Elden Ring Nightreign Deluxe Edition – A Majestic Nightmare or a Must-Play Adventure?

Elden Ring Nightreign Deluxe Edition Review takes players deep into a new chapter of FromSoftware’s dark and mesmerizing world, where treacherous landscapes, haunting lore, and brutal combat await. This expansion introduces fresh challenges, enhanced mechanics, and a gripping narrative that builds upon the base game’s legacy. Whether you’re a seasoned Tarnished or a newcomer eager to test your mettle, the Nightreign Deluxe Edition promises an adventure filled with awe-inspiring moments and devastating foes. But does it truly elevate the experience, or is it just another iteration of familiar mechanics? In this review, we dissect every aspect—from the refined gameplay to the atmospheric storytelling—to determine if this expansion is worth your time. Ready to uncover its secrets? Let’s dive in.

Elden Ring Nightreign Deluxe Edition Review Pros:

• Beautiful graphics.
• 20.1GB download size.
• Steam achievements.
• Full controller support.
• Graphics settings – screen mode, display output, limit mouse movement, resolution, auto detect best rendering settings, quality, and advanced settings.
• HDR support.
• Controller settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, and you can remap the controls.
• Mouse and keyboard support.
• Cross-play can be turned on and off.
• The Elden Ring Nightreign Deluxe Edition comes with a digital artbook, and mini soundtrack, along with in-game items, and at the moment it’s just a gesture, but more will be coming.
• Three-player Co op support, I mean it’s a co op centric game, so yes, it supports online co-op.
• Solo play is possible, absolutely nails hard, but it’s there.
• The game does support the DualSense PlayStation 5 controller.
• Fantasy action RPG gameplay.
• Tutorial pop-ups as you play, but this is optional. The opening area is the obligatory tutorial area with a boss you don’t have to beat in order to progress.
• Awesome cutscenes, set pieces, and character interactions.
• Elden Ring Nightreign is a character-focused game, as in you pick 1 of 6 characters who each have unique attacks, weapons, and abilities. You can choose from – Raider, Ironeye, Guardian, Wylder, Recluse, and Executor. There are additional classes to unlock if you can figure that out! (or read a guide or watch a video)
• Top-notch voice work for every character, and each has a unique entrance scene when starting a new run.
• Name your character.
• Areas in the world will have key locations and can have traps and enemies in them, but they give equipment and runes to empower you.
• Every area, like I said, is safe, but the area that is not will actually shrink and move, changing what is safe in the area.
• Trees can give health or FP.
• When you beat the boss or the circle closes completely, you finish that expedition.
• End of expedition breakdown of any items and gear found and rewards, along with a progress report on where you went in the area.
• Full 3D game world with 360-degree camera control.
• You can place your own pins on the map.
• Areas unlocked are safe to move around freely. When you go out of these safe areas, you lose a ton of health quickly.
• The game plays and moves just like Elden Ring.
• You can wall jump and climb up walls a lot more than before with vaulting and grabbing ledges.
• Sprinting doesn’t use up stamina.
• Stamina system so it depletes when rolling and blocking attacks, once depleted, you can’t block.
• Loot drops are a thing, so all equipment has rarity levels and different passive effects attached to them.
• Many Breakable objects.
• In-game loot is shown to all, and anyone can drop or pick it up. All earned runes are shared by all players, no matter the distance between them.
• The game performs a lot better than Elden Ring did for me on my trusty laptop.
• Loot chests to find.
• Compass at the top will show direction, but also any pins and objective markers.
• Lock on for combat, and you can swap who’s targeted or have it do this automatically.
• You can equip multiple weapons and items and swap between them quickly with the d-pad.
• Skills are plentiful and varied, and will definitely change up your play style. Using a skill will use your FP.
• Character skills are unique to the chosen character and will have a cooldown attached to them.
• Grace is the new bonfire where just passing through them will unlock it, and here you can level up.
• Runes can be earned from enemies and other sources and are the currency used for levelling up.
• Co op partners can put down pins, and you see them on screen; you can also stack pins to show the importance or need to be somewhere.
• Very atmospheric from the lighting to the music and locations themselves.
• Backstab is a huge deal as it does major damage to an enemy.
• Stealth is a sound and practical approach to combat.
• Near death gauge – a mechanic whereby when a player dies, they turn into a ghostly figure, attacking this will bring them back, the ghostly figure can only move and not attack.
• The near-death gauge timer goes down each time you go into the ghostly figure state, but passing a grace period will reset the length.
• When you actually die, you drop all the runes you have, and you drop 1 level’s worth of runes, and you have one life to get them back; otherwise, they are gone forever.
• The roundtable Hold is the Central hub, here you can choose expeditions, fast travel to found grace spots, conduct relic rites, change characters, and generally get all the management side of things out of he way.
• A sparring ground in the round table lets you practice on dummies, set what your character has like infinite powers, or they regenerate quicker.
• Familiar controls.
• Powerful, memorable soundtrack.
• Expeditions is a case of picking a boss and then matchmaking before going in.
• The Relics are powerful and add much to your character in the way that they play. Each character has their own relic loadout, and you need to match the color of the runes in the character’s slot.
• Steam friend list integration.
• Passive inventory is a clever and unspoken mechanic of the game. Every piece of equipment has a buff attached, and just having it in your inventory gives you the buff, not using It, so bear that in mind.
• You can replay the tutorial boss at any time from the Codex; beating him grants a handy relic.
• Churches in the world give an extra use to the flasks.
• Sorcerer’s rises are places in the map that house high-power magic staffs for the Recluse class.
• Camps will have a lot of enemies, but you can use them for farming or buying items from the merchant.
• Relics can be bought from the Small Jar Bazaar.
• You can set multiplayer room passwords and group passwords so you can have it so one mate joins with a password and the other guy doesn’t need a password.
• Any text input in-game when using the controller will bring up the virtual keyboard.
• Merchants appear at fires and sell items, and usually have a blacksmith’s anvil so you can upgrade your weapons if you have the material.
• When in the roundtable hold, you can just bring up the map and select an area in the roundtable hold to instantly jump to.
• Forts and ruins are generally seen as a great place to farm because it has good loot, low-level boss encounters, and possibly low-level enemies.
• What I find interesting is the way the game is made up; it’s actually a lot deeper than you think. Planning a route for your team is the key, making sure you go where your character needs it.
• It is a fascinating world as it has a bit of the new and a bit of the old, and even the old can house the new.
• They have finally put drops in boxes and vases, etc, so breaking them now has a point!
• Find and click on tombstones to get Vengeful sports who will attack with you and last only one attack each.
• The bird you fly in on can be summoned again at set times. At this point, you can control it and drop whenever you want without fall damage.
• Full emote system.
• There are inhabitants in the roundtable hold, and it is interesting to talk with them as they have different things to say and will be found doing different tasks around the roundtable hold.
• This is a whole new way of playing, and it is worth remembering that just because it says Elden Ring doesn’t mean it is that with a gimmick.
• Small Jar Bazaar is the shop in the round table hold, and anything bought here is permanent.
• You can encounter smaller bosses within an area, and killing them adds a grace spot, and you can then pick a random reward.
• Each individual character class has its own set of journals, and playing as them will unlock more chapters.
• A run is split into days, and you need to beat a boss per day to advance, and then on that day, you face the boss of the expedition.
• The best part of the open world part is that you can die loads of times and come back, and the boss will keep the health he was at.
• A defeat (run over) state is achieved by either the ring closing in on itself or all players dying at the same time at the end of a day or an expedition boss encounter.
• Items themselves I found need to be used generously, as they seem to only last a day, so my hoarding isn’t working out.
• It’s quite exciting in a way, as at the moment everyone is learning at the same rate, so every day a new discovery is made, both the good and the bad.
• You have a level number by your name, and if it shows green, you have enough runes to upgrade, and red if you don’t.
• They have updated the game, making single-player a bit more manageable.

