ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN Steam Charts & Stats

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.