Preview: Elden Ring Nightreign Is Not the Game You Think It Is

In FromSoftware’s standalone Elden Ring spinoff, powerful weapons come thick and fast, terrifying bosses come even faster, and you can outrun a horse.

There’s no inventory, no persistent levelling, and no PvP. Even death doesn’t keep you down. With sessions lasting 20 minutes, this is Elden Ring at breakneck speed.

Your aim is to survive for three days against the forces of night. These range from oversized bats and undead soldiers to towering dragons and tree sentinels — basically a line-up of Elden Ring‘s greatest hits.

Each session in my five-hour hands on starts in the familiar surroundings of the Roundtable Hold. Here you’ll pick one of eight expeditions, each culminating in a different boss fight against a terrifying Night Lord. Upon selecting the expedition, a cutscene triggers in which your party of three grabs onto the talons of a giant blue eagle.

This flies you into Limveld, an open map roughly the size of Elden Ring’s opening area, Limgrave. You can drop wherever you want, setting waypoints on the map to communicate with teammates in lieu of voice comms.

Now it’s time to loot weapons, collect useful items, and harvest as many runes as you can while a flickering wall of emerald fire slowly closes around you. Levelling up just once at a site of grace is enough to triple your health bar and boost your stats across the board.

What Do You Do in Elden Ring Nightreign?

The more prepared you are, the better you’ll do when you eventually encounter the random end-of-day boss. During my first playthrough, that enemy is an angry centipede that looks a bit like Romina, Saint of the Bud mixed with the cockroach alien from Men in Black.

Defeating it clears the clouds and makes the sun shine, kicking off day two. Again, it’s into the preparation phase, only this time you’re far more powerful. Where my sorcery originally produced three projectile glintblades above my head, now I’ve got nine. In the base game that would’ve taken about 20 hours.

This puts me in good stead against the second boss, which for me and my party is Mohg, Lord of Blood. We put him down and it’s time for day three, which isn’t really a day at all. It’s a fight.

Interacting with a glowing white clump of ether teleports us to the foot of a cracked stone door. This leads to the Night Lord. It’s stupidly tough, a fiery Cerberus who can split itself in three and attack with the metal whip between its teeth. Your reward for beating it, though, feels like a kick in the teeth.

After a loading screen you’re sent back to the roundtable hold alone, with your level reset, and all your weapons gone. This is a blessing in disguise.

Not only does it give you a chance to experiment with a different build on your next expedition, but find a completely different arsenal of weapons to play with too. There’s no carry weight, and three slots on each hand to fill with a sword, hammer, mace, spear, shield, or seal of your choice, provided you’re the right level and class for it (more on that later).

Character progression comes from relics. These are orbs that impart a number of bonuses, and are the only item that stays with you between expeditions. You can pick your loadout at an altar at the roundtable.

One relic makes your attacks inflict scarlet rot; another boosts rune acquisition for you and your allies; another adds a few points to your strength. Each class has slots for four, so you can spec towards your ideal build.

What Are The Elden Ring Nightreign Classes?

Classes in Nightreign are called Nightfarers. There are four in my preview but eight in the final build. I play as a tanky Guardian with a halberd and great shield, whose two unique abilities are a whirlwind that launches foes into the sky, and an upwards vault followed by a swift downward smash. Also they have the head and wings of an eagle.

The dagger-wielding Duchess, meanwhile, can turn invisible, and manipulate time to repeat the last attack, therefore doubling the damage. Her passive is faster dodging, while the Guardian’s passive is higher poise to withstand strong attacks while blocking.

My favourite Nightfarer is the Recluse, a mage with a unique magic system. Hitting enemies with different elemental attacks marks them, and you can collect these marks and unleash hybrid magic in a spectacular cocktail of fire, ice, and lightning. Their soul blood song also marks enemies, which teammates can hit to restore HP.

The right combination of attacks can melt the sturdiest foes. With one team-up against a fearsome dragon we sync attacks so my ultimate lands and then repeats courtesy of the Duchess’ time-reversal, who proceeds to turn us invisible when the beast responds.

That’s on top of dozens of weapon arts, including bloodhound step, seppuku, rancor slash, and Hoarah Loux’s earthshaker, which are applied to corresponding weapons by default and triggered by holding LT while double-handing them.

