FromSoftware developing a follow-up to Elden Ring isn't surprising, but even if Elden Ring Nightreign looks and kind of feels like Elden Ring, it's still an unexpected turn. Modern FromSoftware has built its reputation on deep RPGs with precise and varied combat, buoyed by obfuscated worldbuilding and indirect storytelling. Nightreign inherits some intrigue, but the only facet it seems to have in spades is Elden Ring's combat, albeit almost entirely separated from any sort of gradual character building.

Elden Ring Nightreign is a session-based cooperative action game, designed for teams of three players, but conceivably playable alone. There's no grand adventure nor the meticulous, steady progression of a Tarnished from raggedy pilgrim to Elden Lord. You instead take on the role of a Nightfarer, locked in some cyclical battle against the Forces of Night in a world parallel to that of Elden Ring. Each session can last roughly 40 minutes if players achieve their objective of surviving three in-game days. Nightreign inherits Elden Ring's difficulty, though, and there are still some long-term progression mechanics that remain largely unclear.

ScreenRant was invited by publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment to preview Elden Ring Nightreign. The build I played is the version that those lucky enough to be selected will experience in Elden Ring's Closed Network Test in 2021, it's an illuminating first look at Nightreign's gameplay loop, but is clearly not content-complete. Nevertheless, the preview build is impressively robust, and Nightreign's familiar but unique gameplay is tantalizing and addictive.

The Night Lord Cometh

A 3-Player Co-Op Elden Ring Roguelite

The main hub of Elden Ring Nightreign is yet another version of the Roundtable Hold, this time overgrown but similarly disconnected from the game world at large. Its equivalent of the Table of Lost Grace is where you start matchmaking, selecting a Target before gathering teammates and choosing a Nightfarer (i.e. character class). The Target seems to be your desired final boss, reached by completing the aforementioned three-day cycle. In the preview build, four Nightfarers were playable: Wylder, a balanced melee character ripe for versatility; Guardian, a sturdier option that can find luck out-poising the enemy; Duchess, a nimble and quick but vulnerable rogue; and Recluse, a spellcaster decidedly more complex than the others.

Eight Nightfarers will be playable in the full game.

When a session starts, a brief cutscene is followed by the chosen Nightfarers gliding into Limveld dangling from the legs of spectral birds. While this and other mechanics are reminiscent of battle royale games, you have very little control over where you drop. Thus begins the cycle with Day 1, where you're free to explore in any direction, gathering loot and collecting Runes to level up, until a steadily encroaching circle of deadly rain forces you toward a boss fight to cap the day. Defeating this boss leads directly into Day 2, which proceeds much the same, with enemy and loot spawns refreshed and randomized, and a different boss fight at dusk.

Day 3 is different, however, consisting entirely of a boss fight against a Night Lord. There is no exploration on Day 3, and no further chances at better gear or stats. Defeating the Day 2 boss provides one more chance to acquire a better weapon or buff, and a final opportunity to level up, as long as you have enough Runes. Regardless of a run's outcome, you'll be dropped back into the Roundtable Hold when it's over.

Defeating day bosses seems to be the mechanism by which permanent progression is made through Elden Ring Nightreign. Beating even a Day 1 or Day 2 boss before being defeated nets you Relics and a sum of currency called Murk to be spent in Roundtable Hold, though the currency has no use in the preview build (the NPC to barter with is not present). Relics are items that apply buffs to your character, but are restricted in how they can be equipped, based on their color. Each of the four Nightfarers has three Relic slots, each color-coded to be filled with a Relic of the same color. For example, a Nightfarer might be able to equip two blue Relics and a green Relic, but not any red or orange ones.

Murk may be used to purchase Relics, cosmetic items, and emotes, though none of this was possible in the preview build.

The Relics acquired in the preview build were relatively minor boons, like dealing slightly increased damage with a specific weapon type, or having a modicum of resistance to certain kinds of damage. I was told that Relics later in the game, conceivably earned from defeating later, more difficult Targets, are much more consequential, and a major component to making your Nightfarers more formidable.

