Latest news with #EldenRing
CNET
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Secret Characters in Elden Ring Nightreign: How to Unlock the Revenant and Duchess
Elden Ring Nightreign's Nightfarer class design allows new players and Souls veterans alike to hop into its speedy, round-based roguelike action RPG gameplay. Key character archetypes have been boiled down into Nightfarer classes with different passive and active skills that can help you round out a strong and efficient three-player squad -- but you don't have a full roster of Nightfarers available to you when you start the game. Creating a strong team composition is just as important as speedrunning bosses and collecting runes, flasks and other upgrades during the three-day expeditions. You'll want to mix-and-match damage dealers, tanks and supporting roles while also ensuring you have melee, ranged and elemental damage options. Read more: Elden Ring Nightreign Beginner's Guide: Team Strategy, Level Goals and Survival Tips As the first wave of players come to grips with Nightreign's speed-based roguelike expeditions on May 30, they might gravitate toward more forgiving Nightfarer options, such as Wylder, Guardian and Ironeye. The six Nightfarers available to you when you first start Nightreign aren't the only player classes in the game -- you're missing the ever-deadly Duchess and the spirit-summoning doll known as the Revenant. Here's how to unlock the two secret Nightfarer classes in Elden Ring Nightreign. If you receive this relic after an expedition, you'll be able to unlock the first secret Nightfarer. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET How to unlock the Duchess The first Nightfarer you'll have a chance to unlock is the Duchess. Once you finish your first Tricephalos expedition, you'll be rewarded with a special green relic -- the Old Pocketwatch. You don't actually have to defeat Gladius in order to obtain the relic, but you do have to complete a full run in order to claim your rewards. This relic imparts decent buffs on any Nightfarer that you're running with a dexterity-based build, but it also doubles as the key item that unlocks the first secret Elden Ring Nightreign class. Once the Old Pocketwatch is in your possession, approach the Priestess in the Roundtable Hold. Her normal dialogue options give some background on what the Nightfarers are doing here and why the fight against the Nightlord is so important. Now, she'll ask about your new relic, and present you with a choice of whether or not to hand it over to her. Even if you've slotted the Old Pocketwatch relic into your build, you have nothing to fear by handing it over to the Priestess. You'll retain the relic and it you can still equip it on any of your playable Nightfarers. When the Priestess is handed the relic, a short cutscene plays where she drops her shroud and reveals that she has been the Duchess all along. She vows to stop standing on the sidelines and join the fight, and with that you'll unlock Nightreign's seventh playable Nightfarer. The Duchess wears a Dark Souls Firekeeper mask, but her overall aesthetic is much more Bloodborne-y. Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET What is the Duchess' role in a team? The Duchess is a dexterous attacker who can flit in and out of battle to keep up the pressure. She doesn't have high poise, defense or health, but she can hold an enemy's attention and easily evade their attacks. The Duchess greatly benefits from weapons like fists, daggers and curved swords, though any weapons with powerful lunge attacks will feel right at home in this Nightfarer's arsenal. The Duchess' passive ability lets her expend less stamina when attacking and dodging, allowing her to stay in the battle longer before taking a tactical reprieve. Her class ability, Restage, rewinds time and inflicts additional damage against enemies who have been wounded in the past few seconds. Her ultimate ability, Finale, shrouds the Duchess and any nearby teammates from enemies during a fight, allowing the team to heal up and prepare attacks with long wind up times. The effects of Finale instantly wear off on any person who attacks an enemy (or gets hit by a stray attack themselves). After you unlock the Duchess, a new item will be available in the Jar Bazaar. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET How to unlock the Revenant You'll need another key item in order to unlock the Revenant, the eighth and final playable Nightfarer. However, this item becomes available as soon as you unlock the Duchess -- it's nestled down toward the bottom of the Jar Bazaar. The Besmirched Frame will cost you 1,500 Murk and, just like the Old Pocketwatch, it's a relic you can use in your Nightfarers' builds. The Old Pocketwatch gives you an insight into the type of Nightfarer it's connected to, boosting dexterity-related stats. The Besmirched Frame is a great relic for any Nightfarer with an affinity for magic, and that's no coincidence. Once you've obtained this item, a Lost Phantom will spawn in the east hallway of the Roundtable Hold. This NPC will be denoted by a girl's portrait on your map -- there will be an exclamation point icon by the portrait's head. Approach this phantom and interact with the girl. You'll be warped to the plateau where you fought the Margit the Fell Omen in Nightreign's tutorial, but this time a unique boss will be waiting for you. Taking on the Night Idol is much easier once you defeat her summons, but you'll still have to avoid some of the spells she slings. Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET The Night Idol is an easy boss fight, but there are a couple of enemies you'll have to micromanage. She has three spirit summons she fields against you: Helen, an agile page who will quickly press the attack; Frederick, a bulky cook who swings slowly but delivers devastating blows; and Sebastian, a massive skeleton who can't move but has deadly melee attacks and magic beams. Focusing on these spirit summons is imperative, because they don't come back once they're defeated. You can beat this boss with any Nightfarer, but I found it was easiest with Ironeye. You can use your bow to zone out the summons, peppering them with arrows until they fall, and then move in on the Night Idol boss using your action skills. Once the Night Idol is defeated, you'll be transported back to the Roundtable Hold and informed that you've unlocked the Revenant, the last of the Nightfarers missing from the roster. The Revenant is a doll, like Ranni the Witch. She commands spirits to enact her will. Screenshot by Tyler Graham/CNET What is the Revenant's role in a team? The Revenant is one of the more magically inclined player classes in Elden Ring Nightreign, which means that she's a high risk, high reward character to use. The Revenant has a high focus point (or mana) pool and can take advantage of sorceries and incantations alike, though her stat spread favors spells from Seals and Dragon Communions. What this character lacks in defense, though, she makes up for in utility that allows her to shift focus away from herself and her teammates. The Revenant's passive ability has a chance to spawn spirit summons of non-boss enemies that she deals final blows to. This combines well with her class ability, Summon Spirit, which allows her to call Helen, Frederick or Sebastian (the same summons from the Lost Girl boss fight) to the battlefield. The Revenant's summons add an element of chaos to Nightreign's battles, and often pull enemy aggression away from players. It's much easier to get in the thick of the fight and mete out some damage when there's a small army marching on a boss. When the fight is turning against her, the Revenant's powerful ultimate ability makes herself and her allies briefly immortal. The Immortal March ability applies to other players as well as the Revenant's spirit summons, making it a real Swiss army knife of an ability -- if you really want to squeeze the most value out of it, you can activate it when your teammates are knocked down to instantly revive them. If you've got a spirit summon active, it'll use its own ultimate ability, but it can't swing a fight nearly as well as picking up your fallen squadmates. The Revenant is fragile, but she provides more effective health to her tankier teammates -- and levels the playing field by bringing more allies into the fight. Now that you have a full stable of Nightfarers, it'll be easier than ever to take the fight to the Nightlord. If you're still having trouble with Elden Ring Nightreign's first set of expeditions, follow these beginner tips and make sure you're utilizing all of the advantages from the game's meta-progression systems. Elden Ring Nightreign launched on May 30 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Series S and Xbox One consoles for $40. Owning the original Elden Ring is not required to play this game.
CNET
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign Director Interview: He Solo'd Every Boss and So Can You
Elden Ring launched in 2022 to great acclaim as the culmination of director Hidetaka Miyazaki's successes with the Dark Souls and Bloodborne series of games. When calls went out in studio FromSoftware to explore more modest spinoff projects, Elden Ring combat director Junya Ishizaki raised his hand -- and proceeded to direct the just-released Elden Ring Nightreign, the multiplayer-only spinoff game. Nightreign is an ambitious attempt to distill the Elden Ring experience into under-an-hour repeatable runs killing enemies and mini-bosses before taking on a unique and deadly Nightlord main boss. Faster, meaner and in some ways tougher than the game it originates from, Nightreign is FromSoftware's expedition into multiplayer. And while it inherits a lot from Elden Ring, the studio's next game was developed to scratch a very different player itch -- a co-op pressure cooker to produce the highest and lowest moments that Souls games are known for. There are a lot of ways the games differ, but Nightreign's director summarized it by saying "I would describe the Elden Ring experience as more of a journey while Nightreign's experience is more of that on the battlefield." In part one of my interview with Ishizaki about his directorial debut in Nightreign, we chatted about what was kept and cut from Elden Ring, how the map design changed over development and whether he himself beat every boss in the game he helmed. (Yes, he solo'd them all.) Read more: Elden Ring Nightreign Beginner's Guide: The Essentials for Not Getting Wrecked in the First 5 Minutes Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET David Lumb: With its co-op focus and fast pace, Nightreign's gameplay is different than Elden Ring. What was kept and what was cut from the latter? Junya Ishizaki: While it's not limited to Elden Ring, with a lot of our games, we keep this sense of exploring the world and traversing the world. Building on these RPG systems and growing your character was definitely an element of Elden Ring that we wanted to keep and transfer into