Seeing The Nameless King inthat first Elden Ring Nightreign trailerleft me with mixed emotions. I was excited tosee Dark Souls return in some formafter all these years, but also terrified that I’d have to fight Gwyn’s firstborn all over again. So, when the mist cleared on the second night of my expedition and that oh-so familiar silhouette reared its head, I was bricking it. A perfect run was about to be cut short. Or not.
He was surprisingly easy, leaving me with most of my flasks and dignity. Now, whenever The Nameless King pops up in future runs, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s just aDark Soulsboss, we’ve got this.Nightreign— likeShadow of the Erdtree— is FromSoftware raising its middle finger to the fans who said thatElden Ringwas ‘too easy’, while simultaneously making some of the most notorious bosses in Soulsborne history look like punks. We struggled withhim,really?
Mastering Bosses Has Never Been More Rewarding…
Nightreign is a roguelite spin on Elden Ring, where you have to survive two days (all while a battle royale-style circle closes in) against two main bosses, before being transported to a vast desert where you’ll face the Expedition’s Nightlord. Loot, enemies, and structures are all randomised, making every run feel fresh, and you unlock permanent upgrades (known as Relics) with each match even if you lose, which allows you to create unique builds for each character. It’s an interesting take on the Soulslike formula, bottling the usual loop into short-burst rounds. But the Nightlords are where Nightreign truly shines.
They each have two phases, and when the second kicks in, it’s like facing a Shadow of the Erdtree boss. The arena becomes a canvas for them to unleash some of the most stunning attacks I’ve ever had the pleasure of dying to. Sure, it can be frustrating, but my god is it beautiful to watch the chaos unfold. And while it’s harder to master the patterns, as death means restarting a run, giving you a 40-minute gap before another attempt, the moves are deceptively simple to dodge, despite the pageantry.
Most of the Nightlord attacks are AoEs, built for groups of three. Once you’ve clocked the wind-ups, getting out of the way isn’t too hard.
The trade-off with Nightlords is that a) these are some of the fastest-moving bosses in a Soulsborne game, and b) one mistake means taking a devastating amount of damage. But even if you die, you’re not immediately sent packing back to the nearest Site of Grace. You can be revived, so even the rockiest of beginnings can be clawed back from the jaws of defeat, making those final moments as a boss fades into the aether some of the most rewarding FromSoftware has ever produced.
What sticks out more than anything about Nightreign, though, is how it finally makes status effects purposeful. Youcanfight Nightlords with any old gear you scrounge up, but all eight have a weakness clearly spelt out in the Expeditions tab at the Roundtable Hold (oddly intuitive for FromSoftware, a running theme in Nightreign). Locations are marked with status effects on the map, indicating what loot and enemies you’re likely to acquire and face, allowing room for nuanced strategy when planning your run, rather than having to adjust to whatever’s thrown at you.
When used against Nightlords, these weaknesses have unique effects that completely turn the tide. Gaping Jaw, for instance, stops leaping around the arena to throw up the poison, giving you a brief window to go all out. Finally, bleed isn’t the only effect worth having — every bit of gear has its place and value.
…But They Have Too Much Health
The downside to Nightreign is that it can sometimes feel like playing Shadow of the Erdtree with only a few Scadutree Fragments to hand. Nightlords arespongy,which tends to make each fight a tedious war of attrition rather than skill or strategy. There were plenty of games where it became clear my teammates were exhausted and running on fumes, getting swept up in attacks they’d otherwise perfectly dodge, sending us into a spiral of avoiding the boss and reviving each other until we inevitably bit the dust.
Status effects mitigate this somewhat, but Nightlords are simply too tanky most of the time, which diminishes the spectacle when you’ve been locked in for so long. It’s always been a tricky balance in Soulsborne games: the more summons, the more health a boss has. But when they’re already designed to tear through trios, it’s tedious.
