Elden Ring Nightreign Hands-on Impressions | Git Gud Together!

Ever since the game was announced at the 2024 Game Awards, there has been a lot of talk and speculation and, let’s be honest, a bit of worry as to what kind of game Elden Ring Nightreign would be, especially since this is an Elden Ring title where Miyazaki isn’t directly involved in. Well, last week, we were part of a special Media Preview and we’re here to tell you about our first-hand experience with the game. Here are our Elden Ring Nightreign first impressions.

What is Elden Ring Nightreign?

Allow me to give you my very simplified description of what the game is. Elden Ring Nightreign is a game that’s primarily designed as a 3-player PVE game that’s kind of session-based as you enter a randomly generated map that has a day and night cycle, with the objective of speed-leveling and speed-looting as much as you can in preparation for a showdown boss that will spawn at night falls on the map. You are free to go wherever you want but you do have to be wary of the ever-shrinking flame circle that slowly engulfs the map. You can compare this shrinking circle to how the circles are in most Battle Royale games (and this is where the comparisons of Nightreign being Elden Ring Fortnight come from, but that’s really as far as the similarities go).

Once you defeat the night boss, the next day begins. Rinse and repeat. The final objective is to clear a 3-night cycle so you can get rewards that will help you secure permanent benefits (as any gear you find will not carry over) that can help you with future runs. That’s my Elden Ring Nightreign in-a-nutshell description but don’t worry. I’ll give more specifics for the notable parts of the game next.

Gameplay Breakdown: Round Table Prep Work

In the media preview, our starting area was always the Roundtable Hold (or at least, something that resembled it). This kind of served as a holding area / preparations room. While we were told that there would be much more things to do in this area in future builds of the game, we were limited to a few core activities here. First off, there was a practice area where you could test out various characters (more on that later) on training dummies. Next, you could review your collection of relics and see which ones you want to equip for your run.

What are relics, you ask? These are special little trinkets that you can equip which will give you added stats / abilities during your runs. There are restrictions and limitations as to what and how many relics you can equip but we can infer that you can address those restrictions and limitations as the game progresses.

“Relics? Preparation? Can’t I just level my character normally and equip gear on the fly like every others FromSoft Soulslike?”, I hear you ask. Well, no. You see, that’s the new thing with this game. In every run you do, the only pieces of gear you bring in are the ones that came with your character by default. You picked up a REALLY NICE weapon on your last run? Good for you! That’s gone now. You pick a character right before your run and that’s it. You don’t make your own and you don’t customize your gear (normally).

During the media preview, we were able to pick from 4 characters but we were also informed that there will be 8 on launch. Each character comes with their own starting gear, as well as a “Character Skill” and an “Ultimate Art”. The Character Skill is basically a skill that you can use whenever and is on a timed cooldown. The Ultimate Art on the other hand can only be used once you’ve filled its gauge which is filled by attacking enemies.

For example, I primarily used a character named Wylder during the preview. He was your typical balanced character who came with a buckler and a sword. His skill was a hook shot that either pulls small enemies to me or pulled me towards huge enemies which was honestly a great gap closer). His ult was this explosive point-blank crossbow explosive shot that would almost always insta-stagger any enemy in addition to dealing massive damage.

Other available characters that were available were “Guardian” – who sported a halberd and tower shield and had skills that would either launch enemies into the air or would let him divebomb a foe, “Duchess” – who uses here quickness and daggers to deal high damage but is also quite squishy but has skills that play with invisibility as well, and the mage-type “Recluse” who destroys foes with magic.

Aside from that, the Roundtable Hold is where you will basically queue up for your runs via matchmaking.

The Bloody Cycle of Limveld

Limveld is basically a land that exists parallel to the world of Elden Ring. This is where the meat of the game is. You will be sent there to survive and overcome its cycle that lasts for 3 Days and 3 Nights.

Upon queueing, that’s when you will select your character (note that 2 or more players can select the same character) and then be dropped off into the land where it’s a mad rush to get as strong as possible just so the Night boss won’t clap your cheeks. So what’s in the map? Well, there’s a lot, and thank God you have a minimap that can help you navigate as well as ping locations to your party mates.

