FromSoftware’s Dark Souls games all included multiplayer in some form, but with Elden Ring spin-off Nightreign it’s turned the soulslike genre into a true co-operative online experience. Players team up in groups of three to take on fearsome Nightlord bosses, able to seamlessly share in its exhilarating thrills together.
Yet this seems to go against fans of the genre. Sure, being able to summon help in the original Elden Ring led to community superstars like Let Me Solo Her, and there are mods to make seamless co-operative play possible. But for the most part, these games are predominantly solo experiences, offering grimdark worlds to explore with the occasional threat of player invasion. And with the reveal Switch 2 game The Duskbloods will similarly be an online multiplayer game, FromSoftware even had to reassure fans it’s still making solo games too.
However, it’s still possible to play Elden Ring Nightreign on your own. The question is: should you?
Like many, I’ve always played Souls games completely alone and I’ve mostly ignored the series’ multiplayer mechanics, so I was intrigued to see how Nightreign would hold up. As I wrote in my Elden Ring Nightreign review, though, the game has surprisingly convinced me a co-operative Souls game can be just as challenging and thrilling. Yet reviewing a multiplayer game is an interesting experience, as there’s a limited pool of fellow media to join up with. That meant in the early stages I did dabble in the game’s single player mode – there’s an option to launch an expedition on your own instead of a team of three, though at present there’s no option for two players.
By comparison to playing with others online, playing Nightreign solo is an extremely lonely, frustrating, and repetitive experience. I would not recommend it – at least, not at first.
It’s clear, Nightreign has been designed primarily as a multiplayer experience, with players relying on each other for support. Character skills can sync up together for increased damage, and players can revive one another if downed in battle. What’s more, bosses have huge health pools, sweeping AoE attacks, and rush across the battlefield to target multiple players. At times, they can feel more like an MMORPG boss intended for multiple players. Often the best method for facing a Nightlord as a team is baiting it in one direction for others to hit from another angle.
But that’s not possible alone. Instead, you’ll likely be overwhelmed by a flurry of attacks, or spend time chasing after bosses rather than engaging them. And once knocked down, there’s no one to help revive you – and when facing a Nightlord, that means restarting an entire forty minute run all over again. FromSoftware has scaled down enemy health for solo players and there are purchasable revival items, but playing alone is absolutely a struggle. Runes – your experience gained by defeating enemies – are shared between multiple players, so as a team you can swiftly beat groups of enemies to quickly level up. Alone, smaller encounters waste your time and bosses are frustratingly challenging. What’s more, you can’t cover as much of the map, and won’t level up as quickly, so you’ll likely be severely under-levelled once you reach a boss. And while buff-providing Relics can boost your chances of success, you could spend hours grinding alone for the best ones to use. The game just isn’t designed that way.
Of course, it’s still possible to play solo. And no doubt there will be experts already looking to rise to Nightreign’s considerable challenge without aid from other players. But this will require significant understanding of character skills, boss patterns and weaknesses, and the most optimal route across the map, all learned after hours of play. This isn’t a game to tackle alone until you’re aware of all its intricacies.
Solo play does have its place, though. While the Roundtable Hold, your base of operations, includes a training area, there’s nothing like a bit of in-the-field action to understand each character’s moveset. So if, like me, you’re too embarrassed to test a character for the first time with others, you can at least do a dummy run of the game alone offline without the prying or judgemental eyes of others.
It’s also handy for completing the game’s Remembrances. Each character has a distinct story, told through journal entries and extra missions, which often means defeating a certain enemy or finding a certain item on the map. These can be completed with others, but going alone allows you to rush over and focus on these missions without interrupting the strategies of other players.
Still, the design of Nightreign is fundamentally geared towards three players and sharing those strategies. Playing with friends on voice chat is the best experience; playing with random matchmaking is feasible; and playing alone is a chore – even if the game’s day one patch has made some balance adjustments.
Yet there’s more to come. Next year FromSoftware will release The Duskbloods on Switch 2 and I’m intrigued to see what the studio will learn from Nightreign. Will it further blur the boundaries between a multiplayer and solo experience? And if all fans really want is another truly single-player game, how long will they have to wait?