Elden Ring: Nightreign Review (Lycaerix)
Pretty tedious and disappointing gameplay loop.
Have to have a bit of a mirthless chuckle that FromSoft is still dancing around the 60fps cap in 2025. Your potato isn't my problem, but making me play as though I share your potato, is.
Unlike other people's moans, I am suitably equipped with companions for the 3-player co-op, which is in itself perfectly fine, but the chaos of the ever-narrowing circle of fire and having to 'rush' through the map as efficiently as possible is not really our style.
Combat, as ever, in Elden Ring/Dark Souls is relatively 'slow' and doesn't exactly lend itself well to any kind of timer.
In fact, the encroaching ring of fire increasingly comes across as nothing more than an artificial and convoluted mechanic used to hobble your character development, while giving you the illusion of an expansive area to explore. Traditional rogue-likes use world-building and character development choices with a mix of randomness to challenge your progression.
This isn't a challenge to your progression so much as a tedious nudge to keep moving lest you level up too much or have too much of an opportunity to find better gear (or even spare a moment to consider the gear) and give yourself an easier time. Can't have that, can we? :)
Doesn't help that if you (read: your party, even) want to restart your run, you incur a penalty. Because of course you do.
The lack of a 'duo' co-op mode (read: only solo or a full three-person party were considered) shows that little was done by FromSoft to actually consider the gameplay loop, the annoyance of not simply being able to end a 'session' when you feel like it, and the general progression.
I'm not sure who the target market for this game was, because it certainly isn't their established fanbase, and yet it's their established fanbase whom they've relied upon to support this. Bizarre.
Opinion may change later, but I doubt it.
You could consider that the resources put into this game might otherwise have given us more Elden Ring; instead it gave us a watered down arcade game set in the Elden Ring universe that leaves us with few opportunities to appreciate what it might otherwise have to offer.