Elden Ring: Nightreign Explained in Huge IGN Report

As an ardent FromSoftware fan with countless hours spent in the dark, twisted realms of their games, I must say that Elden Ring: Nightreign has sent a wave of exhilaration coursing through me! The concept of condensing the epic scope and challenge of Elden Ring into a faster-paced, co-op experience is nothing short of genius.

The announcement of Elden Ring: Nightreign will have caught many FromSoftware fans, especially as the studio wasn’t really expected to have any news to share having put out Shadow of the Erdtree earlier this year. It did, however: a co-op game for up to three players that uses the frameworks of Elden Ring for a different kind of experience. Over on IGN, the outlet was able to play the game ahead of the reveal and interview game director Junya Ishizaki.

FromSoftware aims to compact the essence of Elden Ring into a more focused, streamlined gameplay experience with Nightreign, as if you were playing Elden Ring cooperatively but faster paced, according to IGN’s description.

At the start of every round, you team up with two other players, then are dropped into a section of Limgrave, an alternate reality, which features varying types of enemies and random placements of castles and forts. The goal is to quickly advance your characters from their initial level-one status by collecting runes and weapons as you fight your way through the enemy camps and castles scattered throughout this ever-changing landscape.

Here’s how a play session in Elden Ring: Nightreign goes:

Nightreign is structured around a three-day cycle, with each day lasting 15 minutes
During the daytime of the first day, you can choose to go wherever you like
As night approaches, where you can go becomes restricted as acid rain closes in on you like a Battle Royale circle
When the circle is at its smallest, you enter a random boss fight, including both old and new foes
This process repeats for the second and third day
There are 8 distinct characters to play as that all have clear strengths and weaknesses
Each character has a unique skill and ultimate attack that operate on cooldown meters
If you die, your teammates can revive you by attacking you
In between rounds, you go to the Roundtable Hold
In the Roundtable Hold, you can spend a currency called Murk on emotes and skins
Relics offer permanent upgrades to your characters, and you slot up to three in your loadout

Despite the recent bullet points giving an impression of Elden Ring: Nightreign being a continuous live-service type game, it’s clarified that purchasing the game grants you the entirety of its content. Unlike some games, it doesn’t require Battle Passes or microtransactions to play, and you can enjoy it in single player mode as well as offline.

2024-12-13 17:06

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