Elden Ring Nightreign Is a Step Towards Even Better FromSoftware Games

Nightreign is a good game, but its biggest contribution to FromSoftware will be what it does for future titles.

In Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware is following a formula that has worked before. Nightreign’s director, Junya Ishizaki, is tackling that role for the first time. Hidetaka Miyazaki, FromSoftware’s renowned leader, wants others to learn and experiment, just as he did. When Miyazaki made Demon’s Souls, he was given the reins to experiment because the company already viewed the game as a failure. Witn Nightreign, he wanted Ishizaki to have the same freedom to experiment. The game is practically concept art, and I mean that in the best possible way, because it can be used to inspire future FromSoftware titles.  

Innovation is important. Even the best products need to innovate in some way to put out a new, better product. That is just as true with video games as it is for many other industries. While nostalgia is a powerful tool, innovation will take a game further than nostalgia alone. There is a reason why Elden Ring was such a massive success. It is not Dark Souls repackaged, even if it was built on the Souls formula. While all of the Soulsborne games are beloved, no one would be happy to see FromSoftware release a new game that feels as clunky as Dark Souls or Demon’s Souls did. Elden Ring increased the pace, which has been a consistent trend since Dark Souls,and became thje developer's first truly open-world Souls game. 

But Nightreign brings into focus some of the flaws from Elden Ring, those that make the game's combat (and that 0f the Souls trilogy too) less than ideal. Sekiro (and Bloodborne to a lesser extent) is the exception that has more fluid combat, although Sekiro is the obvious outlier amongst the FromSoft catalog in terms of gameplay. You can only play as Wolf, the main character, and he has one weapon that cannot be changed throughout the game. That meant the studio was able to optimize combat in a way that is not possible for a game with hundreds of weapon choices. 

Nightreign is optimized for combat in a different way than Sekiro, increasing the pace significantly as compared to Elden Ring, and incorporating some changes from which future games could greatly benefit. In my opinion, the most obvious example is the ability to scale walls. Elden Ring navigated this in the open world by giving Torrent a double jump ability. But the player character is unable to climb anything higher than their shin without Torrent’s help.

I do not believe that climbing in Elden Ring is necessary to the extent that it is in Nightreign, but some verticality would make a huge difference. If FromSoftware wants to continue creating open-world games, climbing is almost a must-have. I would not ask for something as extensive as you see in the Horizon games or Ghost of Tsushima, for example, but something akin to Dragon’s Dogma 2, where you can climb small ledges and boulders, would be a significant quality-of-life improvement for an open-world title. 

Other small mechanics that feel good in Nightreign include the burst sprint, using the map while moving, and applying weapon grease to any weapon. Burst sprint would be a good alternative to a mount while in the open world, even if it were disabled inside legacy dungeons.

I never thought anything was wrong with the map function in Elden Ring until I played Nightreign and experienced how fluid it is to use the map while moving. Even though Elden Ring is a slower game, since going back after Nightreign, I find myself wanting to be able to move while using the map. On a similar note, I have always found it annoying how the map is disabled in Elden Ring if an enemy is aggroed. I would like to find the best direction to run away, and if I get attacked while looking at the map, I have no one to blame but myself. It is another mechanic built for the open world rather than for legacy dungeons, but they would do well to consider adding it to future titles.

Regarding weapon grease, there is no reason why Elden Ring limits its use so much. Why can’t I buff my Cinquedea with grease? It does not do elemental damage natively, but because it is upgraded with somber smithing stones, you cannot add an element with grease. It does not make sense. Having grease available for any weapon, or at least expanding its use to all non-elemental weapons, would not be game-breaking. It would be one less point of friction for players, which is not bad.

Another mechanic from Nightreign that is worth exploring further is the class system. I might be a bit biased because Sekiro is my favorite of FromSoftware’s “Souls” catalog, but a game with multiple static and defined classes has great potential. They showed their skill in character-building with Nightreign, and Sekiro showed their ability to build skill trees for a character. It is a system that Dragon’s Dogma utilizes well, and it would be exciting to see FromSoftware experiment more in that regard. With this option, they would be venturing further out from the traditional “Souls” formula, but if it works, people will play it. 

Building from the class system, in a way, is the idea of how stories are told. Storytelling through item descriptions should not be eliminated, but it does not mean that they cannot add to what they do well. Considering Nightreign's focus on hyper-intense, replayable, and unique 40-minute runs, I (wrongly) assumed that the story would be shallow and not worth the time. While some remembrances are better than others, Nightreign does a surprisingly good job of story-building for each of its characters. The most memorable remembrance for me, as is probably the case for most people, was Revenant’s. It would fit perfectly within a horror game. Her final cutscene was emotional, brutal, and sad. I have a hard time with horror, but I found myself wanting more Revenant lore. We rarely see this kind of storytelling from FromSoftware. While the typical text-heavy and minimal cutscene approach in Souls games has its own appeal, cutscene-driven storytelling is more visceral and harder to ignore. As popular as Elden Ring is, it is likely that a vast majority of people who have played it do not understand what is going on. 

Barrier to entry, usually in the form of difficulty, is considered an essential piece to a Souls game, and many hardcore players appreciate that others do not "get" the game like they do. But an opaque story and difficult gameplay do not have to go hand in hand. Just look at Sekiro; it is considered by some to be the most difficult Souls game, but its story is more approachable than others. That doesn't mean it was light on lore, as it still had mountains of that in item descriptions and boss memories, but understanding the basic premise of the story took less effort. Sekiro featured a highly cinematic opening cutscene and numerous others to push the plot forward. The story is also far less complex than Elden Ring, as it is playing out in real time and with fewer key players. Some games feel like you are playing a movie, and Sekiro does just that, whereas other Souls games do not.

I am not advocating for FromSoftware to move away from what they are good at and what makes their games great. If anything, I am advocating for them to lean into things that they have proven they do so well. They shouldn't feel trapped by their success, and they should be willing to push the boundaries with new and interesting titles. They are one of the few developers that I would trust with that mission, as they have been doing it since Demon’s Souls. They are already proving that they are willing to experiment with Nightreign and the upcoming Duskbloods on the Switch 2. And when we get their next single-player entry, I hope that we will see the fruits of their experiments.