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Elden Ring Nightreign Review: Chaos, Co-Op, & Carnage Done Right
Platform(s): PS5 (version reviewed), Xbox Series, PC
Genre: Soulslike Survival Roguelike
I’ve never slain a single boss in Elden Ring. In fact, I’ve yet to actually touch the game. Or any Soulslike, for that matter. Yes, yes—I can already hear the collective gasp of sweaty keyboard warriors calling for my public execution. But alas, here we are. Because while I was still trying to figure out how to properly pronounce Caelid, a review code for Elden Ring: Nightreign landed in my inbox like a misdelivered Amazon package… except this one didn’t end up being socks.
Now, before you start sharpening your pitchforks, let me be clear—I know why Elden Ring took home Game of the Year in 2022. I’m not some clueless cave-dweller. I’ve seen the memes, the montages, and that one guy who beat the game using nothing but a banana. And from the handful of blood-soaked hours I’ve poured into Nightreign, I can safely say this: it doesn’t just live up to that legacy—it comfortably drinks from the same poisoned chalice, and then asks for seconds.
So, canonically speaking, Nightreign kicks off with a charming little apocalypse—something about a Nightlord showing up uninvited and absolutely wrecking The Lands Between. You, brave soul, step into the worn boots of a “Nightfarer,” a fancy name for someone who looked at the incoming darkness and said, “Yeah, nah. I can fight that.”
The game hands you a buffet of six playable classes—three of which return from the Network Test, and three shiny new ones. You’ve got the Wylder, a jack-of-all-trades who does a bit of everything and masters nothing. The Guardian, a walking fridge with arms who can soak up damage like a steel sponge. The Recluse, who wields magic and social anxiety in equal measure. And now added to the mix are the Ironeye (basically a fantasy sniper), the Raider (a rock with anger issues), and my personal pick—the Executor.
Now, I’ll be honest: my experience with Soulslikes is about as developed as a wet tissue. So I naturally gravitated towards the Executor—not because I have a death wish, but because he’s all about dodging, weaving, and slicing up enemies with the grace of a caffeinated ballet dancer. He’s got S-rated Dexterity, which in plain English means he’s built to run rings around anything trying to kill you. Perfect for a total noob who’d prefer not to get flattened every five minutes.
But the real spice lies in their signature skills and ultimate abilities. For example, the Executor goes full anime and transforms into a towering, dog-like demon that mauls enemies with the enthusiasm of a starving Rottweiler. It’s as terrifying as it is effective—especially when your health bar is throwing a tantrum and the boss music’s just kicked in.
Other classes bring their own tactical flair: the Wylder lets off a damage burst like he’s shouting at the enemies. The Guardian conjures a shield the size of a small SUV that can tank hits and resurrect teammates, which is absurdly handy. And the Recluse? He curses enemies so everyone gets free HP and FP bonuses for piling on. It’s like a team-building exercise, except your icebreaker is a demonic incantation.
And yes, you can double up on classes if you’re that kind of masochist, but coordination actually matters here. Talk to your teammates, balance out your party, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll live longer than five minutes.
Once you’re done choosing your flavour of death, the game drops you into its own version of the Roundtable Hold. You can either pair up with two complete strangers (hi anxiety) or use a password system to rope in your equally unprepared mates. After a short cinematic, you’ll be launched over a region called Limveld like a trio of fantasy paratroopers—landing in a world that wants you very, very dead.
After you’ve selected your class and taken to the skies over Limveld in that rousing co-op intro cutscene, Nightreign wastes no time letting you loose into its single available expedition: a 30-to-90-minute rogue-lite gauntlet culminating in a showdown with the fearsome Tricephalos. It’s a trial by fire—and moonlight—structured as a three-day campaign that’s really more of a five-phase sprint: Day One, Night One, Day Two, Night Two, and a final boss fight that will humble any unprepared Nightfarer.
Day phases are essentially the looting and levelling grounds. Every player begins a run at level one, equipped with basic gear and any relics they’ve unlocked through past victories. These relics act as passive, run-to-run power-ups—reminiscent of Hades or Dead Cells—and the stronger your previous performance, the juicier the relic bonuses you’ll receive. My go-to strategy? Touch down and sprint headfirst into the nearest enemy camp for a quick EXP bump. Early aggression usually pays off, especially since the day cycle is built to reward fast decisions and faster movement.
