damage is taken, the mark detonates for a huge amount of damage and staggers as well. His ult is firing a single huge arrow, which can be charged to deal more damage. His passive gives him increased… item discovery? It’s honestly kind of strange that they went with that, since it’s barely noticeable, but it’s okay I guess. Ironeye is a pretty fun and safe character to pick up and learn, with his unique bow moveset being the most fun a bow has ever felt in any Souls game.

Raider is our resident Strength build character, with a lot of tools to help him trade hits with enemies. He’s a bit strange in that he has three preferred weapon types that share one moveset, which are Colossal Weapon, Great Axe and Great Hammer. His skill is a tank and punch skill, which reduces the damage you take during the windup to a massive degree. Taking damage, both in and out of the skill, will also charge up a bigger punch that does a huge stagger and good damage. His ult is a bit of a weird one, summoning a big totem that buffs allies nearby, which is useful, but the weird collision means that bosses can clip into the pillar and hit you from inside, which is decidedly not good. His passive is not being able to die during his skill, which while being extremely powerful, feels like it could have just been part of the skill itself. He’s a really fun character for players who like to trade hits without worrying too much about getting hit back, though please worry a bit because you’re still not invincible.

Guardian is the resident Vigor based character, being our only dedicated support tank. His preferred weapon is a halberd, but realistically the shield is the most important part of his kit. His skill is a whirlwind that does a good amount of damage and stagger in a wide area, which helps manage groups or staggering bigger enemies out of attacks. His ult is a flying slam that resurrects all allies within the zone, and it can be held to provide a decent window of invulnerability for your team to either attack the boss or survive a big attack. Guardian himself doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, but his entire kit helps to enable his teammates to do damage safely, and bring them back if they make mistakes.

Executor is a Dex and Arcane based character, and can actually fill many roles with his slightly strange mishmash of a kit. His preferred weapon is a katana, and he actually has a unique katana built into his skill. His skill pulls out his unique katana and gives him the ability to deflect enemy attacks similarly to how it works in Sekiro. If you deflect enough attacks it also gives you a big counter, which does great damage. His ult turns him into a giant furry with a new extended HP bar, though you can still be downed in this form. His passive gives him increased damage after taking a status effect, which does come in handy with very specific setups, but not really something you’ll use on purpose normally. The wolf form is surprisingly fantastic at resurrecting teammates, and can do a good amount of damage.

Recluse is the Int and Faith character, being a spellcaster who can use any spell well regardless of type, though she does have staves set as her preferred weapons. Her skill eats elemental traces on enemies and allies to get some mana. The traces are left anytime they take elemental damage, and once you have three traces they can combine into one of fourteen spell combinations. Remembering at least the common ones will be helpful in learning to use Recluse. Her ult marks enemies and makes it so any damage dealt will give you back health and mana. The passive is actually just the elemental traces. She’s a hard character to pick up due to the skill combinations, but she’s an extremely powerful character if you’re willing to put in the time to learn her.

Duchess is the first character you’ll have to unlock, and is a Dex Int hybrid build. Her preferred weapon is the dagger, though given her stats I would also suggest staves as a secondary option. Her skill repeats all damage done near her in the past few seconds at lower potency, which is always useful for killing enemies faster. Her ult allows for all allies near her to slip into stealth, allowing your team to set up a combo or to take an opportunity to heal. Her passive lets her dodge mid combo then continue the combo, which kind of works okay, but I don’t think there’s enough things that really make full combos feel worth investing in. She’s a very strong damage oriented character that you can’t really go wrong on.

The final character is Revenant, and you’ll also have to unlock her. She’s a Faith focused character, and appropriately has seals as her preferred weapon. Her skill allows you to summon one of three ghosts, Sebastian, Frederick and Helen, who use the moveset of some normal enemies in Elden Ring. Sebastian is a giant skeleton, Frederick is a pumpkinhead, and Helen is a page. They all have their own HP bar, with it regenerating while they are not summoned. Her ultimate instantly resurrects all nearby allies, and for anyone who was not downed, they get a buff that makes them unable to die for a moderate duration. Her passive gives her a chance to resurrect enemies that she kills as phantoms temporarily to help fight. Managing her summons is the part that makes her quite difficult to play, but she has the stats to do huge damage with spells and an ult to pull your team back together if things go haywire.

