Elden Ring: Nightreign Network Test-Impressions

This past weekend, I got the chance to play the Elden Ring: Nightreign Network Test. And, as always, I have some opinions. This is a game I’ve been looking forward to since it was announced, but I did have some questions. A co-op game? Pre-made characters? Boss rush? What is going on here? Well, after getting my hands on the game for a few hours, I have some answers- and some more questions.

So, after booting up the Network Test, I was taken to the Roundtable Hold. It’s different now. It feels smaller on the inside, but a lot of it is recognizable. You can find the different playable characters standing around, able to be interacted with. They don’t say much, typically just words of encouragement or gung ho “ready for action” talk. Which is fine. This was never gonna be a lore heavy game it seems. There’s a new gem system you can use there. Basically, throughout the game, you will be able to acquire gems that let you optimize the out of the box characters. Think of it like a built in buff. It was in Bloodborne and it’s back here.

There’s a training ground outside which I used to accostomize myself to the new controls. They’re tricky because you might think you know the controls and these are indeed very similar, but some aspects are fundamentally different. For example, no more rolling. Yeah. They changed rolling. It’s just a backstep now for most characters and then one class, the Wylder, gets a roll. The roll isn’t fundamentally better than the backstep, but if you’re coming from base Elden Ring, it feels more comfortable. You also have special attacks now that need to charge but can really turn a battle. They also help to distinguish the characters at the combat level, where the abilities each color aspects of the character’s role and type within the game. For example, the Guardian, has an attack where they fly into the air and then slam into the ground, producing a hearty AOE shockwave. The Dutchess has a dash attack that can close distance quickly, combos well and deals some additional damage. It’s all part of a new combat system that will feel familiar but is different in some important ways.

I picked a character (the Guardian) and loaded into a new game. The map we played, though perhaps the world in general, is called “Limveld” and it looks a lot like Limgrave from the main game, with hints of the Realm of Shadow. It’s a small but dense open world, with a bunch of landmarks. You will immediately see some POIs as soon as you land. Ruined churches, castle-esque strongholds, camps full of troops and other structures dot the map. Having seen some footage and having general knowledge of how these games work, I took off running as soon as my feet hit the ground.

The game works on a round based system, which it labels as “Days.” So, on Day 1, you have one end boss and Day 2, you have another. And then after Day 2, you head straight for the final boss. Your goal is to gain as much power, whether that be weapons, buffs or levels, throughout the Day sequence, so that when you fight the boss at the end, you’re prepared. The world will close around you, just like Fortnite, as a wall of harmful blue rain encroaches on the map. Eventually, you’ll be forced to the boss and if you aren’t ready…oh boy.

See, the way death works, if you die in the Day, you’ll be revived at the nearest Grace. If you die during the Boss, game over. This is balanced out though by various mechanisms such as revival and level docking. So, if you die during the day, you have like a 15 second window to be revived by a team mate. After that, you simply respawn, but you lose a level, which with the economy of the game, is a crushing blow most of the time. If you die during the boss battle, you can be revived at any time, but you aren’t respawning.

You need to be fast in this game. It’s built on a simplified leveling system, but that cuts both ways- every stat is raised a point when you level up, but you also basically have to be a certain level to be competitive in the game. It’s much more of a base power rating this time around than something you can specialize, which does take away from variety, but let’s you gain strength quickly. I found that to successfully take on the first boss you needed to be around Level 5, but to beat it, probably Level 7.

In the main game, the end bosses will probably be somewhat randomized, but in this game, I found that there were basically two that rotated per Day cycle. So, after Day 1, I was fighting either the Centipede Demon or a duo boss of the Demi-Human Queen and the Demi-Human Swordsman. Of these two, I found that the Centipede Demon rarely defeated us and the Demi-Human Queen/Swordsman duo kicked our ass a lot. So, some stuff to balance there I feel. The problem with the D-H Q/SM duo was that they would get additional enemies halfway through, which usually either prolongs the fight or completely overwhelms you. For Day 2, you will fight either the Fell Omen (a Morgott clone) or a hellish trio of two Royal Calvary (not bad) and a Draconic Tree Sentinel (got to hell.) Just like the other fight, one of them, the Fell Omen is not too bad and is actually a lot of fun. The other one is fun, but nigh impossible.

The final boss, Glacius, is like this three headed dog with a long blade-like tail, which splits into three separate dog type enemies about halfway. It’s actually really easy if you have bleed. It’s not too bad if you don’t. It should be noted though, that getting here in the first place is really hard and just as much as you’re fighting a boss, I also found myself dealing with the fear of choking at this stage. Luckily, after a bad start, me and my teammate managed to down this boss by absolutely abusing it’s weakness to bleed.

As far the general Daytime gameplay loop, the bosses here are a mix of early-mid game level bosses and some enemy groups that are given full size health bars. For example, 3 Fire Chariots count as a boss and it’s actually a great fight. The reasoning, I guess, is that it forces you to essentially clear an area to reap all those precious runes, but the this is probably than fighting some bosses you would encounter. For example, I never really got powerful enough to kill the Dragon that hangs out in this lake. The boss variety is ultimately a good thing. It allows for my diverse strategies. In a lot of my best runs, me and my team split up to farm runes. This is somewhat encouraged, as runes carry over across your entire party. So if you kill a boss and your teammates kill another boss somewhere else at the same time, you each get the runes from both.

There were four classes in the Network Test. The Wylder, which is brawler-type class that is balanced between offense and defense, but does not really use magic or have any crazy abilities. The Guardian is a somewhat beefy class that has some cool abilities, but is ultimately more of a support character. The Dutchess is kind of a glass cannon at first but ends up being the most powerful class with a few upgrades. The Recluse is a mage class. The magic is powerful, but it has low health and doesn’t even start with a physical damage weapon. I didn’t like this class much and think it needs to be tweaked to be a more playable option.

Overall, I had fun and I think the game shows a lot of promise. It’s a fundamentally different experience though, despite having similar systems. The emphasis on time efficiency and rune harvesting changes the pace and makes you have to strategize rather than explore. It’s more on rails, even if the world is open. By design, you should have a plan. Running around can waste not only time, but also put you in bad positions. You have to think ahead, because the end game isn’t really that far off.

My one fear is that the game might end up being a little small in scale. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I hope there’s more than one map type and that there’s a lot more bosses. I also hope that progression is incorporated in such a way that there’s something to play for. I’ll play this either way, but the difference between this being a 50 hours game and a 100 hour game is if it has a meaningful progression system that can keep me engaged. The variety in playstyles and general unpredictataof each run are intriguing though and I think the full product will be pretty different. I have faith in FromSoft. They haven’t let me down yet. So, despite any reservations, I would say I’m all in.