‘Elden Ring Nightreign’ Reviews Are In, And They Are Just Okay

FromSoft decided they should release the third piece of Elden Ring content in three years as it shoots for more accolades for its blockbuster hit. But Elden Ring Nightreign is not more DLC, but a standalone project focused on the concept of a co-op survival game of farming enemies, getting loot and killing big bosses in a repeating cycle.

Now, reviews are coming in for Elden Ring Nightreign with the embargo lifted. They are…pretty good, though far from the epic high scores we saw from the original game and its DLC. As it stands, here’s how all three scored on Metacritic:

• Elden Ring (2023) – 96
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (2024) – 94
• Elden Ring Nightreign (2025) – 78 on PS5 (80 on PC, with fewer reviews)

That’s a perfectly acceptable score, but again, with FromSoft and Elden Ring, you’re holding them to a higher standard. It may not surprise fans that doing a pure multiplayer game and straying away from the core of the series is not quite as attractive as sticking with what we know works.

I did have a code myself, but did not have enough time to play to write a review. In my very limited time with the game, I understood the loop but my initial impression was that even if I loved the game and its expansion, this was probably not going to be for me. That’s the case for some reviewers, but we’ll see how fans feel when they get their hands on it in two days.

The game is likely going to be overly challenging for those wanting to play solo, even if that’s how the base game is played. It was at least somewhat balanced for that, but it’s still harder than how it was meant to be played, with three players, either friends online or matchmade with randoms. FromSoft has admitted that it was an oversight not to make a duos mode, which is not possible to play in the current state of the game.

What are critics saying? It’s a range:

• TheGamer (9/10): “Diving into game after game, experiencing that Soulslike loop in a microcosm, was unbelievably satisfying, and those moments of victory have never felt better. There are some minor quirks, like the lack of cross-platform play and spongy bosses, but on the whole, Nightreign is one of the most inventive things to come out of FromSoftware since it coined the Soulslike genre.”
• GamingBible (8/10): “All in all, I did enjoy my time with Elden Ring: Nightreign and I’m looking forward to seeing it grow and flourish with some post-launch updates. It’s not perfect, and it nowhere near has the level of polish that Elden Ring did, but you can tell it’s not really trying to be what that game was.”
• VGC (6/10): “Elden Ring Nightreign is an overly clumsy attempt to graft multiplayer antics to one of the best RPGs ever. While its rougelike elements may entertain, a lack of variety and uneven combat system ultimately make for a curious sideshow that doesn’t come close to the series that shares its name.”

This is largely going to be player-dependent, whether co-op multiplayer or crushingly hard solo content in a roguelike world appeals to you when it’s so different from how the base game functioned. These scores do not indicate a GOTY contender this time, but fans may enjoy it all the same. Or not, we’ll find out at launch soon enough here.