Elden Ring Nightreign is a deeply flawed multiplayer game I've spent over 250 hours in this year

It's funny, but I didn't even enjoy Elden Ring Nightreign at first. Like most FromSoftware fans, I was resistant to the concept of an Elden Ring spinoff you're supposed to play almost entirely in multiplayer. I also recognised its obvious limitations. Despite being a roguelike all about team interplay, as you use your limited time to accrue as much power and pertinent passives as possible while journeying to battle the Nightlord, one thing stuck out to me: It doesn't have comms.

Unless you're playing with friends through Discord, you have to limit your interactions to tagging. Predictably, this leads to endless frustrations and horror stories about incompetent teammates, plenty of which you can find if you peruse the game's subreddit. It's an important flaw to recognise, because if I didn't have two other FromSoftware-fanatic friends with which to play Nightreign, I would've quit.

As you can see from all the clips I've shared below, Nightreign with comms, where you can strategise as your run progresses and share gear more easily, is night and day in comparison to no-comms Nightreign. My recommendation here is primarily based on that caveat. If you have others you can share this game with (especially if they played Elden Ring or Dark Souls), you'll have a really good time, excepting the usual blood, sweat, and tears you'll pour into its hardest bosses.

So how does Nightreign work? You play as a group of Nightfarers (characters with specific skills and stats) who drop into a map with random landmarks, where you're expected to gather runes to level up and gear to make you more powerful. At the end of each night, a death circle will begin to close, culminating in a night end boss. After two nights, you'll face a Nightlord—a challenging large-scale boss battle. While you can wipe during a run and be just fine, if you all die to a night boss or the Nightlord? It's game over.

Elden Ring Nightreign is exactly what you'd imagine from a FromSoftware multiplayer game, and that's both good and bad. A great deal isn't explained—to this day, I'm still learning new info about which passives can stack and how they work.

While not quite as hilariously unbalanced as Elden Ring was, Nightreign is still unbalanced as multiplayer games go. Hell, until recently, one of my teammates' builds in Deep of Night (the endgame mode) revolved around using one very specific flail because its skill does obscene damage for seemingly no reason.

My favorite character, Raider, has an ultimate ability which essentially breaks the game, summoning a giant rock that characters and bosses clip through, and doesn't even protect you properly against ground-based threats while standing on it. Does this hilarious jank stop me using it in the middle of a boss fight and enjoying the utter chaos it causes? Of course not. See below:

Nightreign is a bad multiplayer game when you judge it within the context of most other multiplayer games, but the flaws I'm describing above are things I personally wouldn't ever want to change about FromSoftware's game design. I love the way in which Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne all obfuscate info and leave it up to you to work most things out. I also love the hilarious imbalance and jank of Elden Ring and the total nonsense it leads to.

In many ways, Nightreign acts as a victory lap for Elden Ring. Yes, a lot of it is reused content, bringing many bosses, enemies, weapons, and assets from that game, but remixing them into a big bubbling pot of roguelike chaos. If you're someone like me, who has an almost categorical knowledge of Elden Ring (I guided it at launch) it's a really fun time as you're able to actively apply that know how during each run.

Whether we're talking skills, weapons, boss weaknesses, or spells, Nightreign is such a fun game for those who were really into Elden Ring, but also love the role hard-won knowledge has always played in FromSoftware games. When you throw Dark Souls bosses into the mix, too, plus Nightlord invasions, random events, and the Shifting Earth (which changes the map entirely), you've got a game that fans can really sink their teeth into.

I think that's the real reason Nightreign grabbed me so hard this year. FromSoft players are a bit starved for the genuine article at the moment. Sure, we've been eating good this year with Soulslikes such as Lies of P's Overture DLC or The First Berserker: Khazan, but my brain longs for a big proper Bloodborne or Souls that I can just drink in and frontload into my noggin. Nightreign feels particularly well coded for Souls sickos looking for their regular hit.

FromSoft has also done a really good job supporting the game and fleshing out content. After launch we got the Everdark Sovereigns, superpowered versions of the Nightlord bosses with additional mechanics, and this made for some quite challenging yet fun bosses to work away at. Deep of Night was also added—an endgame mode that gets progressively harder as you gain XP, but that also offers new powerful passives and relics (which make your loadout). One particularly great modifier that can appear in this mode removes all map markers, so you're left to navigate by knowledge and line of sight alone.

Though it was initially expected for next year, we also got The Forsaken Hollows DLC. While it didn't add the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC weapons, spells, and skills everyone was craving, it did bring a new map, two new extremely fun Nightlord bosses, and two Nightfarers, both of whom fill particular niches that were lacking in the game. The Scholar especially helps make Nightreign's items actually worthwhile, levelling them up as he uses them.

With the release of the DLC, I think it's likely that FromSoftware will move onto pastures new next year, but if you're like me, hungry for the next Souls, Bloodborne, or whatever it may be, Nightreign is in the best state it's been since launch, with tonnes of content, Nightfarers to pick up and learn, and bosses to battle. If you've got one or two Elden Ring-loving friends and you're looking for something to play this festive season, I would absolutely recommend diving in.