We Hope You Enjoy Your (Brief) Stay In Limveld

Nightreign Is Fast-Paced By Design

At times, Elden Ring can verge on meditative (certainly more so than its linear predecessors in Dark Souls and Bloodborne), riding Torrent around investigating every nook and cranny. No such luxury is afforded in Nightreign. Each day is a frenetic race to prepare for an unknown boss, resulting in near-continuous encounters – including less consequential boss fights – that require teamwork and deft resource management.

Anyone hoping for a one-to-one translation of Elden Ring's co-op gameplay into bespoke sessions will be disappointed. In theory, Nightreign is very similar, and battling alongside a couple of strangers feels familiar, but in practice, Elden Ring's assets have been grafted like Godrick's many limbs onto a game that hurries you into the action. Dropping in and clearing out that first enemy camp is an odd facsimile of getting summoned into Limgrave, but the similarities are all stripped away by the time you're deep in Day 2 and Margit's disembodied voice taunts you before the Fell Omen boss invades, doggedly pursuing one of your companions even as they run to keep up with the shrinking circle of burning rain.

From a macro perspective, however, Nightreign uses Elden Ring's open-world formula quite cleverly. Anyone who's played even a few hours of Elden Ring will plainly see how Nightreign has shuffled Elden Ring's mini-dungeons – tunnels, ruins, forts, Evergaols, Rises, etc. – and other points of interest to set up an essentially randomized gauntlet. A key difference, however, is that a Site of Grace is no longer an opportunity for reprieve (nor are there any fireside chats with Melina). You visit Sites of Grace for one reason, to level up, and there's no agonizing over which attribute to increase; each Nightfarer has set stat increments for each level, so you're best off sprinting up to the Site of Grace, mashing the level-up button as many times as your accumulated Runes will allow, then sprinting away toward the next fight.

This isn't to say there's absolutely no build crafting, but it's largely a take-what-you-get situation, grabbing the items that best suit your Nightfarer and leaving the others for your teammates. Weapons, shields, consumables, and throwables are all found from a variety of sources: in boxes and barrels (which explode in typical FromSoftware fashion when you roll into them), from opened chests, and dropped by bosses. Field loot must be shared among the party – if a chest drops a weapon, only one person can pick it up. But if a boss is defeated, each player gets to choose one of three exclusive items or buffs to take.

Weapons and shields all come with a ive buff, so even if you don't plan on using an item, it may be beneficial to put it in one of your six equipment slots anyway.

Nightreign isn't cheaply ripping areas from Elden Ring wholesale, though; Limveld has castles, mining tunnels, and derelict ruins with brand-new layouts, and the actual lay of the land is nothing like Limgrave. Although major alterations to the map don't appear to be a part of the preview build (nor the Network Test), part of Nightreign's map randomization, I was told, can be quite drastic, like lava flows covering a portion of the map. Unfortunately, there are not reimaginings of Elden Ring's other regions – a riff on Liurnia of the Lakes or Altus Plateau, for instance – though it's conceivable that this may be part of Nightreign's planned DLC.

A Parallel World & A Parallel Story

The Nightfarers May Be Nightreign's Main Characters

Gameplay appears to be Nightreign's top priority by quite a wide margin, but the same could've been said from early looks at Elden Ring. The latter, however, was more of a known quantity; it remains to be seen how much storytelling, regardless of how opaque it is, the former attempts. While in the Roundtable Hold, you can run around as one of the Nightfarers, and the others are standing there ready for conversation. My limited time with the game didn't afford me much opportunity to poke around – not to mention my teammates waiting for me – but there are a few promising threads for FromSoftware lore appreciators.

Most obviously, the Roundtable Hold is different. It's overgrown, and the decor has changed a bit, but most drastically, the room where the Two Fingers and Finger Reader Enia stood in Elden Ring is gone. The doorway opens into a courtyard sloping up toward a cliff that at first reminded me of the one at the end of the Undead Asylum in Dark Souls, from which the Chosen Undead is taken to Firelink Shrine by a giant raven. Nightreign's is devoid of crumbling ruins, though, and the focal point of the courtyard is a training area, where you can scale your character between levels one and 15, and try out seemingly all the game's weapons, many of which have minimum level requirements.

