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CNET
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Elden Ring Nightreign Review: the Highs and Lows of Distilling Souls Games to Roguelike Runs
I drop into a fantasy land with a sword and two squadmates, all dedicated to defeating the Nightlord ruling over our shadowy limbo realm -- but first, we have to survive. From the deepest mines to the highest snow-capped peaks, we clashed and slew monstrous beasts for two in-game days at a breakneck pace to stay ahead of the closing ring of blue flame. On the third day, confronting the Nightlord in its lair, we get close to defeating it with wild weapons and spells -- but win or lose, we shrug and queue up to drop once more. This is Elden Ring Nightreign, a spin-off of studio FromSoftware's phenomenally successful and notoriously difficult fantasy action-RPG game Elden Ring. Rather than spend dozens of hours exploring wide lands in a solo adventure, Nightreign takes the combat and boss structure to a co-op multiplayer setting where tight gameplay must be balanced against speed and strategy to survive each trip into the game's arena. Nightreign is a departure for FromSoftware, eschewing the slow solo explorations of its previous games in favor of fast-paced rounds building your heroes from scratch, kind of similar to battle royale shooters like Fortnite and Apex Legends. But unlike those PvP-intensive games, each Nightreign round pits the friendly squad against a map full of computer-controlled enemies, leaving players dependent on teammates to survive -- or themselves, if they're bold enough for a solo run. (Currently, players can either go it alone or queue for three-player squads.) Read more: Elden Ring Nightreign Beginner's Guide: Team Strategy, Level Goals and Survival Tips Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Nightreign is focused, repeatable Soulslike action Nightreign ambitiously tries to see how much of an idiosyncratic yet popular game can be slimmed down and imported into a new gameplay loop. It's easy to put a hundred hours or more into Elden Ring, exploring every nook and cranny, upgrading weapons and trying out different strategies. Nightreign punishes that slow pace, requiring squads to blitz around the map, hitting specific points of interest to get as strong as they can to survive and defeat the big boss at the end of each three-day run. (Playing through three in-game days and facing the Nightlord boss at the end of a run can take 45 minutes to an hour -- or less, if you die along the way.) This approach will be catnip for fans of FromSoftware's signature tough boss combat, as it distills Elden Ring down to its core combat loop with just enough randomized surprises to somewhat refresh each run while keeping enough the same to quickly plan and alter course along a run. That makes sense, as Nightreign is directed by Junya Ishizaki, the person in charge of overseeing the combat for Elden Ring. On the surface, a lot has carried over from Elden Ring, but there are plenty of subtle refinements to make it fit fast-paced multiplayer gameplay. Player characters kit themselves out with powerful weapons and spells without worrying about stat requirements or armor. There's no fall damage, allowing players to drop from great heights to keep moving, and spirit hawks lift them in aerial routes around the map. Running up to a spiritual spring of blue fire lets you leap upward hundreds of feet in an invigorating ascent with a heavy bass sound effect -- I breeze around the map feeling fast and powerful, a hunter in a forsaken land. But there is some part of FromSoftware's spirit that's lost in Nightreign: that feeling of being dwarfed by an alien world that slowly unfolds its mysterious history as you cut your way through its cursed remains. Instead, Nightreign leans heavily on the mystique and lore built up in Elden Ring, presenting a mirror version of that well-known setting with its own limited mythology that can be revealed with optional missions. But you can just stick with the gameplay loop, and many will, turning Nightreign into a greatest hits album of fun FromSoftware moments that doesn't introduce too much that's new -- beyond designing the game around persistent squad multiplayer. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET And the multiplayer is a joy, despite rough edges that, in true FromSoftware fashion, are unexplained or buggy in ways that the community will likely fondly rehabilitate as part of the game's charm. For instance, the game requires a lot of ascending big plateaus by hopping up misshapen steps with erratically successful ledge grabs. It's minorly frustrating, but does ratchet up the tension when you're trying to escape death or rush to a teammate's aid -- and much like the rest of FromSoftware's games, Nightreign is so tightly polished elsewhere that this slight jank, or other aspects like it, is tolerated and treated as part of its difficulty and flavor. Which is all to say that, for $40, Nightreign delivers on its vision of concentrated, easily repeatable FromSoftware action that's sure to hook the studio's die-hard fans and potentially lure other difficulty junkies who prefer quick multiplayer romps to lore-heavy solo adventures. With rogue-like novelty that rewards replaying, there's a decent blend of familiar elements and shifting map factors for fans of FromSoftware's tough gameplay to get their fix without needing to replay games they know so well. Fans of the longevity of Elden Ring and its DLC Shadows of the Erdtree should be cautioned: On top of a more narrow appeal than prior FromSoftware games, players will vary in how much replay value they'll get out of Nightreign, since there's currently only one map and a finite number of end-run bosses to tackle. The eight character classes, called Nightfarers, have varying complexity in their ability mechanics and will take players a while to master, but they'll likely spend most of their time attacking with weapons and dodging enemy blows, as in Elden Ring. There are plenty of randomized factors that mix up a run, from shifting terrain opening up new areas to "invasions" of powerful enemy computer-controlled Nightfarers. But in the 20 hours it took me to beat half the end-run bosses and kill the final boss, the single map became such a known entity that I stopped paying attention to it as anything but a race course to speed over on the way to my next task. