Elden Ring Nightreign Hands-On: The Roguelike Soulslike Unlike Anything Else

I sit down with a controller in hand and, within seconds, my sword-wielding knight is air-dropping onto a map strewn with ruins and monsters taken straight from Elden Ring. I dash around killing enemies with two teammates, picking up random weapons and making split-second decisions to delve into dungeons and up castle parapets as a damaging circle closes. Ten minutes into the run, night falls and my team takes on the night boss — and trust that we prepared enough to see another dawn. 

I got a hands-on preview of Elden Ring Nightreign, a spin-off of FromSoftware’s 2022 opus Elden Ring and last year’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. First revealed at The Game Awards in December, the game — set in an “alternate” Elden Ring universe — is launching later in 2025, though players can already sign up for network tests to try the game out in the coming months. I got a chance to preview the spin-off in a pair of events in Las Vegas, Nevada and Irvine, California. 

With a few hours of gameplay under my belt, it’s safe to say that the vast majority of Elden Ring players will have a great time with Nightreign. Heck, its sped-up pace with faster run speed and no falling damage will make playing Elden Ring feel glacial. And those who enjoyed tackling the base game at their own relaxed cadence may feel rushed by the spin-off’s speedy rate of encounters and decisions, but there’s so much familiar territory that they’ll probably get the hang of it after a few rounds.

Read more: Elden Ring Creator Hidetaka Miyazaki Talks Shadow of the Erdtree, New Weapons and More

Put simply, Nightreign is a condensed form of Elden Ring played in brief but intense doses, which is reflected in its $40 price tag: it thoughtfully remixes lots of familiar elements for a novel way to play, though there doesn’t seem like enough content to warrant a full $60 or $70 price point. 

Players pick one of eight pre-made classes (called Nightfarers), squad up with two other players, drop into a map with a mix of pre-set and randomized enemy encounters, scramble to become more powerful over two days of fighting and then try to take down a big boss on the third day. Full sessions through to beating the end boss take 35 to 45 minutes, the game’s publisher Bandai Namco estimates. Win or lose, players return to the hub area with some loot to further permanent progression and mix up their next run. Rinse, repeat.

It’s an enticing pitch for Elden Ring fans: pack FromSoftware’s infamously difficult combat into quick sessions you can fit into a lunch hour, but which are substantial and varied enough to keep you coming back. Players can bring their hard-earned combat skills into Nightreign, but the mix of variables will often bring the kind of “emergent gameplay” that leads to fist-pumping achievement or gut-busting laughter — often depending on whether you or the boss triumphs. 

My preview was full of such “had to be there” moments that are typical of run-based games (or Roguelikes), where decisions early on shape how your session unfolds. When you dropped in the map, where did you go first? Which weapons and bonuses did you pick up? Did you play it safe fighting easier enemies or risk taking on tougher bosses for better loot? Most importantly, did you help your team and vice versa?

And like all good run-based games, after playing Nightreign for a few hours with all those variables spinning through my head, win or lose, all I wanted to do was drop in another session — this time it would be different.

Suiting up in Limveld: where are we dropping, fellow Nightfarers?

Bandai Namco insisted that Nightreign isn’t a battle royale, and that’s true: players aren’t pitted against dozens of others for PvP-centric combat, at least in the gameplay seen in our preview. Players drop into their own world to fight computer-controlled enemies and bosses, with the dead bodies of other “players” occasionally found in the world with basic loot.

But Nightreign does incorporate some hallmarks of the battle royale genre (or its sister gametype, the extraction shooter). Players airdrop into a map with static locations, all dynamically reshuffled with random loot. As time goes on, a circle closes in around the players, damaging them if they stay outside it. If they die (during daytime), they can drop back into the game at a cost (a lost level).

That’s where the broad similarities end and Nightreign shines on its own. The game takes place in an “alternate version” of Elden Ring’s world (an easy way to recycle everyone’s favorite weapons, enemies and bosses from the base game), so even though the “Limveld” map players drop into is technically new, veterans of the base game won’t be surprised by its Limgrave-like familiar elements. Weapons largely work like their Elden Ring counterparts, with some containing Ash of War-like skills, while spells come randomly packed within staves or seals. 

As with some battle royales featuring pre-set classes like Apex Legends, players pick one of eight Nightfarerss before dropping, each with their own passive, active and ultimate skills (as well as a lore backstory unavailable in our preview). Each is geared toward a specific playstyle, and when you level up at Sites of Grace scattered around the map, your stat assignment is pre-decided — no thinking needed, just keep powering up as you go to get strong enough for enemies and bosses. There’s no armor to equip, just six slots for weapons that provide passive bonuses, resulting in light inventory management as you juggle between what you want to use and what you want powering up your hero.

We had our choice of four Nightfarerss in the preview: the newcomer-friendly knight Wylder with grappling hook and stun ultimate, the tanky birdman Guardian with whirlwind and defense-boosting ultimate, the swift Duchess with a wildly useful ability to double up damage from the last few seconds along with a cloaking ultimate, and lastly the magic-based Recluse with a perplexing elemental skill (that I never pulled off) and a sublimely helpful curse ultimate that earned health and mana (FP) back with damage dealt.

