Not paying for a sub-par cash grab by FromSoft.

tl;dr; it’s an over-simplified Battle-Royale format spin-off of a great game, and FromSoft is charging 40 euros for it. Skipping this release until it goes for a very big sale.

With Elden Ring Nightreign being launched last night(as of writing), I have already gotten views of how the gameplay is courtesy of all the YouTube Let’s Plays and as an avid enjoyer of FromSoft’s games I’m going to say that I’ll be skipping this game for the time being, at least until it becomes like €10 on sale. €40 for this is a complete rip-off, and I’ll try to provide my reasoning here.

Now, please keep in mind that I’m only gauging this from a viewer perspective, as in - I have only watched videos and read initial feedback of players on the Internet and asking opinions of friends who’re fortunate enough to play it as opposed to playing the game myself. Assuming my opinion changes in the future when I actually get to sit down and play this, I will append this post accordingly with a follow-up post.

1. It feels like an unfleshed Battle Royale-styled bumrush gamemode.

where we droppin, bois?

Now, while I understand this game was created as a ‘fun’ spin-off of the original Elden Ring game, considering how many mechanics have been copied over from other games(e.g. dropping onto a large region of the map with the circle closing in like it’s Fortnite), it just feels more like a PvE Battle Royale than an actual Souls-like.

Items being released from chests & crates like it’s a battle royale drop - while inherently not a bad thing, I feel like they just looked at most BR games and asked themselves, ‘how much of these mechanics can we shove in?’ - and it seems like they got a fair few in.

Revival of players is interesting, but IMO a fair compromise to prevent bonfire respawn dashes - you may not wish to stop what you’re doing to wait for a progress bar to fill up as you’re killing the boss, so swinging your weapon at your downed allies is a good way of tackling it IMHO.

Upgrading system, for a gameplay streamlined to increase the game pace as opposed to making it a collect-a-thon… Listen, I’m not a loot collector myself, but forcing my hand to let up some loot is a bit… Odd, to say the least.

Ultimately, the idea of having a limited amount of time to explore the world at your own pace really prevents you from taking in the views of the cool areas, which saddens me primarily because I have started enjoying the views of Night City while playing through Cyberpunk 2077, and I kinda wished to do the same here - but that cannot happen.

2. It inhibits player creativity in builds(?)

ayo where Rocky Balboa build at

With players being locked in to a handful of choices of preset characters, it inherently inhibits most, if not all player creativity in customizing characters - making them their own. Hell, my own creation - Fish Lard - wouldn’t have seen the light of day and have been such an amazing character to take out with friends and solo alike(for those who care/wish to know, it’s a FTH/DEX oriented build targeted at spamming incantations at range and using dex weapons for up close action - really fun stuff).

Now, normally I wouldn’t mind this - as the format doesn’t necessarily allow building up a character long-term - Heroes of Hammerwatch 1 & 2(link) are excellent means of allowing some character construction while still maintaining replayability & progression - as your skills sharpen, so does your town & character. I have missed that with Nightreign, and it really saddens me that we are not allowed to have any shape & form of character persistence. From what I saw at some friends’ streams, it doesn’t seem like there is a lot of gear persistence in between victories of beating areas, so it’s a miss from me.

3. Simplified, to a fault

here let me give my niece the controller and have her collect shit for me

Most of the game’s UI appears to have been simplified to allow for more streamlined rogue-like gameplay, which in of itself is not bad(it could’ve been worse - it could’ve been Cinders mod!), I feel like it breaks a lot of mechanics I adored from Elden Ring that are just… bastardized in this release. Inversely, there’s some good done, but I’ll list my thoughts on it as needed.

For instance, I can approve removing the need for a horse(aka Torrent in Elden Ring) by just increasing the sprinting speed of all characters - that is a valid change and I like it.

Wall & double jumping is an okay mechanic in lack of a horse, but fall damage not existing is a ‘take it or leave it’ for me. Sure, it helps streamlining the game - but is it really needed?

