In a night full of surprises at the Game Awards 2024, Elden Ring Nightreign may have been the biggest shocker of them all. FromSoftware built its reputation on the fabled Dark Souls series and single-player games. While games like Elden Ring and Bloodborne include co-op, the studio has never taken its award-winning formula into full-on multiplayer territory. That changes on May 30.
Digital Trends spent four hours playing Elden Ring Nightreign ahead of its release date reveal. FromSoftware’s latest borrows elements from various genres like battle royale and roguelikes to create a unique experience that’s more than the sum of its parts. The already established systems have been retooled to fit a multiplayer experience, and the newly introduced ones still complement it. It feels like the kind of multiplayer extra that was attached to so many PS3 and Xbox 360 games in their era, but in the best way possible.
Where we droppin’ boys
The objective in Elden Ring Nightreign is to survive three days. There’s exploration to be done, loot to be found, and bosses to be slain during that time. At the start of a session, players have the choice between eight classes, but I was only given four in the demo: Wylder, Duchess, Guardian, and Recluse. That batch includes your typical melee character focused on being an all-rounder, a speedy glass cannon, and a tank. Most of these are straightforward as they solely rely on physical hits.
The Recluse, a primary magic user, is definitely the most difficult one to adjust to of that crop. I had to learn how to conserve my MP, and restoration is hard to come by. Plus, I had to be more reliant on enemy weapon drops, just in case I couldn’t cast spells anymore and needed a backup. Playing as the Recluse definitely has its benefits, as it has huge damage potential, but managing MP is a challenge.
Gameplay allows for up to three people to participate at a time, and thankfully, there are no class restrictions or limits. You can pull up with a squad of three Guardians if you’d like. Your party then drops into The Lands Between on some mystical birds, Neightreign’s version of the Fortnite Battle Bus. In fact, there’s a wall of fire that closes gradually during the day, and once it transitions to night, the ring creates an arena for your party to fight the boss in.
In one instance, my party was fighting a mini boss in an underground cavern, but the fire closed in on us mid-battle. We had no choice but to abandon the encounter and escape so that we wouldn’t suffer continuous damage. Players have to be tactical in how much time they spend exploring the different dungeons and castles in search of loot.
Traversal in Nightreign is significantly faster than you’d expect from your average FromSoftware game. characters run like Usain Bolt in comparison to Elden Ring, and there is absolutely no fall damage whatsoever. They can even grab onto ledges and climb hills. Despite those major changes, the combat feels much the same. It’s a reminder that Elden Ring’s gameplay was always more fast-paced than players may have realized; everything has just been sped up to adapt to Nightreign’s new multiplayer systems.
Adapting to change
That’s not the only big change to Elden Ring’s formula. Nightreign simplifies much of FromSoftware’s level up and death systems. Instead of picking which stats to increase at a Site of Grace, stats grow depending on character class. For example, Guardians will always have a higher HP stat than other classes, and Recluses will always have lower HP stats. This helps streamline the Nightreign experience by decreasing the mental tax of deciding which stats to increase.
As a side effect of that, players no longer drop Runes upon dying. Instead, there are no consequences whatsoever for dying during the day. There’s an evil catch, of course: die during the night, in the middle of a boss fight, and lose a level. It’s fascinating to see how much a level or two can really mean the difference between life and death in Nightreign. This adds an incredible amount of tension during boss fights and players need to try their hardest to stay alive.
Though that’s a harsh punishment, Nightreign is surprisingly forgiving too. Downed allies can be revived by continuously hitting them. This means that the more powerful a character is, the faster they’ll be able to get allies back on their feet. It’s a clever inversion that really fits the unforgiving setting of Elden Ring.
Thankfully, the trademark difficulty that Elden Ring is known for is still intact. The boss I faced off against during my first night was the Centipede Demon from the first Dark Souls game. That foe wasn’t terribly difficult, especially with a group of three, but the boss of the second night was absolutely brutal. The Tree Sentinel from Elden Ring appeared with three other henchmen. Not only did the hulking beast deal ungodly amounts of damage, but his henchmen actually had two health bars — one for their horses and one for themselves. My party was eventually overwhelmed and wiped out.
At the end of our run, we received relics that we could attach to our characters to get bonuses such as increased attack power or burn damage. This roguelike element makes it feel like our time wasn’t wasted even though we failed. Unfortunately, my group never made it to the third night. Not only was the Tree Sentinel horrifyingly difficult, but we ran into connection issues that caused teammates to drop out suddenly. Every time it happened, we were forced to exit the game and start our run all over since it was pointless to carry on with just two people. It was a total buzzkill. That shouldn’t be a problem for launch, though. While this demo didn’t let players rejoin the session, Bandai Namco said that the final build will allow players to do so.
If Elden Ring Nightreign can iron out its connection issues, there’s real potential here. It brings me back to the era of obligatory multiplayer game modes that you’d find in Mass Effect 3 or The Last of Us during the PS3 era. Not all of them made sense, but it sometimes produced some creative gems that earned them a loyal player base. Nightreign feels like one of those better ideas because it knows exactly what it’s doing. It has smartly taken Elden Ring’s existing ideas and fit them into a multiplayer mold while retaining what made the game so beloved in the first place. That already feels like a winning recipe.
Elden Ring Nightreign launches on May 30 PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
