Elden Ring: Nightreign - Rise Together and Take on the Night!

Racula
Jun 20
8 min read

Welcome all to an exciting XPN Gaming collab review with Racula and Lewis!

Some of of us know who FromSoftware are and the games they produce, but for those who don't know who they are, let us give you a bit of background information about them.

FromSoftware is a Japanese video game developer and publisher and it was founded in November 1986 by Naotoshi Zin, as a business software developer.

The company released their first video game - King's Field on PS1 in 1994, it's success shifted FromSoftware to focus fully on games, with them producing two more King's Field games, before the first release of their mecha shooter game series - Armoured Core in 1997.

By the 2000's FromSoftware achieved further success with more game releases such as: Echo Night, Shadow Tower, Lost Kingdoms, Otogi and Another Century's Episode series.

In 2010 they went on to achieve further success by releasing Demon Souls and the infamous role playing games (RPG) Dark Souls trilogy, which has often been cited as among one of the greatest video game series ever made.

FromSoftware's emphasis on high difficulty and environmental storytelling, led to the creation of Soulsborne subgenre, which now includes other games that FromSoftware created such as: Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Racula's personal favourite game - Elden Ring.

All of which are published by the company known as Bandai Namco Entertainment, which serves as the publisher for FromSoftware's games in North America and Europe. Which handles aspects like marketing, distribution and customer support, whilst FromSoftware focuses primarily on game developments.

Now that we have you given you a bit of background information on the company, let's take flight and drop on into the game that to date is one of FromSoftware's most challenging games so far.

Welcome to Elden Ring: Nightreign

On 30th May 2025 FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment released Elden Ring: Nightreign on Playstation, Xbox and PC via Steam.

A standalone multiplayer, co-op action, survival game that will challenge players to come together, in order to defeat the Nightlord.

Players can team up in to either squads of two or three, or if you're up for a challenge go at it solo, you must survive a 3 day and night cycle, making team decisions about combat and exploration across changing maps, to become strong enough to take down terrifying bosses at the end of each day. Survive the nights and on the third day you will face one 8 challenging Nightlord bosses, some of which you may recognise from other FromSoftware Soulsborne games. Both myself and Lewis took upon the challenge of Nightreign on the PS5 and we're not gonna lie, there was a lot of raging, stressing and frustration going on, but most importantly we gave it our all and had a lot fun in doing this.

Become a Hero and Banish the Night

In Nightreign, sadly there is no creating your own character, but players do have a choice of multiple characters to chose from, each with their own unique abilities and distinct flair and while each character is formidable alone, their skills can create powerful synergies when united as a team. There are 2 additional characters that you can unlock, but we'll let you figure out how to do that for yourselves as don't want to spoil too much.

Each character starts at level 1, with basic weapon, armour and no talismans either, though you do get relics to give your character a little boost before each expedition, which does come in handy and you can also get some unique ones that are tailored to each character. You can either buy these from the Jar Jar Bazaar or acquire some after each expedition, whether you survived or not.

So as for game play, you get to do a quick tutorial at the beginning and as all Souls gamers will know, you're not expected to survive the boss for this part. Once the tutorial is completed, it will throw you into the main game, which the main waiting area is the Roundtable Hold, that was in Elden Ring and is now nothing more then ruins and you can now explore outside of the former castle.

This is where players can set up expeditions, team up or go solo, character select, go to the bazaar, set up relics and practice with each character in the training grounds.

Once sorted and ready to start, set up and commence an expedition, watch the short cutscene if you like as you literally fly off into action.

Elden Ring combines with Monster Hunter and Fortnite

That's right, this little header does not lie, the game does indeed have some familiar traits from Fortnite and Monster Hunter. For example: In Nightreign, you can't just travel from the Round Hold to any site of grace that you have been to and then go explore like in Elden Ring. You have to set up an expedition, to hunt and taken down a night lord boss in order to continue on with the game. Pretty much like Monster Hunter with setting up missions to go hunt a monster. As for Fortnite, remember the area reducing barrier that comes into affect after so long? Well Nightreign has introduced something similar, known as the night's flame and it to comes into affect after so long. To bring in the night, reduce the map area twice to a smallish circle and also reveal either night 1 or 2's boss. Defeat the boss and the night's flame will disappear and the next day will begin. Also, if you're in the night's flame, it will damage health and kill your character, so you have to be quick and careful in avoiding that, as with all soulsborne games, you will lose your ruins and won' be able to get them back to level up.