Nightreign. I think in terms of, not what what we cut because boss battles are still a large part of Elden Ring, but more as a good focus point on where we had to deliver something new for Nightreign -- we wanted these large-scale boss battles to feel really epic and really unique to this game. DL: What's it like to tweak the difficulty in a FromSoftware game, especially one built upon Elden Ring's specific challenge level from the lethality of everyday enemies to the biggest bosses? JI: These challenging elements to our games are always under scrutiny and that we're always looking at closely. We felt like we needed to step back and review that process for difficulty balancing with Nightreign in particular … being a multiplayer-focused title, the player is constantly evolving and changing their power level on the fly during any one session. So you really need to focus on what that power curve and that difficulty curve looked like within each session quite closely. Of course, as I say, we do look at this approach carefully from title to title. It's not just an all-in, make-it-hard approach. That said, Elden Ring, we did go too far in some areas and I feel we didn't go far enough in other areas. So we're always learning from our projects and past experiences, trying to create a game that feels fair and satisfying and gives you a feeling of accomplishment when you do overcome these challenges. DL: Hold on -- I think everyone would like to know your opinion on which bosses in Elden Ring went too far and which didn't go far enough! JI: This is not necessarily related to the difficulty specifically, but I think in terms of the battle system with Elden Ring -- which is something I was quite involved in the development of that game -- where the player feels too pressured or too restricted in what they can do within that framework and that setting, I feel like that created a lot of the feeling of difficulty for a lot of players. That is somewhere that we felt we were able to release the valve a little bit with Nightreign and allow for more player freedom and to have a more liberating experience. So with Nightreign, I think really leaning into something new was at the heart of this game, even though we're using Elden Ring as a base, that really gave us a lot of room to explore these battle systems and explore how the player traverses the world. Really really lean into creating a fresh experience there that doesn't feel like it's too tied to the original game in that sense. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET DL: Speaking of traversal, I can't be the only one who's wondered this: Was there ever fall damage in the game? I love dropping down from a great height. JI: There was actually fall damage at one point, very momentarily. We did study it and try it for a bit but we felt like the game could exist without it. We felt like the game stood up on its own and didn't need it in order to feel thrilling or to feel trepidation of other areas of the game. DL: What are other things players might be surprised to discover had been cut during development or refined into something totally different? JI: I'd say one example of this is the terrain changes that occur in Nightreign. At one point, there was the idea to have different maps -- specific set maps for when you play each session. At one point, we had the idea to try to collapse this into a single map, and instead have these different layers and transformative changes that occur during that session. We thought this could be a new challenge that could set it apart from previous and existing games, give us a new challenge to work with on Nightreign and provide a different gameplay experience as well to extend the breadth of each play session by having this layering feature to the terrain features. We found this added very different gradients to the exploration and to the way each session pans out. When we tried this, we felt like there's no one right answer. There's no one correct way you can do this, it just depends on the game. And this presented a new and interesting challenge for us and a way to, again, spice up the new gameplay in Nightreign. DL: That's interesting and sounds like a lot of development in the game experience. Was Nightreign ever considered as a full-size game like Elden Ring? JI: In a word, no, Nightreign was always considered a smaller, lighter title in comparison to the likes of Elden Ring. But to give a little bit of context to that, during the development of Elden Ring, I myself expressed interest in wanting to direct my own title, and this was picked up by Miyazaki and the other staff at From and I was given this opportunity. Being a new director, we wanted to take things from a smaller scale and a smaller perspective and start with a strong base with Elden Ring. Of course, having had this experience as director, I'd very much like in the future to start completely from scratch and have my own project and see where it can go scope-wise, so I'm looking forward to that opportunity as well. Bandai Namco DL: Now that you've finished Nightreign, what's your favorite part of it? JI: There's a lot of nice things to choose from, a lot about the game I like. But I think one thing we've honed in on with Nightreign in particular is the feeling of being both approachable and light in terms of an RPG, but also quite involved and quite in-depth if you want it to be. I think this is an area that we've managed to hit quite well. DL: And what have you and FromSoftware learned from making Nightreign? JI: I think