Okay, so I want to talk about this.

I've been playing a game called Elden Ring: Nightreign recently. It's been out for about a week, and I have something close to 30 hours in it already, so I think it may be fair to say that I'm a little bit obsessed with it.

The premise of the game is an interesting one. Take Elden Ring, one of the greatest game of this decade, and narrow the focus entirely to its combat. Also make it multiplayer, because why not. The entire game is hyperfixated on the combat experience; you start out as a specific class of character with their own specific strengths and weaknesses, and the goal is to explore a slightly randomised world as quickly as you can in order to find loot, take down bosses with your friends, and get ready for the final boss waiting for you at the third day of the expedition.

Days in Nightreign are only 10-15 minutes long, and I'd feel remissed to not mention that at the end of those 15 minutes, you have a fortnite-style storm circle that closes in on a specific point on the map where your party has to take down a night boss before the next day. Which means you have to be very expeditious in exploring as much of the map as possible; I'm convinced that it's impossible to actually explore the whole map in the two days that you're given because of how fast-paced the game is.

All this together combines for a surreal experience. It's as if you're putting the entirity of the massive game that is Elden Ring into a single 1 hour long adventure. And I bloody love it... with a few caveats.

Let me get this out of the way now. Nightreign is an amazing game, IF you have two other friends to play it with (since the game lacks a 2 player option), AND those two other friends are of a pretty similar level of skill to you. As a former top 150 Dark Souls III speedrunner, that's a pretty difficult bar to meet, and souls players aren't exactly known for having friends to begin with. Most of the criticism of this game comes from people who aren't able to meet these requirements, which is to say quite a lot of people. The singleplayer experience is lackluster, and unbalanced teams (or playing with randoms) can be a frustrating experience because of the high emphasis on effective, efficient execution. The game is as difficult as Elden Ring is, but now it also expects mastery of the game from all three players, not just you.

But if you do meet that requirement of three equally matched players, in a voice call together trying to min-max the hell out of the game? It really is the Elden Ring experience condensed into the space of an hour, and that feels amazing. The largest (and only real) criticism of Elden Ring is that the game is far too massive for actually trying to replay the game, and Nightreign solves the issue while also solving the notoriously bad netcode that the FromSoftware games have suffered for a decade. There's really nothing quite like asking "where we droppin' boys", picking up a sword I've literally never seen before after over 100 hours in Elden Ring, and getting my face kicked in by one of the expertly designed bosses from FromSoftware's catalogue.

I'm planning to do a full replay of all of the FromSoftware souls games over the next few months, and Elden Ring: Nightreign was a great reminder of what I love so much about these games.

Final verdict? 2/3. (if you're curious how my rating system works, ask me on discord one day.)