As Night Falls, We Rise.

The gameplay itself, pretty much plays like Elden Ring does, just with a couple of different changes to it. Each run can take roughly 45 minutes to up to an hour to do, depending on how far you can get. Once an expedition has begun, players will be flown in and dropped off at random areas of the map - the drop off's change every expedition. The objective is to work together, find anything and everything that's quick and easy to take down, find more stronger weapons or upgrade - if you can find a normal or somber smithing stone and the anvil, find a site of grace and level up, all before the night's flame starts to encircle everyone. Oh by the way, you can no longer rest at grace sites now, so you can't take a quick break anymore like you could in Elden Ring. The map is filled with various locations such as: churches to upgrade your healing flasks, castles with Crucible Knights, trolls tossing pots at you, mines for upgrade materials and world bosses tucked away, each place either changes what's in side of it, or sometimes locations as well.

If a player falls in the game, other players can revive them by simply hitting them a few times, before the time runs out. If they can't be can't be revived in time, they then lose a level and runes they had on them and have to regain the runes needed to reach that level again, this can be tedious and annoying at times. This can also happens when soloing as well.

When it comes to the night bosses, the same principle stands as when a player falls, you have a time limit to get them back up, however if the time runs out, then they don't come back until the boss is defeated. Should all players fall to the boss, then the expedition is sadly over, players lose everything and you have to start from scratch all over again. If soloing the game and manage to get a night boss, that player gets a second wind chance to try again, but if they fail again, then that's also the expedition over for them as well. This can be very stressful and frustrating at times, as you put a lot of effort in to getting your character to the best they can be, with levels, weapons, spells, talismans and so on, all for it to be stripped away and to start over again and again.

We are going to be honest, both myself and Lewis tried our best at this game, but we really struggled to take on the bosses. They were incredibly difficult to beat and leveling up was no easy feat either. Everything becomes a lot harder when you're in multiplayer, as all of the bosses health and strengths go up because of it.

Nightreign's Performance, Design and Audio

Nightreign has been in development since 2021, so it looks and performs almost exactly like Elden Ring. This means the excellent design and art direction are carried over completely and the world is intriguing and beautiful in its own unique, fantasy painting style. From hills, to valleys and mountaintops, underground mines, crumbling castles and ruined churches, they all offer something far rarer: true texture, variety, and long-term intrigue. Even though the map is not overly big, it's still a massive world to explore, astonishingly rendered (the sun slowly changing to the night in the sky, casting each scene anew) and seemingly limitless in its creative diversity. Even though it's pretty much the same graphics as Elden Ring, both are an unrivalled feat of design and inventiveness.

For those who have played other Soulsborne games, players will notice that there are a few surprise bosses that have been pulled from the Dark Souls series as well.

Boss and enemy designs for new and returning bosses are very well realized, and the Nightlord boss fights are truly amazing spectacles worthy of the long runs required to get to them. In terms of music, the audio track for the game is really good, with many standout soundtracks. The main theme of the Roundtable Hold, The Shrouded Roundtable Hold, is especially a highlight. As it works as the perfect melancholic and nostalgic hub music, to set the stage for your waiting time in between expeditions and those heavy conversations about your character’s past.

Boss and exploration themes are all around fantastic, and while we won’t get into specifics in light of spoilers, it’s good enough to know that the original Elden Ring composers are there for Nightreign.

Our Final Thoughts

Lewis: "Even though I've have never played a Soulsborne game before, I did really well and tried my best, but this game was just not for me, Racula did her best to show me how to play in a quick run through, as she has been playing Nightreign on her own. But I just found it too stressful, it caused me a lot of rage and frustration throughout our time playing. There is one thing both myself and Racula agreed on and that was it definitely needs a cross-play, as most of our friends are on different consoles or pc that want to play together and can't as a result of this".

Racula: " What Lewis said, I have been playing on solo, so know a few good places to go and level up and what area's to avoid, Lewis did really well and held his own. For me, it is a challenge as I have played Elden Ring and this is a massive step up from it. It can be stressful and tedious at times, but overall I do like it and is happy to keep at it regardless. I'm looking forward to seeing what else FromSoftware have in store for Nightreign in the future".

Thank you to everyone who took time out of their day to take a moment to read this review, your support is always appreciated and means a lot to us.

Elden Ring: Nightreign is available to play on:

Steam

Xbox Series X/S

Playstation 5

XPN Rating 4 out 5