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Where Elden Ring Nightreign triumphs and falters As a FromSoftware fan who can muck his way through its games in ways that nobody would describe as "dominant," Nightreign is something of a relief, as my two permanent teammates can help a lot in distracting bosses and picking me up when I make mistakes. Thanks to previewing the game earlier this year, I hit the ground running, pairing up with CNET teammates to try taking on big bosses -- and failing. But after pairing up with a very skilled Bandai Namco employee (one of many who volunteered to help reviewers like me take on bosses and finish the game), we took down some of the biggest and baddest Nightreign has to offer. There's no mistaking that I was carried by more skilled teammates, and that has me concerned for a bit of the game's flow and player skill growth. While I was used to cautiously and slowly going through FromSoftware games, my more skilled teammates flung us outbound on a speedy tour of the map zones we needed to hit to get as strong as we could. When I fell, they tanked bosses and dodged attacks to revive me. When the map's Shifting Earth conditions led to a new area, my expert teammate took us to the exact right spot to take full advantage of it -- something that might have taken plenty more runs to figure out on my own. I certainly improved over time, but it was all during rounds -- in the Roundtable hub, players return to between missions, a Sparring Grounds area lets you try out each of the eight total (six starting, two unlockable) Nightfarers' regular and ultimate skills, along with every weapon in the game. But it's a far cry from the game's high-pressure situations of boss events, enemy groups and more. Players will improve only by trial and error in the field, sometimes letting down their teammates in the process. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNET Yet, when you and your team are firing on all cylinders, there's no thrill like eking out a win over a monstrous boss. After killing a trio of end-run bosses, another reviewer, Bandai Namco employee Micah (team Cat Password all the way) and I locked in to beat the game's final boss. Shouting out congratulations over team chat, my body shaking with adrenaline, I felt like I'd completed a gaming feat -- something not unknown to many Elden Ring players after surmounting one of that game's many challenging bosses. I felt accomplished. I wanted to tell everyone, and when the game comes out, bring my friends in to play Nightreign with them, guiding as I was guided. But would I recommend my FromSoftware newcomer friends to play? Bandai Namco Who is Elden Ring Nightreign for? The more I thought about it, the more I felt my dozens of hours in Elden Ring were essential to starting Nightreign strong -- and even then, it took 20 hours in Nightreign to feel like I'd gotten a good handle on the best way to play. Knowing Elden Ring's massive arsenal of weapons and spells felt essential to picking up Nightreign and immediately having fun. New players who don't have baked-in knowledge of Elden Ring or the combat flow of FromSoftware games will probably be left in the cold. Aside from a tutorial section teaching players basic mechanics, Nightreign lacks the carefully crafted early sections of the studio's other games -- it quite literally drops players into the map for a run and tells them to get killing. The virtue of FromSoftware's single-player adventures' difficulties is that players could approach them at their own pace; in Nightreign, they must rapidly adapt to the studio's particular flavor of tough combat while also figuring out a largely unexplained world. The studio's famed minimalist storytelling will likely do a disservice to new players who die too quickly to learn. Whether they continue with the game after a humiliating defeat is, indeed, the classic trial that every FromSoftware player faces. But it sure seems like new players have a high hill to climb picking up on the game's subtly conveyed details -- map flow, enemy camps, bosses, weapons, churches, strategies -- while also figuring out how to play Soulslikes from scratch. And yet, Nightreign is so unlike every other game out there that its sheer novelty may be enough to tempt FromSoftware veterans and newcomers alike. It's polished, is easy to get into the action and has a very high skill ceiling. If players stick through its lack of direction and difficulty, they'll find a multiplayer game that feels rewarding to win in a way few other games are. And when they lose, they may find themselves like I did -- nursing annoyance that they fumbled but eager to drop in one more time with their trusted squad. Elden Ring Nightreign launches 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.
CNET
2 days 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).
