Sekiro and Armored Core aside, FromSoftware games have a specific pace. You inch forward through dark, unrelenting dungeons filled with terrible creatures and mystifying mysteries. Every step could be your last. Every wall could be an illusory hologram hiding an entirely new area to explore. You peer down every chasm to see if it contains a shiny new piece of equipment hidden in the dark, or only death. You loop back on yourself and activate elevators and other contraptions to make the return trip after your inevitable death somewhat shorter.
Elden Ring Nightreign is not like this.
Nightreign is a Souls game for the TikTok generation. You speed around the open-world map, slaughtering enemies in a team of three. Fall damage doesn't exist. There are no illusory walls. There are no shortcuts back because you only ever need to press forward. It's Elden Ring as a rally racer, where you only drift around each corner once, and take big risks in the name of speed before eventually colliding with an erdtree.
That doesn't mean there's no depth, however. With matches split over two nights, each approximately 15 minutes long, and a battle royale-style zone forcing you to move, your goal is efficiency.
You learn through repeated sessions which normal enemies are worth killing and which to skip over, which bosses to fight and which to avoid because they take too long. You learn which points of interest to prioritize as the three of you sprint across a procedurally slapped-together Lands Between on a dogged mission to build power for the final showdown. Eventually, it all clicks and you're planning on the fly, adapting to each new layout to maximize your character growth, sprinting around and hurtling from clifftops while swapping items and pinging map locations without stopping for breath.
There is a story here, but it's even more fractured and unknowable than other Souls games, to the point where the final cutscene completely bewilders. This is not a game for the lore YouTubers -- it's a game for combat aficionados; people who want the loop of the Souls games without the hassle, and with two friends at their side.
Fans of the world are served through the bosses it throws at you. There are plenty of new ones, but there are also nods to older FromSoftware games, from reworked Demon's Souls bosses to Dark Souls 3 highlights and returning Elden Ring encounters with some nasty new tricks.
Each boss has been reworked and balanced around three superpowered players, each with special abilities that can turn the tide. The boss fights are some of the most exciting, tense and tough battles FromSoftware has ever put together. It still captures the feeling you get when you finally beat one after multiple failed attempts -- except now, instead of being forced to run through a single dungeon to try again, you have to play an entire round, which can mean beating 20 bosses over a 40-minute session. Some might not have the stomach for it.
There is some meta progression to keep you going. You get items called relics for each failed and successful expedition. Each character can equip three for small stat buffs or effects, such as extra holy damage, improved ultimate abilities, extra dexterity or debuff effects on your starting weapons. It's unlikely they'll ever be the difference between death and victory, but if the three of you work together to max your damage output for an element the final boss is weak to, you will notice the extra damage.
The characters are all your basic Souls archetypes. There's an archer, a mage, a tank, a big damage dealer, a katana wielder, a thief, a summoner, and an all-rounder - and each works best if you focus on equipping them with weapons they're efficient with. But all of them can carry any weapon in the game, allowing you to mix things up for whatever situation. You're encouraged to swap between six weapons at a time to take advantage of passive stat buffs anyway, so Nightreign is a proper Elden Ring combat sandbox, encouraging you to play with weapons you've never used before. It speaks to the strength of the core design of Elden Ring, but everything is viable. But sometimes that core is a weakness.
You can see how Nightreign is assembled from the bones of another game with different priorities. One example is how you revive other players by smacking them with your weapon. Each death means this takes longer, though there are a couple of character skills that can speed the process up. The lock-on mechanic isn't fit for reviving your pals. You'll flip between targets with the analogue stick while trying to keep the camera trained on the boss, dodging and making your way to them while fighting the controls as it refuses to lock on. Then there's the climbing, which has always been poor in FromSoft games, but here you can double jump up cliffs and other surfaces -- sometimes you'll mantle at the top and sometimes you won't. You just have to mash jump and hope for the best, which is frustrating when trying to escape murder gas.
Once it all clicks and you get used to the breakneck pace, Nightreign is an excellent time. It should have shipped with more map variety and, surprisingly, there's no PvP element at all, but it's another chance to play around with one of the best combat toolboxes in video games and test your mettle against relentless beasts. It's just a shame that sometimes those beasts are the controls.