Elden Ring Nightreign is quickly proving itself to be a bit marmite in reception—at least, on first blush. It's my opinion that the game'll likely pick up in opinion as the playerbase, like me, gets used to this bizarre, experimental, and harsh co-op game's eccentricities.
Now that I'm well and truly submerged in the Nightreign soup, I'm having a grand old time. I'm familiar with the Executor's ins and outs, what the best relics and relic rites are for it, and so on—but there's just one problem. FromSoftware's infamously obtuse UI design and coy descriptions, part of the charming and occult vibe of its previous games, are a massive obstacle to enjoying Nightreign.
Before I have a big gripe, though, I want to talk about why FromSoftware's tendency to hide knowledge behind a layer of mist works in its other titles.
Shrouded in fog
An archetypal souls game is, in part, characterised by mystery and discovery. For example: What lies in the serpent-filled Sen's Fortress is an intimidating mystery you want to solve—and you quickly discover that swinging axe traps are very good at cutting you in half.
Games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring are intimidating mountains to climb, with hidden pitfalls and secret mechanics, but they're ones you can tackle at more-or-less your own pace. There's a deep satisfaction to be found in inching around corners, building out a mental map of your surroundings so that you can deepen your understanding of them. Learning boss movesets off by heart.
This sense of mystery and discovery is preserved in item descriptions and UI elements. How a weapon passive improves your ability to survive in a harsh and unyielding world isn't always clear—and you get to feel a sense of mastery over not just the environment, but your own arsenal as you come to understand how weapons affect your stats. The act of humbly muddling through item descriptions has the same feel as casting Identify in a TTRPG. It's clunky, but it works to sell you on a feeling of oldschool RPG grit.
A community is built up around this mystery, too. Builds are formulated, theories are crafted, and everyone generally has a good time. When the build maestros stumble upon something busted and broken, it's an event—folks get to venture back into the world armed not just with skill, but with knowledge and ambition.
Nightreign does have this to a certain extent. I like knowing a shortlist of clutch item interactions. I enjoyed discovering that the "X while walking" passives worked hand-in-hand with the Executor's Cursed Sword stance, and I feel more powerful now that I understand the most lucrative parts of each biome and building.
But I wish the game would just say what it means from time to time.
Spit it out
While I also play a lot of souls games, I happen to enjoy a roguelike on occasion. The reason I like roguelikes is because I get to feel clever when I stumble across an unexpected build path that turns me into a living god—a build I pieced together on the fly from the scraps I've been given by the game.
A roguelike, however, needs to clearly and cleanly communicate what a given item or passive you're picking up is going to do. And it especially needs to do this if you're on a time limit.
The problem with Nightreign's attitude towards this is twofold. First up, when you look at a weapon, you're only given a brief description of its passive traits—if you want to learn more, you need to go through the laborious process of opening up your inventory screen, clicking in your stick, and flicking through the passives.
This becomes even worse when you realise that you can't inspect items unless they're already in your bags, turning decisions that could be quick, simple deliberations into laborious inventory jenga—jenga you don't have time for, given the rains are closing in, and every second you spend not farming runes or clearing out camps is a second you're falling behind.
The core experience of kill, loot, repeat might be improved just a smidge by telling you what something does without awkward fumbling."
Then there's the descriptions themselves. While most passives are self-explanatory percentage boosts, some pretentious sod at FromSoftware decided "Power of the Dark Moon" was an apt descriptor for just about anything. "The Executor's Grief"? I'm feeling pretty aggrieved over these UI decisions! Imagine me slapping my knee and having a sensible chuckle.
And, yes, you can get more detailed explanations by picking the item up, opening your equipment screen, yada yada. But, also, have we considered that they could just not make you do that? That the core experience of kill, loot, repeat might be improved just a smidge by telling you what something does without awkward fumbling?
This even extends to relics. "Improved madness resistance" is a prime example. Typically, talismans give you a percentage damage resistance, but not here, and I couldn't tell you why not. "Taking attacks improves attack power." What's considered 'taking' an attack? Hell if I know. "Ultimate Art Gauge +1"—am I getting a new Ultimate Art Gauge charge, is my gauge charging faster, and what does the +1 mean? What's the difference between a +1 and +2 of this relic? The meaning is lost to time.
And sure, you can equip these relics and do a run to find out, but I don't know if that lends itself to a feeling of eerie mystery. It's more like opening Wikipedia and being given directions to your local library instead of, you know, a description of the thing you're looking up. Except your local library is filled with monsters who want to stab you very much.
A glaring flaw
All of these design decisions—which work just fine in a game where you have all the time in the world to experiment and theorycraft—immediately crumple upon impact like a car made out of tinfoil when they hit Nightreign's time pressure.
A time pressure I don't have any issue with in isolation, to be clear. I'm one of the sickos who enjoys having to speedrun a boss, feeling the light breeze from the swaying of Damocles' sword overhead as I wonder when the next tightening of the rope will occur.
The oppressive drone of the encroaching storm, the purple flames licking at your heels, it all works great when you aren't playing freaking ARPG build Tetris with your goddamn swords because of some obstinate UI design that hasn't been upgraded in however-many games.
My reward for efficiently cleaning up a camp, every time, is a session of literal item juggling and squinting at my screen. It's a huge issue, a thorn in the side of the game's dopamine loop. I want to git gud at fighting, not navigating menus—and FromSoftware has really made almost no effort to improve how it imparts all of this info to me.
I hope future patches consider increasing the readability of the UI—otherwise, this one unfortunate snag is going to stop me from well and truly loving Elden Ring Nightreign, and it just didn't have to be this way. FromSoftware: I beg of thee, give me just a little bit more knowledge. I promise I'll use it well.
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