Relics And Remembrances Keep The Flow Going Between Matches
Between matches, you can progress through each of the eight Nightfarer’s stories, which are among some of the most poignant that we’ve seen in a Souls game. Through a mixture of Roundtable Hold quests and additional expedition objectives, ‘Remembrances’ elevate the intermittent, jigsaw narrative of characters in past games like Lucatiel and Solaire into more involved personal tales, which are only heightened further by surprisingly vulnerable journal entries that let you peer beyond the unreliable accounts that FromSoft characters so often give us.
The map, while remaining the same throughout, is freshened up by Shifting Earth events, which add new areas like a snowy mountain, lava-filled crater, or rotten woods, all with their own rewards.
It’s a layer of storytelling that’s unlike what we’re used to from the base game, while also sticking with the intrigue and mystery that has kept lore fiends speculating for over a decade. But beyond their narrative oomph, Remembrances break up the monotony of each loop, as you venture to colosseums to battle it out with gladiators, or enjoy quiet contemplation outside the Roundtable Hold, painting a bygone world. Not only does it diversify Nightreign’s core loop, it also transforms the pre-set classes, which are already more distinct than ever thanks to their ultimate abilities and unique powers, into truly memorable characters.
you may take things even further with the aforementioned Relics, of which you can equip three for each Nightfarer. Initially, I thought these were useless. A lot of them are filled with stat jargon, like +2 in Strength or vague improvements to Dragon Communion Incantations, which started to feel like generic looter shooter fluff, creating the illusion of progression between matches. While the boons do sometimes still feel that way, the more I pushed on, the more I uncovered Relics that feltmeaningful.
For instance, it’s not guaranteed you’ll find a weapon with the right status effect to take on that expedition’s Nightlord. But I had a Relic that made my starting weapon deal poison damage, which combined with higher-tier Relics that boosted my damage around poisoned enemies, made the Gaping Jaw far easier. There was a noticeable difference in damage, even just by upgrading my starting weapon rather than looting some of the more extravagant gear. You can also tweak and customise abilities, like making Executor’s cursed blade (which essentially functions asSekiro’sdeflect mechanic) heal you, becoming more self-sustainable in battle.
I’m excited to see how the community mixes and matches Relics to come up with builds for each character. Given that you can have multiple Relic loadouts, it’ll be especially interesting to see what metas crop up for each boss, and how much the game clicks into place when finding the right synergies.
Matchmaking Has Me A Little Concerned
I wrote in my preview that Nightreign has perfected the Soulslike multiplayer format, and I stand by that.Reviving is done by hitting your downed teammates, which is not only fitting for a Soulslike, but far more involved than simply holding a prompt. There’s again an element of strategy here, as it becomes a gamble on whether you have the time to damage your allies enough to get them back up, or if you’d be better off focusing on the boss. I lost plenty of games going for the revive — sometimes, you’ve just got to attempt a solo clutch.
Forming a squad is also far easier than the archaic, needlessly obtuse summoning system, as it works like every other modern multiplayer game now. The problem is that matchmaking was unreliable in the review build. you’re able to invite players directly from your friends list, but it didn’t always work. Passwords did, but it was a gamble if you were playing cross-region. We also had a few network errors boot us out of matches, which you can rejoin, but you’ll lose a level in the process. Given that the foundation of Nightreign is co-operative play, hopefully, these kinks are ironed out.
What’s more concerning right now is the lack of cross-platform play, especially for a dedicated multiplayer game in 2025. I understand leaving PC out of the mix with all of the hackers that Souls games invite, but Xbox and PlayStation not being able to intermingle is a confusing miss. The lack of duos,which may be addressed post-launch, is also concerning. I found that, even when players left, just two of us were able to cinch a victory, so it’s easy to imagine that duos would be as viable to play in as trios. More than solo, at least, which, despite the balance tweaks, still felt incredibly harsh given the lack of revives.
Diving into game after game, experiencing that Soulslike loop in a microcosm, was unbelievably satisfying, and those moments of victory have never felt better. There are some minor quirks, like the lack of cross-platform play and spongy bosses, but on the whole, Nightreign is one of the most inventive things to come out of FromSoftware since it coined the Soulslike genre.