there's a lot of experience we can take forward into future projects. One thing in particular I think has been really successful and really valuable to work with is this new approach to characters and character design, both from a gameplay and narrative perspective. I think this is a really unique aspect of Nightreign and it's something I think could be developed even further with our future titles, characters feeling unique and interesting in terms of the way they play, the way their controls translate to their unique game feel, and also how you as a player approach and explore their backstories and narratives. These are areas that make Nightreign stand apart from other titles and I think this is something we could definitely improve on and refine going forward. DL: Great. Last question: I beat the final boss yesterday and I just want to know -- have you, in fact, beaten every boss and the final boss yourself? Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET JI: Yes, I can hopefully give you reassurance to know that I have beaten all of the game's bosses. I've seen everything it has to offer, both in multiplayer and as a solo player. So I want you and players to know that this is very possible and I want you to have the confidence to give it a try yourself. And in terms of secrets and a narrative as well, I think there's a lot there for players who were invested in that side of it to uncover and I hope you look forward to experiencing everything that Nightreign has to offer. DL: Just to clarify: you solo'd every boss in the game? JI: Yes. And without relics. Elden Ring Nightreign launched on May 30 for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles for $40. Owning the original Elden Ring is not required to play this game.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Elden Ring Nightreign' Is Already Being Patched To Be Easier
Elden Ring Nightreign The launch of Elden Ring Nightreign has resulted in all manner of takes about FromSoftware's adventure into a multiplayer-only co-op game. In many ways, it's a lot more punishing than the original Elden Ring and its Souls games, given mechanics like losing levels and tanking entire, lengthy runs on death. Many may say that's part of the fun, and while that may be true, even FromSoft thinks Nightreign may be pushing the limit a little too much. The developer has announced Patch 1.02, set to be released next week, which will make two changes to make things a little easier, especially for solo players. The runes thing is self-explanatory, as runs will now be more rewarding. The auto-revive for solo players on Night Lords is to combat the intense difficulties of those fights where a single wrong move can be death. So now it's…two wrong moves. Though Night Lords are hardly the only bosses that pose an extreme challenge for solo players. Elden Ring Nightreign It's not a blanket difficulty nerf, which I think most players of the game probably would not want. There are certainly mainly complaints about how hard the game is, but even if it's tougher than other FromSoft titles, I think there's a crowd that wants that. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder However, there are other significant additions players are hoping to see other than what's being offered here. FromSoft has actually apologized for the lack of duos in the game, meaning it's impossible to play with just one other friend, and that should be in development for a later update. The other issues, a lack of in-game comms past pinging and the inability to crossplay with friends, seem harder to overcome and if they were addressed, would take a long time to implement. The lack of comms especially, text or voice, seems bizarre in a wholly co-op game, and results in silent runs with random teammates you have no way to coherently strategize with, and you just have to hope everyone is on the same page. Despite being multiplayer, Elden Ring Nightreign is not a live game. It will not be pumping out content or seasons or things like that. But it will release fixes, updates and features over time. It's good they're starting off quickly here in just week one. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
CNET
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign is a Drag to Play Solo. Here's Why It's Way Better With Friends
I've never been one to bristle at calling in help while playing one of FromSoftware's Souls games. I stalked the night all by myself in Bloodborne, but I played through Elden Ring with my best friend using the Seamless Co-Op mod -- only after I explored the game alone, the way I prefer it. While I don't have any qualms with calling for help or using spirit summons (as far as I'm concerned, these are tools in my arsenal to level the playing field), I do enjoy trying to take on the game all by myself the first time around, slaying massive enemies and making epic discoveries by my lonesome. So I embarked on my first Elden Ring Nightreign expedition alone with steely resolve, readying myself to charge into battle as the defense-oriented Guardian class (called Nightfarers in the game). I collected enough runes to get to level five, survived until nighttime and was promptly kicked straight back to the lobby when a duo of Demi-Human bosses passed through a cloud of miasma and beat the stuffing out of me. This became a bit of a trend while playing solo -- I never reached the end of an expedition by myself. I know I'm afflicted with what is colloquially known as a skill issue, and that's what led me to struggle