Format of Each Run

Let’s talk about the format of each run. At the start of the run, you pick the Nightlord you’ll fight before you set off. You can go in as a solo player, as a duo, or as a trio. There is matchmaking so you don’t necessarily need a group of friends to play with, though it does help add a layer of strategy and teamplay if you are able to communicate with your team. At this point you’ll be able to pick which Nightfarer you wish to use for the run, and we go off to start.

The format of the run is essentially that there are three Nights. For the first two Nights, your objective is to go around, kill bosses, do Points of Interests, and get strong enough for the boss on Night three. On each of these nights, there will be a timer that ticks down and slowly shrinks the map, much like a Battle Royale game does. This leads to a much tighter time pressure than many other roguelikes, and Souls games in general. At the end of the first two Nights, you’ll be presented with a Night boss, who will work as a gatekeeper for progressing to the next Night. Once you finish Night two, you’ll go into the prep area for the Nightlord, and then the fight starts there.

Your main sources of power in the runs are the weapons you pick up. I know that sounds quite obvious, but let me explain. Each weapon will have a randomized Ash of War and a passive on the weapon. You’ll always want a weapon with a moveset you’re comfy with, and maybe a useful Ash of War of some kind.

The passives however, are going to be the main source of your power. There are two types of passives on these weapons, one that is active only while it’s being used, and one that is always active. The during use passives are generally stuff like healing on hit, or added status effects. The always active passives have a much bigger pool, and can vary from things like increasing all melee or ranged damage, reducing damage taken while full health, to increasing attack while two handing a weapon, to even increasing damage from Ash of War. With six slots in your inventory, having a good combination of passives can make each run significantly easier.

Continuing on, the maps are randomized in each run, with a lot of different things on the map to route your way through.

There are of course the points of interests that you can go in and quickly do, they all tend to feature a boss of some kind to cap it off and reward you with a weapon or passive. The points of interest themselves are all preset, with a few different variations available so it’s not exactly the same, so you’ll start to learn the optimal path to get what you want and get out quickly.

A quick side note to these points of interests is that sometimes they’ll spawn with a tornado above them visually, which signals that these points of interests will spawn an NPC invader to fight you once you enter. These invader points of interest usually are a lot harder than normal ones, but the invaders all drop upgraded Nightfarer gear with passives, which can be useful even once you get to the Nightlord.

There will also be bosses in the map who drop loot for you if you can defeat them. Generally there are two tiers, with normal bosses being marked with the boss symbol on the map once you aggro them once, and formidable bosses having the boss symbol with a red aura around them. The red aura bosses tend to be your end of run targets, since they usually guarantee higher tier gear for you to work with, and the game actually marks their location on the map at the start of day two.

Speaking of bosses, there are some locations with Evergaols that you can unlock to fight the bosses within. The keys usually drop from points of interest, and can be a good source of passives or souls, though they will never drop weapons so you’ll have to plan with that in mind.

There are also shopkeepers in most points of interest, not all, and they’ll generally provide you with a weapon or spell of each element to deal with specific Nightlord weaknesses in case you get unlucky with your random rolls. They’ll also sell useful consumables, and some things they sell provide good passives. There will be churches spawned at different locations on the map, and visiting one will allow you to upgrade your healing flask. Depending on your familiarity with the bosses and Nightlord, these can be very useful.

There are also Raid Events that can happen. These raids are usually an invasion of some kind from another Nightlord you do not have targeted, which you will definitely want to deal with as they give useful and interesting passives, and leaving them alone can be debilitating. There are also other events that happen unassociated with Nightlords, which will grant you unique passives or weapons as well. I think that these help keep the runs quite fresh and unexpected.

To finish off the map, we have Shifting Earths. Shifting Earths are essentially variants of the map that we have that you unlock as you progress, with a massive dungeon-like objective to each one. All of these objectives will provide you with a very powerful advantage you can use against the Nightlord, and are actually fully preset so all the minibosses and bosses are the same every time. Between that and the fact that the Shifting Earths’ final endpoint being the same every time, I will say that they’re extremely predictable, which can be a positive for some players and a negative for others.

