FromSoftware's curious co-op roguelike spinoff Elden Ring Nightreign is finally here, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it's off to a more decidedly rocky start than most of the storied developer's games tend to be at launch. Critic reviews were generally positive (though less so than is typical of FromSoftware), but even as over 2 million play in its first 24 hours, the initial fan reception to the title has been quite mixed.
Common complaints about the game include some disappointing map and enemy variety (something I discussed at length in my review), the lack of a two-player duos option (you can only play solo or in a trio), and the absence of crossplay. Another big one is Nightreign's solo play balancing — but while it's up in the air if the former issues will be addressed, FromSoftware has confirmed it's planning to improve the solo experience in a new update patch next week.
"Nightfarers, thank you for playing Elden Ring Nightreign. Next week, Patch 1.02 will be released, and will include several bug fixes as well as improvements for solo expeditions," a post from the studio reads. "Further details will be provided next week."
Specifically, the developers are planning to give you one automatic revival if you go down during any of an Expedition's Night boss battles, which includes the ones you fight at the end of Day 1 and Day 2, as well as the final Nightlord boss at the conclusion of your runs. Additionally, solo players will also gain more runes (experience) from slain enemies and bosses than players in a co-op team.
Both of these sound like great changes for solo players, with the former ensuring you won't lose your entire run if you go down once and the latter helping to compensate for the fact that one player can't blitz through a map as quickly as a full squad can. Together with the solo scaling in the game currently that reduces enemy and boss HP, this will hopefully make vanquishing the Night alone feel a lot more enjoyable.
With that said, though, I'm not sure these tweaks alone will be enough. One I and many others were hoping to see was an increase to the time you have to comb through the map before Night falls, for example, because even with solo scaling, individual points of interest take a lot longer to clear out by yourself than they do with allies.
I also think solo players should get more healing flasks; the cap in co-op is seven with upgrades from churches, but given that the mainline Elden Ring experience let you have up to 14, you should be able to at least have 10. I don't find that unreasonable at all.
Ultimately, the community will have to give the updated solo experience some playtesting once Patch 1.02 comes out next week, and we'll see where things need to go from there. Personally, I'm expecting it to still feel too rushed and difficult to make serious progress in, but I could be wrong.
The good news? FromSoftware was pretty receptive to player feedback in Elden Ring and made tons of changes to it in the months following its release; the same can't necessarily be said about previous titles like the Dark Souls trilogy, notably. So, if solo play in Nightreign still doesn't feel like it's where it needs to be, players can likely look forward to further adjustments.
Elden Ring Nightreign is a bold new experimental spinoff from FromSoftware that spices up the original game's Soulsborne combat with a roguelike, co-op driven twist. Though it has sizable issues like only having one map or underwhelming enemy variety, it's nevertheless going to be one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games for Souls fans craving action. It's $39.99, but you can get it for $33.99 at Newegg with the promo code XVSAVE (Xbox) or EPES3Z23 (PC).
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