so much with Nightreign's solo experience. As a matter of fact, I was so soured by my single-player runs that I didn't even think I liked Nightreign until I got a chance to queue into a multiplayer lobby. Though once I got my posse together, I quickly fell in love with the game. Thankfully, players may not suffer quite as much playing solo thanks to a day-one patch that looks to buff players going it alone, according to Eurogamer. But there are still key pieces of the design here that create extra friction for the solo experience, and it takes a lot of extra effort to work around that. If you're extremely good at FromSoftware's usual dark fantasy action RPGs, you'll probably excel here. But if you're an average player, you'll quickly run into these problems. If you wish to stand a fighting chance in Elden Ring Nightreign, you need to work together as a coordinated squad. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Elden Ring Nightreign revolves heavily around team composition I'm used to having many different tools in my arsenal when I'm approaching an Elden Ring boss. Even when I specialize my character for a strength build, I can depend on the Wondrous Physick and spirit summons to help me power through a tough battle. In Nightreign, each individual player has far fewer tools at their disposal. You have your wits, your weapon, any items and arts of war you stumbled upon and your Nightfarer abilities. Some of these abilities are useful by themselves, like Ironeye's dagger slash that gives him multiple precious invincibility frames (as well as bonus damage on the affected enemy) and Duchess' time rewind that stacks up tons of damage instances at once. But most abilities require a team to capitalize on them in order to feel truly effective. Ironeye's ultimate ability is timely to set up, but it does massive poise damage, staggering an enemy for a melee character to follow up with a critical hit. When I played by myself, I found that each role I committed to floundered without support from other people. The Guardian tanked hits but wouldn't have the stamina to follow-up with big damage. As Ironeye, I was under constant melee pressure, preventing me from consistently peppering my opponents with ranged damage. The Wylder might be the best all-rounder of the Nightfarers, especially with his one-time death-escaping passive, but there were still situations where I wished I had other players to chip away at the boss from far away while I dodged around its feet. Nightreign feels like a smooth and natural experience when you plan ahead and cover other people's weaknesses. I had the most luck when I played the ranged Ironeye and matched up with another CNET reviewer and a Bandai Namco employee who played as a tank and a melee attacker respectively, allowing me to stagger bosses by firing arrows at their weak spots from afar. If you're ever rooted in one place, you're frittering your precious time away. Bandai Namco/Screenshot by CNET Speed is key -- and you go slower alone Unlike the leisurely pace you can take in previous FromSoftware games, there's no time to take in the grandeur of Nightreign's version of The Lands Between. From the moment you land on day one to the end of night two, it's speedrunning time. Every round involves an anxiety-inducing calculus of balancing your leveling and your looting: By the time you face the Nightlord (the final boss of an expedition) in night three, you want to be at least level 12 and have a good mix of weapons, passive buffs and extra healing flasks. This is tough enough in multiplayer, where runes are distributed to every nearby member of the team regardless of who struck the final blow on an enemy and bosses are more easily staggered and dealt with between three Nightfarers. Navigating the map's randomized locations requires a lot of game knowledge and team unity. Taking Nightreign's expeditions on alone is a different story entirely. You're in charge of personally farming every rune you need to level up while still making your way to enough churches to stock up on healing flasks. Getting bogged down in boss fights for too long is a delayed death sentence, because you're wasting your most valuable resource: time. Still, you need the valuable weapons and passive buffs that boss enemies drop, so you'll have to beat down some of the tougher enemies you stumble across. The most powerful buffs of all are located in the game's Shifting Earth events that change a portion of the map during each run. These can be volcano-like craters or misty, hidden cities that house some of the hardest bosses and most valuable loot in the game, but you'll almost never be able to take these on by yourself before the circle closes in around you. I'm confident that I could overcome many of the challenges in Elden Ring Nightreign solo, given enough chances and time. But the clock was so against me that I never felt that I had the time to get strong enough. The game simply moves too quickly for me to be playing alone, and I think many other solo players will likely feel the same way. If you want to build a powerful team to take on the epic action RPG challenges that FromSoftware is lauded for, then you'll feel right at home with Elden Ring Nightreign. If you're a casual player looking for a good solo experience, I reckon you'll have to wait for another Souls game entirely (and you'll probably want to skip upcoming Switch 2 exclusive FromSoftware game The Duskbloods, too, which looks like it could inherit a lot of Nightreigns' multiplayer gameplay).