Ultimates and unique abilities are… meh. Honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with them, but inversely - I’d like to see some customizability with them. Weapon arts are great & all, but surely if characters can switch up their weapons, they can also switch up their abilities? …right?

Additionally, collecting shit from crates and larger enemies in a BR style is… iunno, it’s just not for me perhaps.

4. No more sense of difficulty (and in turn, fulfillment).

yeaaaa I whacked this boss! …after dying to it like 5 times

Enemies do not get reset by deaths outside of boss finale in this iteration of a Souls game, which means that one might be capable of outright just bum-rushing bosses with their teams(if applicable), which for me kills that sense of difficulty(a la ‘Hey, you cannot die while killing this boss!’) and in turn, that sense of achievement, that hit of dopamine when you finally crack that boss wide open after so many retries!

To me, that is a core part of playing a Souls game, getting that rush of dopamine when I finally whack that boss, when I have finally figured out it’s attack patterns and adapted to adjust to them - that is fulfillment to it’s fullest. That is proper Souls gameplay. Nightreign shit-canning all of that will turn it into an inferior product for me.

5. 3 players required for a good time.

bro wya we gotta do another battle bus run

One of the biggest complaints I have identified by most negative Steam reviews(sort by negative and most helpful and you’ll see what I meant) is the lack of choosing the party size, as FromSoftware has decided to lock down the player amount in each session to be exactly three or just solo. No more. No less.

You’ve got exactly 2 friends who own this and are ready to lock it in with you? Great, have at it!
However, not everyone is so fortunate to have 2 more friends to play this with. Granted, the point I’m trying to drive here is that while the game does offer an option to do solo runs - it’ll always remain a larger challenge than, say, tackling it in a duo(which is my preferred method of playing Souls games - with one friend, working back-to-back). Which, as far as I can tell, is not an option - either 3 players by any means necessary(which, in lack of 2 friends would mean 2 randoms) or strictly solo. Which in of itself wouldn’t be an issue if the game was balanced to support solo or duo runs well. As far as I can tell, for the latter scenario you cannot even duo these(without getting a third), and solo runs are abyssmally hard. Sure, some tryhards will prove me wrong by running it like the absolute chads that they are, however I’m looking at this from a ‘retired from sweating’ Souls enjoyer point of view. I like difficulty and challenges these bosses bring, but if I have to solo and it feels just as bad as the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC where I must cheese every boss with 200 buffs to have a chance at beating them, because their move set is total bullshit? Yeah nah boss, miss me with that.

There’s ways to solve this issue IMHO - one of them would be to allow the remaining two characters be controlled by AI(similar to how 4-player co-op games like Left 4 Dead have done it) until a friend has dropped in, OR allow straight up to not have a third if he cannot be gotten hold of. As far as I can tell, FromSoft has yet to acknowledge this as an issue, let alone confirm whether they’d consider changing this in the future.

Ultimately however, this also stems another issue - what if you wish to grab a larger party to play this? Say, four or even more friends? Then you’re SOL and have to rotate your allies in these sessions. Not fun for anyone.

Anyway, I’ll wait for this feature to get patched before I consider picking this up.

6. It’s an asset flip.

ayo hold up this isn’t Sif & Nameless

This one, while being an appended point, I feel like is one of the more important ones. While looking at it as a ‘new’ game, one must not forget that this was not a work of Hidetaka Miyazaki and instead a spin-off, re-using assets from both Elden Ring and older games, and in turn causing a lot of sales to be from retro-oriented folks who see the bosses as throwbacks into a new game. Not inherently a wrong opinion if I may add, but one that I feel FromSoft is banking on to succeed in the sales of this game. Rose-tinted glass retro vibe can be a strong selling point, after all - but it won’t get me. I see what they’re doing.

Conclusion

In lieu of everything I have laid out(hopefully, in a logical manner as I’m still recovering from a slight hangover from last night’s work teambuilding party), I will not be purchasing this game full price and I will be holding off on it until either I can get hold of it for cheap, or someone decides to make me play it by sponsoring me a copy of this game.

Until then…

see you Space Cowboy…