7/10
There’s a solid game buried in Nightreign, and when you’re deep in it with friends over Discord, it can be a blast. The moment-to-moment gameplay is intense and satisfying: carving out a path, strategizing around the ring of fire, chasing resources and runes before the world collapses around you. That tension is where the game shines.
But it’s also riddled with these strange, horrible oversights and design friction. Little things - like how the character select screen locks you in before you can tweak your relics - feel clumsy. The Shifting Earth events quickly turn into bland optimization chores that railroad you into paths and flatten a lot of the tension.
Multiplayer is clearly the intended experience. I only played with two friends, and it was fun. But the fact that Nightreign doesn’t support crossplay or any real way to coordinate with strangers is kind of shameful. It makes the game feel like it shipped unfinished. Trying to match with randoms is worse than useless - most people just disconnect immediately.
The performance on a base model PS4 is pretty inexcusable.
And then there’s the randomness. I guess I feel like Roguelites live and die by how fair they are when the dice roll against you, and Nightreign doesn’t pass the test (Roguelikes are a different story). Relics are randomized, and it’s too easy to end up with a build-breaking combination: one skill you want and two that you’d never use, no way to reroll, and no guarantee of synergy. RNG boss spawns can be just as punishing. One run we fought Morgott (sorry, “Fell Omen”) at level 14 and breezed through. In another, he showed up at level 3 and hit us with a permanent debuff we couldn’t recover from. Sometimes a demon cuts 30% of your health and leaves the map before you can react. Sometimes a plague steals a level and vanishes.
There’s no tension in that. Just frustration.
Also, a side note: if you’re going to censor player names, maybe don’t block the name of the game itself. “John Nightreign” being flagged is peak Scunthorpe problem. Just whitelist the title. Please, I can’t handle any more “John ***htreign"s.
Maybe I’m just salty because I got baited by the Dark Souls nostalgia. The trailer teased the Firekeeper from DS3 - she’s just “The Dutchess” in a cloak - and the supposed boss callbacks are quick cameos. Nothing with the weight or dread or lore you’d expect.
The game is basically 45 minutes of boss run-back, so of course the bosses are tuned easier than in the mainline Souls games. It’s a necessary trade-off, but it leaves them feeling underwhelming.
Still, when everything clicks - when the pathing works, when you’re communicating well, when the game gives you the right relics - it’s a good time. But that “when” does a lot of heavy lifting. Nightreign is a compelling, chaotic spin on Elden Ring’s DNA, but it stumbles over its own systems too often to be great.
Maybe a weak 6/10 but a stronger 7/10, with both real highs and frustrating lows.