Which actually leads me to one of the main negatives I have. The level of randomization in Nightreign is actually quite low. There are four Shifting Earths in addition to the default map, and each boss has roughly 20 map variants per Shifting Earth. That sounds like a lot, but after you finish the game the first time you can actually control which Shifting Earth spawns in each run. It is entirely possible to run into the same map seed multiple times. This actually happened with my group, where we ended up with the same map seed three times in a row. I have heard of a mod that adds a lot more variations for the modes, with bosses from other Souls games, and while I haven’t tried it out myself, I am quite excited to try it someday. There is a post launch update that has a fully randomized mode called the Deep of Night that fixes most of my issues here, I’ll expand on it more once we get to the DLC segment though since that did come after launch.

Relics

To end this segment, we have Relics. Relics are going to be your form of long term progression, with multiple dropping for you after each run regardless of win or loss. There’s a lot of RNG involved when it comes to relics, and honestly could be one of the bigger complaints here. However, let me see if I can paint an unbiased picture for you.

Each Nightfarer has a vessel that can fit in three relics, with more vessels you can buy or unlock as you play. These vessels will have their own color combinations. All relics will have a color associated with it, so it is likely not going to be usable on every Nightfarer. Each relic rolls with up to three effects, and there’s no guarantee that the effects will be actually useful to what you want. The general rule of thumb for me is if there are two useful effects, then it’s a good relic, and if there’re three useful effects then it’s amazing.

There are a few sources of relics that are preset and guaranteed. The first source is Remembrance quests, which will give you a few character specific relics that are generally fantastic for the relevant characters. The second source of the preset relics are the Nightlords themselves. All of the Nightlords will drop a thematic relic once you defeat them, and some of them are extremely versatile while others have very unique effects. Once you defeat the Everdark versions of the Nightlords, their relics will be purchasable in the Collector’s Signboard as well, which leads me to the final source of relics, the Small Jar Bazaar and the Collector’s Signboard. These shops will sell preset relics that are generally useful, and the further into the game you are the better relics you can buy. These relics won’t always be the best you can use, but I enjoy that these exist because it helps set up a baseline for what a build will be like. This way even players with bad luck will be able to cobble together a decent build.

That said, in order to get builds that you genuinely want to experiment with, the level of RNG in this is absolute insanity. Even rolling one good relic takes a lot of rolls, sometimes in the hundreds, and many characters require specific effects so they’re not universally applicable, so you have to do this grind for all ten characters. Some characters are more needy with relic slots too, which can be quite hard to work with RNG wise. I know there’s a lot of players who edit relics so they can try interesting builds, and honestly understand where they’re coming from.

DLC

Post Launch Updates

Let’s start with the free post launch updates since those actually changed a lot of things. First off, we got harder variants of each Nightlord other than the final boss himself. These bosses are called Everdark Bosses, and are generally really cool fights that start in phase two of the base fight and then push into phase three halfway through. Most of these fights are really cool and awesome, but there are some where I question the developers’ intentions and decisions. These bosses are available only while you are online and which bosses are available rotate weekly. Originally we had one everdark boss per week, but that has grown to three as of writing this script.

The second, and more important update to me, is Deep of Night. Deep of Night is a ranked mode of sorts where your target, and which Shifting Earth the map is, is randomized. They also mix in the Points of Interest from the Forsaken Hollows into them for people who have that DLC as well. I kind of wish that we had access to this in normal runs, but I realize that that could lead to a player population issue. Back to the point though, this mode has singlehandedly kept me playing for so long after release.

Each win increases the Depth points that you have, and you’ll get into higher Depth at point thresholds which add more modifiers to each run. By default, all the enemies get a boost to their health and the damage they do, scaling up with each Depth level up til 5. Once you get to Depth 3, it is possible that there will be modifiers such as hidden map information and hidden Nightlord, which doesn’t sound too bad until you’re fumbling around lost or preparing for the wrong boss.

Once you get used to the randomness and difficulty of this mode, the normal runs become significantly easier. I’m proud to say that I made it to 9999 Depth, and have that nice little ribbon now. One thing that does make me sad, and is one of the reasons that I wanted to reset my rank however, is that once I got into Depth 5, which is the highest Depth rank, the players were so good overall that it didn’t feel like it mattered if I was there or not. And before anyone mentions it, no it’s not just the Balancers Build and Revenant Claw Builds. There’s plenty of those, but I’ve seen some of the most cracked players using different Nightfarers and they’re all amazing.