In the map, you’ll find the usual camps that contain mobs and treasure chests that contain items and weapons that you can freely swap out with the ones you have by default. There isn’t a lot of time until nightfall so you wanna do as much as you can. Major points of interest will be represented as a picture on your map like towers, castles, etc. These areas will usually contain bosses that you can beat for massive amounts of experience and weapons that will be huge upgrades to the ones you already have (if RNG is on your side). Churches are also a good place to head to as they contain powerups that increase the number of charges your healing flask contains. You’ll find sites of grace as well where you can heal up and level. Aside from these points of interest, you can also just discover random things like caves, secret mini-dungeons, and even massive bosses that are just roaming on their own like Dragons, Giants, and more!

Traversal is also actually quite nice… and different. If you played Elden Ring, you’re used to traversal being a bit on the slower side on foot, with horse rides on Torrent being the faster way around the world. Here, there is no torrent but you seem to run much faster and when there are no enemies around. Coupled with unlimited stamina in the overworld, you can explore quite fast here. The game also now allows you to wall jump to scale walls quickly, and there are even special interactable places that makes going around even smoother. You have these purple areas that allow you to jump insanely high (similar to Torrent’s Spirit Springs in Elden Ring) and these spectral trees that allow you to hitch a ride on a spectral hawk which you can drop from at any time. Oh, and did I mention that Nightreign has no fall damage?

Strategy-wise, we found it best to just rush towards huge boss fights, get drops and exp, go to a grace to level, then slowly head inwards depending on the circle’s position. In case you’re wondering, when you die, you can get resurrected by your teammates if they’re able to hit you enough to revive you. Yes, they have to strike your dead body like it was an enemy. If they fail to do it in time, you die for real and you get transported to the last site of grace you interacted with. Yes, that’s right. Any deaths during the day isn’t permanent but you are penalized. Aside from you “dropping your souls”, you also get a penalty like your level going down by 1.

We keep doing this until the circle gets small enough which marks the end of the day ushering in the night along with its boss. Night boss fights are intense especially since they are meant to test not just your skill but if you’ve leveled / geared up enough during the day. Deaths here via full party wipe or if your mates just cant revive you quick enough are permanent unlike during the day. The only saving grace is that if the rest of your party manage to take down the boss, you all get to move on! You head on over to Day 2 / Night 2 and repeat the process. With the media preview build though (I’m not sure if this will change), once you’re done with Night 2, you move on to a small special area where you can upgrade your weapons and buy items.  Once ready, there won’t be a Day 3 anymore and you move straight on to Night 3 for an epic final showdown.

Elden Ring Nightrein – Initial Impressions

I honestly believe that this iteration of Elden Ring was quite fun – way more than what I initially expected. While it felt weird not having fall damage and just blazing through the maps, it was overall a nice rush and still got me that “soulslike fix” that I liked about the FromSoftware games. I also think that Nightreign will be even more accessible to players because you now have the beauty of teamwork to power through the difficulty and skill walls that Elden Ring bosses are known for.

Admittedly though, I did notice a potential danger of the RNG parts of the game which may lead to a bit of player frustration. My group was able to around 8 or 9 runs. In some, we were able to get some amazing weapons and I was so happy that I was able to get the Bloodhound’s Fang Greatsword which I loved using during my time in Elden Ring (and yes, bleed is still broken lol). But there were also like 2-3 runs where we just weren’t getting good weapon drops. This did make me feel deflated at times but not so much that I couldn’t just power through. This was, of course, a very early build of the game and the rogue-like permanent rewards may just make that part of the RNG more manageable.

Another thing to point out is I think this is something that will be enjoyed more if you can communicate with people in your party. Without communication, I think that just becomes another layer of difficulty to the game and may make it less fun. The best moments I had during the session were when the room was filled with yells of both panic and determination as well as the high fives we shared when we were able to finally clear Night 3 at our very last run of the day! Without comms, I think it would be such a shame to miss out on those moments.

The RNG isn’t all bad as the game also does feature things like these big special encounters too that would just randomly happen. In some runs, we suddenly had to deal with these huge insects and, if we won, we would get some nice drops, exp, AND we also got to extend the duration of the daytime which is great because that meant we could farm more.

On the other side of the coin though, we also experience a huge random encounter where Margit just spawned on us for a fight… but we had the unfortunate luck of the circle closing in on us just minutes after the encounter started. I’ll reserve judgement of course as a lot can still change and be revealed between now and the release of the game.

Overall, I think Nightreign is a potentially strong title that can get more people to experience the soulslike genre. I can only hope that FromSoftware really gets to strike that balance between fun, challenge, and RNG.

Elden Ring Nightreign will be released on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC on May 30, 2025.