Limveld, the sprawling battlefield, is dotted with meaningful points of interest—each with consistent, predictable rewards:
At first glance, it’s overwhelming. But once you clock the always-shrinking zone-of-death circle, it quickly teaches you to play with urgency. Thankfully, speed is baked into every movement decision. Sprinting is now mapped to the left stick and comes without the stamina penalty you’d expect. Fall damage? That’s been chucked out. You can leap off cliffs, parkour up walls, or rocket up via Spiritsprings. Limveld’s traversal is less about punishment and more about keeping you in the fight.
Gone are the contemplative, stat-dissecting level-up menus from vanilla Elden Ring. Each class comes with a locked-in upgrade path. When you reach a Site of Grace, you’ll find a streamlined level-up system: press a button, get stronger. Got enough runes for four levels? That’s four quick button presses. No fuss, no min-maxing paralysis.
The mobs and bosses you’ll face during the day are often familiar faces—Godskin Nobles, Fire Chariots, etc.—but the three-player co-op aspect tips the scales. What would be a soul-crushing solo encounter becomes a moment of tactical rhythm and satisfying coordination. With three of us hacking away, most fights felt like speed bumps instead of roadblocks.
Moving onto the gameplay. It doesn’t take a Souls scholar to realise Nightreign is on a completely different energy level from Elden Ring. From the moment you touch down in Limveld, the game practically screams, “Right then! Let’s get on with it!”
Gone is the slow, methodical combat loop of traditional FromSoftware titles—here, you’re in a sprint from the word go. You don’t stalk enemies. You collide with them. It’s like the developers looked at the original Elden Ring and said, “What if we poured Monster Energy into the map?”
Even if, like me, your experience with Elden Ring extends only to watching Ludwig weep and Kai Cenat scream into a microphone for 12 hours straight, it’s still immediately obvious how much faster Nightreign moves. Combat, traversal, even looting—it’s all been cranked up a few notches.
And you know what? It works. Nightreign thrives in the chaos. It wants you to sprint headlong into a swarm of undead and figure things out on the fly. The pace feeds into the multiplayer synergy too—where one second your team’s strategising, and the next, someone’s set off a boss fight while you’re still looting a cabbage.
This isn’t just “Elden Ring Lite” or “Soulslike for TikTokers”—it’s a deliberately frantic, co-op twist on the formula. Think less opera, more mosh pit. And honestly? It’s the jolt of adrenaline the genre didn’t know it needed.
Interestingly, Nightreign eschews armour systems altogether (barring shields). Instead, you’re working with six weapon slots and two amulet slots. You can carry weapons you don’t intend to use just for their passive effects—essentially creating a build from bonuses, not just your active loadout.
For instance, let’s say you equip a dagger that causes high bleed damage. Later, you might pick up a spear that boosts status effect build-up. Even if you never swing that spear once, its effect stacks with your dagger’s bleed output. This opens the door to organic, synergetic builds that can turn your Nightfarer into a monster-melting machine—or, if the RNG gods curse you, a wildly mismatched mess of buffs and bonuses that don’t quite gel. It’s part roguelike, part Souls, and the alchemy is tantalising.
And it’s not just weapons—defeating bosses gives you access to modifiers. Some are bland-but-useful (like a +10% to physical damage), but others are absurdly fun. Ever wanted to summon a poise-breaking lightning bolt every time you dodge? Or trigger a frost nova whenever you start sprinting? Welcome to the chaos of buildcrafting in Nightreign.
Everything changes once the sun sets. After the zone shrinks enough, a minor Erdtree sprouts in the map’s centre, signalling the arrival of that night’s boss. These encounters are no joke. They’re where Nightreign sheds the friendliness of its daylight romp and dons the cape of a Soulsborne again.
Survival becomes a team effort. If someone goes down, reviving them is a matter of attacking their body, though each successive revive requires more hits. If your group struggles during Night One, that’s your cue: you’re probably under-levelled, under-geared, or poorly built. Either course-correct fast or brace for a gruelling uphill battle going into Night Two and beyond.
Despite what the loading screens might imply, Nightreign isn’t all doom and despair. Occasionally—just occasionally—you witness a miracle. A teammate clutching a fight with 2 HP and a prayer. A last-minute dodge that turns a wipe into a win. These aren’t just “cool moments”; they’re borderline cinematic. It’s the kind of tension you don’t find in most multiplayer games—because here, every nightfall is basically a knife’s edge with weather effects.