In my preview, the Recluse was the toughest class to pick — since there aren’t any Flasks of Crimson Tears to refill your FP, the only way to get it back is to get a bit of it back from specific trees scattered around Limveld, returning to Sites of Grace (which refills FP and health flasks) or replenishing with the Recluse’s ultimate ability. By picking up whips or bows off the ground, I could make do, and high-risk, high-reward players will enjoy this scrappy survival.

With the teams of three players jumping into each Nightreign session, I didn’t find an ideal composition of classes in my preview, though having a high-health Wylder or Guardian tank tougher enemies and bosses was helpful. 

But our setup was ideal in a different way: we sat in the same room and could easily hear each other make callouts and talk strategy. Since Nightreign won’t have party voice chat, either players have to coordinate beforehand (say, teaming up in a Discord call) or fumble along in-game without voice or text chat. While this is essentially how Elden Ring’s multiplayer has worked with player-versus-player invasions and when summoning other players to take on bosses, it’s worrisome for Nightreign considering the coordination needed to pick directions and make calls as the map’s circle closes in or a boss fight rages.

Even considering our advantage, I had only two successful runs beating the end boss of a Nightreign run. This means completing two “days” of around 10 minutes each of roaming the map to get loot and level up; at the end of each day is a big boss (ours included a scorpion-chimera, three Tree Sentinels, two Demi-Humans and more). The third “day” was just a last stop of leveling up, buying items or upgrading weapons before taking on the big boss. In our preview, we had only one option for a final encounter: a three-headed wolf who spit fire, slashed out with a massive sword and split into three separate foes before reforming.

The couple of times me and my fellow games journalists at the preview were victorious, we cheered as the shaking in our hands subsided…and then took a look at the permanent loot we earned that would improve every run thereafter.

Nightreign’s loop: Returning to the hub and setting out again

With under-an-hour runs, the big question is: what will keep players coming back to Nightreign? To some degree, the conceit itself of reshuffling variables on a map with Elden Ring’s tight gameplay is replayability enough. Publisher Bandai Namco is playing coy with the deeper secrets awaiting players as they do loop after loop, but we did get a look at relics, the main mechanic for progression between runs.

Win or lose, you’ll likely exit a run with a relic — a gem that provides certain bonuses, which could be anything from stat boosts to adding harm types like bleed to attacks. The further you made it in a run, the higher quality the relic with more and better bonuses. These come in different color varieties, and each Nightfarers class has three relic slots of differing colors. You can also sell relics to gain Murk, a currency we didn’t have any use for in our preview, but will likely be used to upgrade or alter relics.

Despite being in a “parallel” Elden Ring, the area you return to between runs is the Roundtable Hold that players found in the base game — and while visibly different, it still holds a number of secrets. The Nightfarerss themselves are scattered around to talk to, and it was hinted that story elements might be found in the Hold’s corners. The Hold has a practice range to try out any of the game’s weapons and your Nightfarers’s abilities as well as a place to swap relics; you set out on new runs and pick different end bosses at the central table of the Hold. 

Our preview was limited, with half of the eight available Nightfarerss to choose from and only one boss to take on. Also absent were any strings of the game’s central story, which will unfurl as players go on runs and unsurprisingly will be dribbled out in lore by non-player characters, item descriptions and more secrets around Roundtable Hall. Notably, you won’t find any story elements while in the field, leaving players free to focus on their runs rather than snooping around as the clock ticks.

There is also a central villain, the Nightlord, whom players will find out about through progression. 

What’s gained, and lost, in Nightreign?

I had a heck of a time playing Nightreign, and after adapting to its faster pace, Elden Ring veterans will find a lot to enjoy — especially those who have built up their skills across different weapon types. Those who played through the base game with one setup will have no choice but to adapt.

Equally important is cooperation: while there may be an option to go for a solo run, the game’s curious yet intentional decision to force three-player teams (and forbid two-player queuing) means you’ll either have to make two friends or get used to relying on strangers — which admittedly fits the ethos developed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of FromSoftware’s Souls games. 

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out what classic Elden Ring experience is lost to streamlining down to the game’s most adrenaline-spiking experiences. You just can’t sit on a vista and take in the view.

Not that you’d enjoy gazing out at Limveld after a few runs, as you’ll be dropping into the same map over and over again. While the mix of players and randomized situations refreshes the experience, repeatedly dropping into the same environment desensitizes players by design such that they can focus on efficiently plotting routes. While a boon for pro players and speedrunners, it kills the wonder at beholding some of the more incredible environments that Miyazaki and FromSoftware’s developers have cooked up. 

But that’s okay — Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree are right there if I wanted that slower play. Nightreign is a new venture, directed not by Miyazaki but Junya Ishizaki, a designer on Elden Ring, Bloodborne and Dark Souls III. Accordingly, this feels like a new page that FromSoftware is turning to let other voices and visions expand its oeuvre to newer, stranger player experiences. After putting players through harrowing dungeons, difficult bosses and more poison swamps, it’s nice to see the studio pose a new challenge to its audience to play together — and this time, share in all the triumphs. 

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