Then there are new passives, called dormant powers. Taking down the map’s stronger foes (demi-humans, giants) rewards you with them. One grants me the rare chance to instantly kill an enemy regardless of their remaining health bar. Another conjures lightning clouds when I walk forwards. My teammate gets a devastating dodge roll that makes damaging red lightning cascade from their feet.

So, you have dormant powers, weapon arts, Nightfarer skills, passives, and ultimates, all newly acquired in that session and multiplied by your three-person team. Unleashing your combined efforts together is, in short, a blast. You’ve never been more powerful.

On day two we take down Margit, The Fell Omen in a perfect no-hit run, me calling down a deluge of magic stars, one teammate splitting the air with blood-red katana slashes, and another unleashing hordes of grinning black skulls from their staff. You almost start to feel bad. Although it should be mentioned, later expeditions get significantly harder.

Can You Play Elden Ring Nightreign Solo?

On the topic of multiplayer, you can go through Elden Ring: Nightreign solo, but it’s clearly geared towards online team play. Groups must always consist of three players, and you can join with either your friends or randomers using matchmaking.

Co-op is important. If you’re downed during a boss fight, teammates must revive you by whacking your crawling body. If all of you die, it’s game over. Chests and loot drops aren’t instanced, meaning players can steal items you were about to grab, but they can always drop them for you later.

That’s not to say you always have to stick together. Before the growing fire narrows the playing space there’s plenty to see and do out in the world. Paying a visit to church altars, for instance, gives you an extra healing flask, which proves incredibly useful.

There are HP-restoring plants, and vengeful spirits summoned by interacting with gravestones. Merchants in the field sell weapons and items, and offer the chance to upgrade your gear in exchange for a smithing stone. And on the off-chance you spot a scarab beetle, you can smash it for loot.

Find a Stonesword key and you can unlock an evergaol, which spawns a boss and another chance to grab some all-important runes before the final showdown with the Night Lord.

There are hidden areas under the map, too. Falling down a dark hole lands me in a mini dungeon guarded by a flame monk. Later, an unassuming tunnel in a cliff leads to a gleaming crystal mine. Getting out is difficult, however, due to the wall of fire that shrouds it while I’m busy bashing in miners.

It applies constant pressure, and leads to some frantic moments as you’re desperately outrunning its burning impact. Staying outside the zone slowly saps your health, but you can survive it for a bit while you look for an escape route.

These can come in the form of glowing blue cracks that launch you hundreds of feet into the air, as well as ghostly trees that, when interacted with, summon a bird to ferry you across the map.

Expanded parkour options also let you scamper up sheer cliff faces, while dropping from even the greatest heights results in zero fall damage. It results in more immediacy. The map is no longer an obstacle, freeing you up to focus on pillaging loot and preparing your character.

Does the Elden Ring Nightreign Map Change?

The map itself differs every session. Not in terms of geography, which is always the same, but enemies composition, boss spawns, vendor locations, and loot rolls.

There are even random events. At one point a rogue Lord of Blood invades us while we’re fighting a Golden Hippopotamus, giving us two foes to tangle with. On another occasion, a swarm of giant ants emerges through a purple portal.

Towards the end of my five-hour preview, the map does start to feel samey, both aesthetically and spatially. Simply randomising the enemies and loot might not be enough to sustain it for weeks or even months of playtime.

There’s also no ping system, which means anytime you want to point out a direction to an ally, you have to open the map then place a marker, which is cumbersome and disorienting.

The biggest omission, though, is the lack of armor. There are no gear drops, so what you see is what you get. This makes sense during expeditions when you’ve got no time to assemble your outfit, but it would’ve given the game a greater sense of progression if you could earn currency and purchase the means to personalise your character.

Currently, there’s really only one incentive to keep playing: relics. Heading back to the roundtable after an action-packed session, therefore, can l feel deflating if you haven’t earned any decent ones.

Yet Elden Ring Nightreign doesn’t feel like a stripped-down Elden Ring lite. It’s a satisfying spinoff with a swifter energy, distilling the 50-hour power fantasy into a 20-minute romp that gives you more means to conquer than ever before.

Endgame sorceries, mob-melting moves and ground-shaking incantations can be yours in next to no time. While there seems to be no new weapons, shields, bows, staffs or seals, the fun comes in finally getting your hands on all the ones you’ve always coveted, combined with the thrill of never knowing how the next game is going to go.