Elden Ring Nightreign Review: FromSoftware Reinvents the Soulslike

What Is Elden Ring Nightreign?

Elden Ring Nightreign is FromSoftware's bold spin-off that reframes the Lands Between as a co-op roguelike arena. Instead of a 60-hour linear journey, you and up to two companions drop into a shrinking map, loot weapons and runes across three escalating nights, and then face a randomised Night Lord boss. Runs last 30–45 minutes. You can be back in the lobby before your pizza arrives.

Released in January 2026 and expanded in April with the Forsaken Hollows DLC, Nightreign has sold 3.2 million copies in three months — making it FromSoftware's fastest-selling standalone title ever. We've logged over 90 hours across both the base game and DLC to give you the definitive verdict.

How Does the Roguelike Loop Work?

Each run follows a tight three-act structure. Night One tasks you with gathering weapons, talismans, and rune arcs from the procedurally-populated map. Night Two introduces stronger enemy variants and a mid-boss checkpoint. Night Three is the climax: the Night Lord descends and you face a multi-phase boss fight with everything you've accumulated.

What makes it sing is the randomisation. Weapon drops vary by run, forcing you to adapt your build on the fly. You might find a Rivers of Blood katana on Night One and build an arcane bleed monster, or stumble upon Moonveil and pivot to a pure intelligence mage. The flexibility demands improvisation — and that improvisation is endlessly satisfying.

Is Co-op or Solo Better?

Nightreign was designed from the ground up for three players, and it shows. Playing with friends transforms the looting phase into a genuine social experience — coordinating who takes what, calling out elite enemy positions, and rallying downed teammates during the Night Lord fight. Communication wins runs. Silence loses them.

Solo play is not locked out — FromSoftware tuned enemy health and aggression separately for single-player. It's harder and somewhat lonelier, but still viable. Expect solo runs to take 50–60 minutes as you play more conservatively. The real magic, though, is with your squad.

Forsaken Hollows DLC: Is It Worth It?

The April 2026 DLC adds four new Night Lords, each tied to a new biome: the crystalline Shattered Peaks, the subterranean Fungal Abyss, the burning Cinder Coast, and the fog-shrouded Forsaken Hollow itself. Each biome has unique enemy types, loot tables, and environmental hazards that force entirely different survival strategies.

The standout is the Forsaken Hollow's Night Lord — Malekith, the Shadow Remnant. A recontextualised version of a base-game boss, this encounter spans three distinct phases across a collapsing arena and is, without hyperbole, the best boss fight FromSoftware has ever created. We've cleared it 14 times and it still feels tense.

Performance: How Does It Run in 2026?

On PC with an RTX 5070 at 1440p with DLSS Quality, Nightreign runs at a locked 120 fps with all settings maxed. The April patch added frame generation support, pushing capable systems to 165+ fps. On PS5, the 60fps Performance mode is rock-solid, and the 30fps Quality mode offers ray-traced global illumination that looks stunning on an OLED screen.