I was impressed by the number of weapons in the preview build – dozens, likely more than a hundred, were included – and I was assured that the full release will have many more. Quickly scrolling through, I found many Elden Ring staples present, including powerhouses like the Sword of Night and Flame, which carried quite a high-level requirement (12, if I recall correctly). This is a major way in which Nightreign's roguelite elements operate; there are so many weapons that every run can have small but meaningful differences in how you approach combat.

Another lore mystery that stands out revolves around Guardian, one of the four playable Nightfarers. Guardian is some sort of bipedal bird-person, walking on taloned feet and sporting a pair of wings on their back. Elden Ring's character creator provides options for which race your Tarnished belongs to, but they are all typical humanoids. There's no indication that the Nightfarers are Tarnished, but it's notable that this is the first playable character in a game with Soulsborne combat that doesn't present as a human. The full game will hopefully provide some insight into Guardian's species.

More broadly, there are inklings of a main story, though details remain scarce. Bandai Namco very pointedly capitalized the phrase "Forces of Night" when referring to the Night Lord's followers. Oddly, "Night Lord" seems to be interchangeable between definite and indefinite usage. The Night Lord seems to be the title of the main antagonist, per Nightreign's initial gameplay trailer, but it is also the name given to the final boss of a run, a Night Lord. Who or what the Night Lord is remains a mystery, but they've clearly exerted some measure of control over Limveld, which itself remains an enigma.

All that's been revealed about Limveld, per Bandai Namco, is that it is a "parallel world to Elden Ring," but what that means metaphysically is unknown. The Roundtable Hold and Grace exist in this parallel world, but how Limveld relates to the Lands Between seems like it may be one of the more tantalizing mysteries to be uncovered once the game launches. If Limveld is some sort of split reality from Elden Ring's timeline, where is the break? Does Nightreign's version of the Shattering have different consequences? Has the Night Lord risen to power long after one of Elden Ring's possible endings? More Elden Ring lore is an exciting prospect, but Nightreign's structure may make new information difficult to parse.

Elden Ring Nightreign First Impressions

A Potentially Divisive Spin-Off

Nightreign's announcement at The Game Awards 2024 was met with a mixed response, and understandably so. Elden Ring was a phenomenon, arguably the release that turned FromSoftware's formula, which had been enthusiastically celebrated by die-hard fans, mainstream. Generally, it would track that Elden Ring fans want more primarily single-player RPGs, which Nightreign is not – a roguelite is almost the antithesis of what has made FromSoftware's games steadily rise to stardom. It's not quite a live-service offering, but it's also not an appeal to Elden Ring's core audience, not even the dedicated PvP community.

For me personally, though, even this brief taste of Elden Ring Nightreign has me convinced I'll be obsessively playing it on release day. I've been bugging everyone to get on the FromSoft train since Dark Souls in 2011; I too want a more traditional follow-up to Elden Ring and was at least a little skeptical of this weird, multiplayer-first, roguelite and PvE battle royale hybrid. I'm obsessed with Elden Ring's co-op, and even though this isn't the exact same thing, there's a lot to like about a modestly priced spin-off that's stripped back to focus almost exclusively on multiplayer combat.

I fought the Scadutree Avatar boss in Shadow of the Erdtree dozens of times in co-op with strangers, just because the boss fight was so fun with multiple people. My Elden Ring save files' play times are padded because of co-op gameplay; I run a lot of dungeons and Legacy Dungeons multiple times because I find it so fun to pop into someone's world and fight through to a boss. Nightreign is a game that streamlines that process into a randomized amalgamation. I'm still a little worried I may not get world-building as robust as its predecessor's, but my preview of Elden Ring Nightreign assured me that I'll at least have a lot of fun playing.

Source: Bandai Namco Entertainment America/YouTube