With Deep of Night, we also got Deep Relics to further customize our setup. To simplify, these are three extra relic slots that give us stronger positive effects and negative effects to go along with them. Some of the new effects also adjust character stats, so some characters become proficient in other things, like Revenant getting the meme strength builds. They really do keep up with the community.

The Forsaken Hollows

To finish off the DLC segment, let’s get onto what we got with the Forsaken Hollows DLC. In this DLC, we got a Shifting Earth, two Nightlords, and two Nightfarers.

The Shifting Earth we got actually feels like a completely new map. There’s a huge amount of depth to the map, with a lot of verticality and different levels above and below. That said, it is extremely confusing and hard to navigate if you aren’t already familiar, and with some higher value objectives on the map being locked behind others, it is much more punishing than the normal set of maps. There’s also many new points of interests for normal maps as well, which in non-Deep of Night will only be available while hunting the two new Nightlords.

The two Nightfarers we got with The Forsaken Hollows are Undertaker and Scholar.

Undertaker is our resident Strength Faith character, essentially a Cleric. Her relic and skill effects help her stick to enemies and keep swinging, making her a great fit for more aggressive players. Her skill is a buff that refills stamina and boosts her damage as she keeps swinging. She actually has two different ults, the first is an improved version of her skill, and one that propels her at the enemy for a lot of damage and stagger. The improved version of her skill is notable in that it gives her auto dodge to every attack during the buff. Her passive is also quite powerful, giving her a free use of her ult each time she dodges a grab or when allies use their ult. She’s quite fun and honestly a strong character who isn’t too difficult to play.

Scholar is a very unique character in that his stats are all kind of garbo except for Arcane. However, his passive is when he uses consumable items, he gets better at using them and gains bonuses to the next use of the item type. His skill is a scan of sorts, which fills up the gauge the longer he looks at a target, with it being faster when he’s closer to the target. He can use them without filling the gauge as well, but it’s far stronger with the gauge filled. The skill allows him to debuff the enemy’s damage or “parry” an attack and stagger the attacker, opening them up to big damage from your teammates. His ultimate, and this is probably one of my favorite things, links all enemies nearby and makes it so they all take a portion of shared damage. This is fantastic for speeding up clearing points of interest as you can just link the normal enemies to bosses and then kill the boss and watch runes roll into your pocket. He’s probably the one I ended up playing the most and is who I would consider my “main”.

The Nightlords we got were great, though one of them is a 7v3 in a trio setup, and a 7v1 in a solo setup. I’m not the biggest fan of it but I do see what they were going for.

Conclusion

So, what’s the final say? I’m not even gonna pretend it looked like I would not recommend the game, I like this game a lot. I’ve got more hours in it than Elden Ring at this point, so you know it’s got me hooked. That said though, as always, I think that this will appeal to some types of players and not appeal to others.

If you’re a story/lore only player, I don’t think I can realistically recommend this game to you. The stories told are fantastic, but the gameplay is the meaty core of the game, and it’s not an easy game either, especially with the time pressure during each run and mechanical difficulty of each boss. If you want to experience the story without the stress, youtube works fine enough.

If you’re a gameplay focused player, I think that this is actually a big step up from base Elden Ring. It gives the players a lot more tools to work with and retroactively improves a lot of bosses’ designs. It also brings in old bosses from Dark Souls and gives them a fresh new coat of pain. With the Deep of Night mode, there’s a challenge to climb towards, and you get a nice little ribbon as a reward if you manage to hit 9999.

If you’re in the middle, I would say it’s worth checking out but maybe decide after checking the footage to see if you think it’d click with you. There’s a lot of good gameplay here, and the story being told is quite interesting but all completely optional. Having a premade team helps make the game a lot less random by virtue of not having to adapt to a rando teammate, so if you can find a group to play with, it can help make the game a lot easier to get into.

I can’t believe how long that review was. I hope that it’s helped you get a better picture of the game at least! Please let me know if there’s any questions you have, and I hope it helped you figure out if you want to get the game or if you don’t. Thank you for sticking around, and I’ll see you next time!