Elden Ring Nightreign Forgets What Made the Lands Between…

Summary

Elden Ring Nightreign sacrifices exploration for fast-paced gameplay.
Players lose autonomy in Nightreign, focusing on optimization and rushing through the game.
Nightreign lacks the essence of Elden Ring, offering a unique but potentially disappointing experience.

FromSoftware's biggest experiment yet, Elden Ring Nightreign, is officially here, offering players one of the most unconventional Soulslike experiences they have likely ever had. Whether its attempt at innovation will pay off in the long run is still up in the air, but Elden Ring Nightreign has nonetheless finally arrived, with a brand-new take on FromSoftware's signature formula.

Unfortunately, innovative it may be, but Elden Ring Nightreign is a bit of a strange one. It just doesn't feel like Elden Ring, despite having the name, and a big part of that feeling is how it handles the Lands Between. It goes without saying that Elden Ring's greatest strength is its open world and the autonomy players had to go off the beaten path, discover hidden dungeons, and just take it all in. In Nightreign, there's just no time to do that because everything moves so fast. Of course, this is how the game is intended to behave, but it still makes what was once the most glorious part of Elden Ring's design nothing more than ground to be trampled on.

Elden Ring Nightreign: Shifting Earth Events, Explained

There are four Nightreign Shifting Earth events, each of which adds a new area and special rewards to the Limveld world map.

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By Erik Petrovich

Elden Ring Nightreign's Momentum Comes at a Cost

Nightreign Replaces Exploration With Urgency

Elden Ring is known for having one of the best open worlds in video game history, to the point that it is considered by some to be even better than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its successor, Tears of the Kingdom. Exploration in Elden Ring's Lands Between is immensely rewarding, as there are just so many different secrets to find, making just about every adventure worthwhile. Even Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree acknowledged this by somehow taking everything the base game did and quite literally soaring to new heights.

However, all of this has largely gone out the window in Elden Ring Nightreign. FromSoftware's latest experiment is more about players gaining muscle memory for its gameplay loop so they don't have to even think about where to go or what to do next. Understandably, Elden Ring Nightreign is designed to be a fast-paced Soulslike experience, to the point that each playable character can even sprint at unprecedented speeds. Regardless, however, the magic of the Lands Between is lost inside the pressure of the ever-enclosing ring — replaced by a sense of urgency that doesn't give players time to truly experience the world around them.

Autonomy Takes a Backseat to Optimization in Nightreign

One of the key characteristics of a Soulslike is that it gives players a great deal of agency in how they play. They can build their character the way they want to, venture off the beaten path at any moment, and even take on challenging boss fights before they are ready. While Elden Ring Nightreign observes some of these principles, the autonomy players had to explore in Elden Ring is missing. Instead of letting players explore the world to uncover secrets, Elden Ring Nightreign's pacing makes it little more than a boss rush that has them quickly sifting through items and gear, leveling up when they can, and always on the lookout for the next best thing.

The magic of the Lands Between is lost inside the pressure of the ever-enclosing ring — replaced by a sense of urgency that doesn't give players time to truly experience the world around them.

Again, this design philosophy makes sense for what Elden Ring Nightreign wants to accomplish, but it nonetheless spoils what made Elden Ring so great in the first place. Effectively, this turns Nightreign into an asset flip, making it Elden Ring in name only, lacking the substance that defined the game it is founded on. It's a shame that the wonder of Elden Ring's Lands Between has been lost in exchange for Nightreign's experimental mechanics, but there's still room for this ambitious spin-off to evolve in the future.