Each night’s boss fight is the great equaliser. It doesn’t matter how many mushrooms you’ve foraged or wolves you’ve kicked into rivers—when the moon rises, the real test begins. Coordination, timing, damage output, and yes—how many of your mates haven’t wandered off to loot a barrel mid-fight. All of it matters.
And what a gallery of nightmares you’re up against. You might end up facing the Demi-Human Queen and her deranged, machete-swinging Swordmaster. Or maybe the Bell Bearing Hunter, who looks like someone tried to build an Assassin’s Creed character out of pure malice. Or perhaps the Leonine Misbegotten, a lion-thing so aggressive it makes Scar from The Lion King look like a household pet. And if you’re really unlucky, you’ll face the Tree Sentinel and two Royal Cavalrymen, because why stop at one overpowered horseback nightmare when you can have a whole damn cavalry charge?
There’s no telling who you’ll face each night—it’s random, like a cursed gacha machine. But that unpredictability is half the thrill. One run you’ll cruise through, the next you’ll be flattened in five seconds and wondering why your healer is emoting instead of reviving you.
Survive the night, though? Conquer that chaos? Oh, the game rewards you. And not just with loot or shiny new gear—it rewards you with the smug satisfaction of surviving a cosmic horror with two strangers who couldn’t even agree on which direction to walk five minutes ago. It’s brilliant. Stressful. Ridiculous. And somehow, utterly addicting.
Day two in Nightreign kicks off in familiar fashion—your squad respawns at the edge of the map, fully refreshed and ready to rumble. But while the loop feels the same, the stakes have quietly escalated. This is where FromSoftware starts to flip the knife, gently at first.
Your main goal is still to explore the map, scoop up loot, and build your ideal death-dealing machine. If your party wipes during this day phase, the punishment isn’t the end of the run—but it still stings. You drop your runes (which you can recover), but the real loss is time. You wasted minutes battling an uninvited guest, and those are minutes you could’ve spent powering up for the fight that actually matters: night two.
The second boss phase can feel like the game is trying to humble you. You’ll either face The Centipede Demon—a massive, twisted abomination that feels brutal but beatable—or you’ll meet what might be Nightreign’s equivalent of a Soulsborne group therapy session: the Three Sentinel Knights. This trio is pure evil.
They don’t just hit hard. They hit in perfect sync. They force your team to act as a single unit. If someone starts mashing buttons like they’re in a Street Fighter match, your whole squad suffers. Coordination is everything. Target one Knight at a time. Share your heals. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll whittle them down before your flasks run dry and your revive attempts become tragic comedy.
In my play sessions, my group only made it past this wall of pain once out of six or seven runs. Most attempts ended with us frantically dodging, screaming over Discord, and reviving each other like we were playing Dark Souls: Battle Royale Edition.
Assuming you do manage to scrape through night two—either by raw skill, brilliant coordination, or sheer luck—day three arrives… by not arriving at all.
There’s no map roaming this time. No mobs. No distractions. Just a short prep phase where you can spend your remaining runes on levelling up or snagging last-minute consumables from a vendor before walking into the final gauntlet. It’s the quiet before the storm—like the world knows this is your last shot.
And then… it’s boss time. The moment where dreams are either forged in fire—or more often, shattered like a porcelain mug lobbed at a wall in rage. Whether you win or lose, your run ends here. There’s no wiggle room. No quicksave. No hero’s second wind. This is the bit where the game rolls up its sleeves, grins, and says, “Right, let’s see what you’re really made of.”
Through my review playthroughs, I only made it to the third night twice. Two whole times. And I lost. Both. Our party was basically made of glass and blind optimism. For context: I only survive Night One maybe once in every three runs. And when I do? Reaching Night Three happens maybe once in five of those.
So yes—it’s hard. But not unfair. Not too hard. It’s exactly the kind of punishing challenge you expect from anything with “Soulslike” tattooed across its chest in blood and regret. You’re not being blindsided; you’re being tested. Brutally. Repeatedly. Gleefully.
But here’s the twist: it’s bloody fantastic. It’s the kind of fun that hurts your pride and massages your dopamine receptors at the same time. Every loss became a shared tragedy. Every win? A full-blown celebration. I played most of it with one of my closest mates, and I kid you not—our Discord calls were like a football final whenever we survived a boss. Critical hit? Screaming. Dodge spam success? Euphoria. Every night felt like gambling with your sanity and walking away just a little bit poorer—but way more alive.
It’s not just a game of survival—it’s communal catharsis. A beautiful downward spiral with your friends in tow.