Tom's Guide
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
I thought Elden Ring Nightreign was a flop at first — here's the one thing that made me love it
Elden Ring Nightreign is a game of highs and lows. After more than 20 hours played, and every major boss (known as Nightlords) vanished, it's provided me with some of the best co-op moments I've ever had in gaming, but also some of the most tedious, frustrating and just plain unfun multiplayer sessions I've ever endured. My experience can be neatly categorized into runs that offered pure joy and ones that were, frankly, an unmitigated disaster. But it's not because of a skill issue (even if I am an average Souls player, at best), but rather because I started by relying on 'random' companions rather than pulling together a squad. If you're not aware, Elden Ring Nightreign is a new multiplayer-focused spin-off from 2022's smash hit, and very challenging, Elden Ring. It sees you and two online companions attempt to survive across three days in a procedurally generated mishmash of the base game's map. It's a highly streamlined take on the Elden Ring gameplay loop, and that proves to be a lot of fun, but you need to get just the right conditions to see the game's true potential. Elden Ring Nightregin is a new co-op spin on the best-selling RPG. It combines roguelite and Battle Royale elements and drops you and two companions on an ever-shifting map as you look to survive three days and take on an uber-powerful boss. You have the choice of playing as one of eight unique characters, each with their own playstyle and unique abilities. Plus, for those who enjoy tough encounters, Elden Ring Nightreign offers some of the most difficult bosses developer FromSoftware has ever made. In my first two hours of Elden Ring' Nightreign I made one crucial mistake: I opted to group up with fellow Nightfairers via the game's online matchmaking system. Essentially, I was teamed up with 'random' players from around the globe. I didn't know these players personally, and beyond placing pins on the game's rapidly shrinking maps (the closing circle mechanic from battle royale games like Fortnite is shamelessly cribbed), we had no means of communicating. In a tough game like this, communication is key. In these initial runs, my companions and I just didn't have the means to coordinate properly. Instead, we bumbled around the map, often traveling in opposite directions, and failing to synergize our ability to take down the game's toughest bosses. This led to spectacularly unsuccessful runs that were significantly more frustrating than fun. On a couple of attempts, we did manage to stumble our way to the final boss of a run, but the odds of actually beating these powerful foes were virtually nil. We wiped in seconds. At this point, after a couple of hours of play, I was genuinely thinking that Elden Ring Nightreign was a huge misstep from developer FromSoftware, a studio with an insane hit rate. I briefly considered whether it was even worth persisting with my playthrough. But I'm glad that was just a fleeting thought. Things dramatically changed when I did the thing I probably should have done from the start: Grouped up with some friends and industry peers. Getting a three-man squad together, that included TG's own Ryan Epps (who reviewed Elden Ring Nightreign), took my experience from largely frustrating to remarkably fun. Suddenly, runs became an intense race against the constantly ticking clock as my companions and I strategized on the fly to craft the most efficient path through the game's shifting world. We became obsessed with figuring out the quickest way to acquire runes (Which allow you to level up your chosen character), loot high-powered weapons and still have enough time remaining to visit every church we could find, as these provide health-restoring flasks. Battling bosses also became not just significantly easier, but seriously enjoyable as well. We could devise a plan, coordinate our special abilities, and call out when our oversized combatant was about to deploy a devastating chain of attacks that required us to leap out of the way. I was also able to consistently reach the final boss of each stage and start bringing them down. Even when the repetitive nature of each run became a little monotonous, just having friendly teammates to goof around with kept me hooked and eager to keep playing more. During a highly memorable encounter with one of the game's toughest Nightlords, my squad managed to bring the beast down with each of us having just a sliver of health left after three failed attempts. It was in this real fist-pumping moment that I got to see Elden Ring Nightreign at its very best. There's an adage in gaming that any multiplayer game is better played with friends, but Elden Ring Nightreign takes this idea to a whole new level. If you're on the fence about picking up the game, I strongly suggest you only cough up your cash if you can convince at least two other friends to join you on your journey. Trying to play this brutal game via online matchmaking, or god-forbidden, solo is a recipe for a bad time. It's just not worth the headache. Under the right conditions, when you have a team of (at least vaguely) competent players all communicating, Elden Ring Nightreign is truly something special. But be warned, if the conditions of play are anything less than optimal, the entire structure falls apart and becomes miserable. Nevertheless, it's a good sign that I went from considering dropping the game after a few hours, to 20 hours later, having beaten every single boss Nightreign could throw at me, yet I remain eager to jump in again to keep getting that intoxicating adrenaline rush that only a FromSoftware game can provide. However, I won't be making the same mistake twice, and unless I can pull together a posse each time I want to dive into Elden Ring Nightreign's pretty unique brand of co-op action, I'll opt to play something else instead.
