In Elden Ring Nightreign, the FromSoftware formula goes awry

Japan Times

5 days ago

My first few runs through Elden Ring Nightreign felt familiarly masochistic: FromSoftware's patented against-all-odds boss fights still scratch the same itch that helped turn the Tokyo studio from a niche developer into the progenitor of an entire gaming genre.
But where 2022's Elden Ring represented FromSoftware at the peak of its art in the single-player, action roleplaying genre, Nightreign, released on May 31, sees the studio try its hand for the first time at not only a multiplayer experience but a roguelike nonetheless (a genre in which repeated attempts by the player lead to new and varied abilities and, ideally, eventual success).
The result is a game that excels when it leans on the core DNA of the FromSoftware formula — but withers when it needs to rely on much else.
Your first several hours of Nightreign might feel like stepping into a boss rush mode for Elden Ring. After dropping into a map lifted largely from the 2022 game, teams of three players defeat low-level enemies for stat-boosting equipment and weapons while a damaging storm closes in from all sides. This is all preparation for the more powerful bosses that bookend each evening of Nightreign's three-day cycle (sessions that progress fully take about 40 minutes). After the second night, it's then time for a showdown with a substantially more difficult enemy where the run ends in either victory or death.
Barring the exceptionally skilled (or the lethally lucky), your first runs are almost certain to end in repeated defeats — a feature, not a bug, of nearly every game FromSoftware has made going back 30-plus years. However, in games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Sekiro and others, these single-player experiences task the player with progressing through a fixed gauntlet. A particularly challenging boss can act as a gatekeeper, stymieing progress for hours; upgraded weapons and armor are helpful in felling powerful foes, but patience, attention to detail and measured aggression are the true determiners of success in FromSoftware's single-player games.
After dozens of hours in Nightreign, however, it's hard to shake the feeling that the inverse is true. Runs that progress to the final boss nearly always fail if players don't have equipped weapons that deal damage specific to enemy weak points; getting those weapons means clearing enemy encampments earlier in the session, but what loot you receive is determined by chance. Once you figure this out, two-thirds of each run largely devolve into sprinting from location to location and defeating minor enemies until loot and stat boosts drop.
Herein lies Nightreign's greatest missed opportunity: a lack of variety baked into this loop. Other games in the roguelike genre grasp this problem — in order to maintain player interest in repeatedly running a set course, the power-ups they encounter must be meaningful enough to change the way players play. A boon might erase health while making attacks exponentially stronger, so the player must become adept at avoiding attacks and choosing the right time to strike; a rare item might promise a massive upside when paired with another as-yet unobtained ability, requiring players to weigh the risks and rewards of abandoning their current plans in pursuit of an uncertain benefit.
Elden Ring Nightreign is still an enjoyable experience, but it has difficulty thriving as a roguelike. |
FROMSOFTWARE
In Nightreign, these choices are largely nonexistent. Sessions become overly mechanical in nature, checklists of items and equipment rather than on-the-spot wagers bursting with potential. In roguelikes, no two runs are meant to feel the same, but in Nightreign, almost every run does.
Can these issues be addressed to some degree in post-release patches? Possibly. Will FromSoftware learn from these mistakes if it returns to the well for a Nightreign 2? Almost assuredly. But the studio's first major foray away from its forte of single-player action roleplaying shows something we've rarely seen: a core gameplay loop lacking the veteran developer's characteristic polish.