Regardless of whether your team slayed the final boss or got flattened halfway through night two, Nightreign doesn’t let your suffering go unrewarded.
Every completed run—or failed one, for that matter—grants you relics: persistent upgrades that carry over into future expeditions. These range from straightforward stat buffs to build-defining modifiers that can steer your entire run from the outset. Think of it as a roguelike loop, only laced with FromSoftware’s signature brand of cruelty.
So even if a run lasts just 30 to 90 minutes, each attempt chisels away at your ineptitude, making you—and your builds—sharper, stronger, smarter. Until one day, those dreaded Sentinel Knights? They’re not your death sentence anymore… just your warm-up act.
With that said, I highly recommend playing with a full party of three—either with friends or via solo queue matchmaking. The game is built around synergy, clutch revives, and shared suffering. Going solo might sound like an enticing Soulslike challenge, but unless you’re cosplaying Let Me Solo Her, it’s a brutal uphill climb I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
That said, during the review period, matchmaking was hit-or-miss. It sometimes took anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to find a lobby. Not ideal—but entirely expected, given the pre-launch player base. Fingers crossed this issue vanishes once the full release drops and the servers are teeming with fresh victims.
Aside from the matchmaking quirks—where solo queues sometimes felt longer than an Elden Ring boss fight phase transition—there’s surprisingly little I actively dislike about Elden Ring: Nightreign. In fact, it’s a blast. Pulling off a win by the skin of your teeth delivers that same primal satisfaction that I’d imagine you’d get from conquering Margit, Malenia, or any of Elden Ring’s many iconic nightmares.
The moment a round ended, I couldn’t wait to jump back in and see what kind of chaotic build I’d cobble together next. And when my team finally brought down that blasted day three boss? We cheered like we’d just won a small war. It’s those moments—shared, sweaty, and triumphant—that remind me why I fell in love with the Soulsborne genre in the first place.
That said, Nightreign doesn’t walk away entirely unscathed. It’s clear that the game was designed with three-player co-op in mind, but it’s a bit baffling that two-player matchmaking isn’t supported at launch. You’re either solo—or you’re part of a trio. Duo players currently have to awkwardly fill the third slot with a random or risk running a man down. Thankfully, the devs have acknowledged this and seem open to patching it in later.
There’s also the minor issue of communication, or lack thereof. Without built-in voice or text chat, you’re left relying on a barebones ping system to coordinate, which can feel like trying to mime tactics during a boss fight. For a game that thrives on synergy, this feels like a missed opportunity, especially when things start going sideways.
And then there’s the issue of clarity—or the complete lack of it. Important mechanics like reviving downed teammates or how relics interact with your build aren’t always well-explained, leading to trial-by-fire situations that, while very Souls, aren’t always very fun.
The limited weapon variety during expeditions also stood out. RNG can be cruel, sure, but when three runs in a row handed me the same uninspiring stick with different modifiers, I started to wonder if the loot pool had been hollowed out.
The map itself, while beautiful in that melancholic FromSoftware way, can be tricky to navigate, and storm warnings are easy to miss without constantly checking the sky like an anxious weatherman. Without a mount, traversal feels slower than it should, especially when death means retracing your steps all over again.
And if there’s one final caveat, it’s that Nightreign might feel a little content-light at launch. With just one map and a handful of classes to start, even its roguelike variety can only carry it so far. But that feels less like a problem and more like a promise. With new expeditions, classes, and balance patches already hinted at, FromSoftware clearly sees this as a foundation rather than a finished product.
Nightreign is a hell of a time—but like any good roguelike, it’s only as exciting as what comes next.
For now? I absolutely cannot wait to jump back in for more. Nightreign takes FromSoftware’s mastery of tension and triumph and remixes it into a co-op formula that’s stressfully brilliant, borderline ridiculous—and dangerously addictive.
It’s not trying to out-Elden Elden Ring. Instead, it turbo-charges the experience with a multiplayer twist that turns despair into shared laughter, and panic into camaraderie. The rogue-lite loop keeps things snappy, the class system is absurdly well-designed, and even as someone who’s never touched a Souls game before, I felt like I belonged in this world of moonlit carnage and beautifully timed dodges.
Sure, it trims away the slower, methodical approach that purists might hold dear, and yeah, there’s a certain chaos to the pace that might not be for everyone—but Nightreign doesn’t care about that. It wants you to dive in, mess up, die gloriously, and laugh about it with friends. It’s FromSoftware with the safety off—and it’s an absolute blast.
Review code provided by publisher.
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