I kept dying in FromSoftware’s Elden Ring spin-off Nightreign – and that’s why I can’t stop playing

I’ve spent an unhealthy number of hours in the Lands Between (click here to read Glenn’s review. So when Elden Ring: Nightreign was first announced, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. A multiplayer-focused spinoff with a roguelite gameplay, timed objectives, and shrinking map zones sounded like someone had dropped Elden Ring into a blender with PUBG and a sprinkle of Fortnite. I didn’t hate the idea, but I didn’t know where I’d fit into it either.

You see, I’m the sort of player who spends more time reading item descriptions than actually using the items. I like wandering off the trodden path to chase down a mysterious light source or listen to ambient wind. So when I booted up Nightreign the first time, I expected to bounce off quickly. What I didn’t expect was to find myself continually pulled back in – not because it gave me the freedom to explore, but because it dared me to try anyway, knowing full well that the world was collapsing around me.

In Nightrein, you’re no longer the Tarnished but a Nightfarer. And you’re not trudging through the Lands Between – instead you're stuck on Limveld, a cursed island whose landscape is constantly eaten away by the Night’s Tide. Expeditions are broken into three-day cycles, each acting as a miniature gauntlet of scavenging, boss fights, and survival. You can go in solo or team up with two others, and like most roguelite games, progress is only semi-permanent. Lose a run, and you start over.

Everything about this structure in Nightrein screams urgency. The clock is always ticking. The playable area shrinks. You are being hunted, either by the environment or by enemies. Which is why it’s strange – and maybe a little bit foolish – that I kept trying to explore anyway.

To be clear: Nightreign doesn’t actually encourage you to take your time. It punishes hesitation. Wait too long, and the Night’s Tide will consume the land beneath your feet. Linger in a dungeon for an extra minute, and you might not make it to the safe zone before your health drains to zero. But that’s what makes those early-game moments feel so charged. There’s often a small pocket of relative calm in the first expedition day – just enough space and time to veer off the main trail. And if you’re stubborn (or stupid) enough, you can use that moment to explore the ruins, read a codex entry, or get distracted by the glint of something buried in the dirt. It's a constant push-pull between survival instinct and naive curiosity – and more often than not, I chose curiosity, even if it got me killed.

Combat still holds that familiar FromSoftware tension. It’s deliberate, punishing, and beautifully animated. But the addition of eight fixed classes shifts the feel considerably. Each Nightfarer has a distinct identity and backstory, and while you can still mix and match weapons, their class abilities add a level of expressiveness that the original Elden Ring never really had.

I started with Ironeye, the ranged Nightfarer specialising in bows, figuring that staying at range would help me stay alive longer. That mostly worked until I got blindsided by a sprinting deathbeast and yeeted into a ravine. I also tried the Duchess, whose Restage ability lets her replay her previous attack sequence for bonus damage. It’s one of the most stylish mechanics I’ve used in ages – satisfying not just in execution but in how it lets you commit to a bit of combat theatre.

But the class that stayed with me – and the one I kept going back to – was the Guardian. He’s a towering, armoured bird-person wielding a halberd, with a busted wing and a protector’s heart. The codex entries slowly reveal his story: how he failed his original flock and is now trying to protect his new companions. It’s sombre, mythic, and deeply FromSoft in tone. One particular moment, where the mage-like Recluse character tends to the Guardian’s injured wing, nearly stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t part of a cutscene. It wasn’t announced. It just appeared in the codex after an expedition. These little lore discoveries became the reason I kept throwing myself back into the chaos.

I haven’t beaten a full expedition. Not once, yet. I’ve made it to the end of day two a few times, but I usually die before then – taken out by a mini-boss, a misstep, or just bad timing. And weirdly, I never mind. Nightreign is structured like a game that wants you to win, but it feels like one that’s perfectly comfortable letting you lose too. There’s no dramatic failure screen, no mocking commentary. The world just resets. The story nudges forward. Your codex updates, your understanding grows, and the next run begins.

It’s worth saying that playing solo is punishing. The encounters are tuned for squads of three, and unless you’re an exceptional player (like Elden Ring’s most famous ‘Let me solo her’), going it alone means you’ll likely be overwhelmed at some point. That’s not necessarily a flaw. Nightrein is, after all, a co-op experience by design. But the fact that I still felt compelled to solo-queue, knowing I’d probably fail, speaks to how well the game handles narrative drip-feed and world design.

And for all its roguelite structure, Nightreign doesn’t chase the usual trappings of the genre. There are no weekly objectives shouting at you from a main menu. No cosmetic shops cluttering the hub. No convoluted progression trees begging to be min-maxed. It’s clean. Almost austere. The closest thing to progression is the accumulation of character lore, entries that unlock with repeated attempts and observations that tie the larger mythos together. You’re not levelling up so much as you’re piecing a story back together, one death at a time.

Initially, I assumed Nightreign was a response to market forces – a calculated attempt to capitalise on Elden Ring’s popularity by tacking on multiplayer systems and faster pacing. But now that I’ve spent time with it, I’m less cynical. Yes, the structure has a distinctly modern flavour, you know, like battle royale maps, shrinking zones, loot runs. But the heart still belongs to the same world that gave us Melina, Blaidd, and Ranni. It’s introspective, tragic, even gentle in strange ways. And it plays surprisingly well with the tension of not being able to stop and look around – which makes the moments you do manage to look feel all the more special.

Even if I never make it to the final boss, I’ll keep returning. There’s still a crypt I haven’t cracked open. A line of dialogue I haven’t heard. A ghostly figure I saw vanish beneath the roots of a tree. And I’ve been trying to follow ever since.

Elden Ring Nightrein is available to play on PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X|S.