Elden Ring Nightreign Deluxe Edition Review Cons:

• You cannot pause the game even in single-player.
• No character creator, you just name the preset character.
• You don’t level up in the traditional Elden Ring way; you just level up, and it will improve your HP, FP, and stamina.
• There is the obligatory opening area with a boss fight and tutorial fights, but then it just ends and leaves you to do what you want, which is a bit daunting.
• I found the menus were not that clear, and even setting up a single-player room was not straightforward.
• You cannot build unique builds like you did before instead, it’s relics and characters.
• The lock-on is too good; it never seems to stick to an enemy, and that’s only if you get it to lock onto the enemy in the first place.
• The game does a bad job of explaining what’s going on because your first few runs in an expedition are frustrating and confusing, and you don’t know half of what you are clicking on or why.
• You have a small inventory and will fill it quickly, and that means you cannot pick up any more items.
• At times, now clicking on a corpse will spew multiple items out and make picking them up trickier, more of an issue if you are a runner and picker-upper.
• The roguelike elements do not quite fit together, it seems not to have as strong a hook as it should.
• For the average or even above-average player, the single player is not balanced. It’s a game meant for three players, and single player is it’s just you, no AI or anything, just a character against enemies with health meant for three different damage.
• I wish the marking and notifying of items and locations were quicker and easier.
• There is no voice or text chat.
• The ring speed is very fast, I mean I think over time you can manage it, but for the first few hours it should have it where the ring is slower.
• An issue that I cause players more than anything is that I’m letting people down by learning the game and not doing aswel but then that goes full circle and it happens to me.
• Has a kernel-level anti-cheat software built in.
• The game can at least initially be called a racing game, I swear down the amount of games si go in and at least one person will just leg it across the map like he’s late for tea is so common.
• There isn’t any sort of skill or level-based matchmaking.
• It’s safe to say that Elden Ring Nightreign has an identity crisis.

Related Post: RoadCraft Review – Building Dreams, One Road at a Time

Elden Ring Nightreign Deluxe Edition:

Official website.

Developer: From Software

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Store Links –

Steam