Digital Trends
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Elden Ring: Nightreign: how to play with friends
The major factor that sets Elden Ring: Nightreign apart from the base game is that it is designed to be a co-op experience. Instead of a long, primarily solo RPG adventure, you and two companions will rush through Limveld slaying bosses, getting loot, and hopefully surviving all three nights. While you could try your luck matchmaking with random players, your best bet at success is to get a group of friends together. FromSoftware games have notoriously obtuse matchmaking systems, and sadly, Elden Ring: Nightreign isn't much better. Here's how to play with your friends. Recommended Videos Difficulty Easy Duration 10 minutes What You Need Complete the tutorial How to play with friends in Elden Ring: Nightreign After beating the tutorial (or more likely dying), you will appear at the Roundtable Hold. This acts as your hub between runs and is where you set up matchmaking. Before explaining how to start a party, you should know that Elden Ring: Nightreign is not a cross-platform game. This means that, no matter what, you can't form a party with someone on a different platform than the one you are on. You also need to pay attention to which boss you're targeting on your run. Besides just limiting which people you randomly matchmake with, anyone you want to team up with also needs to have that same boss selected. Then there's the matter of the world state. Based on different events we won't spoil, your world state can change in multiple ways called Shifting Earth. This further fragments who you can match with because two players with different world states cannot team up. There are also eight different expedition playlists to further dilute the matchmaking pools. If the stars have aligned and you and your friends have the same world state, boss selected, and are on the same platform, here's how to party up. Step 1: Approach the Table of Lost Grace and select Commence Expedition. Step 2: Hit the right bumper to view Matchmaking Settings. Step 3: Either select Invite Members to invite players directly from your friends list or go Under *Multiplayer Password and enter a unique password. Step 4: Send that password to your friends. The only final note we need to make is one you likely already know. Nightreign can only be played solo or in groups of three, with no options for duos. If you set a password and only invite one friend, that third slot will be randomly filled before you can start the game.
Top Gear
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Top Gear
Endurance Motorsport Series preview: why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
Gaming Playing as driver and mechanic in online co-op? Brilliant Skip 5 photos in the image carousel and continue reading In this present chapter of the games industry, in which it's rare enough to play a game that hasn't been preceded by at least nine sequels or released twice already before its current remastered form, new ideas are thin on the ground. But the developers at KT Racing have evidently had their thinking caps on lately. Endurance Motorsport Series is a strikingly generic name for a strikingly bold, fresh racing game. In the simplest terms, you get to be the driver, the strategist and the race engineer all at once. Or stick to one role and play in co-op with your mates occupying the other roles. Advertisement - Page continues below It's as simple as that, and yet nobody's really tried this before. The line between motorsport management and racing sim has always been kept crisp and clear, and other than the Codemasters F1 series letting you run a team off the track and then drive the car at race weekends, no one has dared to step across it. Hypercars, LMP2 and GT vehicles are all on the roster here, as are a mix of real-world tracks like Spa with some supermarket own-brand fictional circuits inspired by the circuits who evidently wouldn't sign the license agreements. We're not talking Gran Turismo 7 -levels of encyclopaedic rigour, then, but that's not really what EMS is going for. You might like As we quickly discover on track at The Green Hell, the handling has a simcade character rather than an all-out simulation. KT Racing wants this to be equally compelling for direct drive wheel users and racers who like to sit back on the sofa with a gamepad in their hands, and that's a smart place to pitch the accessibility level considering there's a co-op element, which means selling the game hard like Jordan Belfort to your gaming buddies in Discord. Lower barrier for entry equals greater likelihood of getting friends involved. Oddly enough, though, it ends up being more compelling with a wheel than a controller. It takes some time to figure out that you can brake much later than when the reasoning gland in your brain starts yelling at you, and even a shade after the 'seriously, brake now' cortex chimes in. Advertisement - Page continues below You've got so much more stopping power and lateral agility than the cars in Assetto Corsa Competizione or iRacing give you, which means half the challenge is finding where the new limit is. And the analogue inputs of a wheel and pedal make that a bit easier to feel your way into than the sharper stick waggles and trigger squeezes of a gamepad. In third-person cam and using a controller, it's clear there's a bit of fine-tuning still to be done on the handling before EMS releases later in 2025. Specifically, the relationship between camera movement and turn-in rate – it's tricky at present to judge how much grip you've got, and the strange understeer-oversteer-understeer phases we experienced through Spa's corners (admittedly, in the wet) felt short of convincing. However: switching between driver and engineer is just as gratifying as it sounds. With one button tap, you're out of the car and watching several data readout screens from the pitwall. Here you're given all the information to analyse the best pit window, the optimum tyre compound, and where the clear air is on track when you exit the pits. It's enjoyable enough to play both roles, but the prospect of playing as a duo and having each co-op teammate committed to their role is genuinely exciting. Because it's genuinely new. We need to shout about these risk-taking games from the rooftops in 2025, because there aren't nearly enough of them. So keep doing what you're doing, EMS . Please make it an easy sales pitch when we get onto Discord and try convincing our mates to join us. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Look out for your regular round-up of news, reviews and offers in your inbox. Get all the latest news, reviews and exclusives, direct to your inbox. Endurance Motorsport Series is due later in 2025.
CBC
3 days ago
- General
- CBC
Dozens picking up pieces after major fire in Pierrefonds-Roxboro
The fire broke out overnight on May 28 in a co-op housing complex in Montreal's West Island. More than 40 people are being housed by the Red Cross, but they'll soon have to find other arrangements.
