OH BOY MULTIPLAYER SOULS MASH-UP YIPPEE LETS GO
It holds up, mostly.
This game is best with friends, I spent probably 105 hours with friends and 10 between solo and randos. If you don't have a friend or two ready to commit some time, you might be better off skipping this. Communication is key in this game, and there's no text or voice chat iirc (it's been a while since I played.)
This game happens in two place at once. First there's what's actually on your screen and the enemies in front of you. All the characters are fun, unique, and exciting to play. The character sigils can make the characters work differently or help you hone in on a gameplay loop you enjoy. The enemy mobs are pretty basic punching bags. The bosses have fun mechanics to deal with, are fun to learn, and fun to take down as a team, they are well designed for multiplayer, a few might be frustrating solo.
The second part of the game is the maps and menus, which are also fun because of the time constraint this game gives you. You drop onto a map that slowly closes via fortnite circles, so you and the gang have to use the map to try and route the best path you can to strengthen up to the point where you can comfortably survive the boss at the end of the timer. You'll have to decide between health potions, boss fights, caches of spells, larger boss fights, treasure chests, and bigger boss fights. Different characters might have different priorities, so splitting up works in some cases, but this is where playing with friends in a voice chat is important. Being able to compromise and communicate the route in a way where the most people possible benefit makes your runs a lot stronger.
While the map is fun and well-made, there is only 1 map, or was until the DLC. It had some variants and random events but it did get old after a while.
The characters are fun and unique, BUT they each have a 'preferred' weapon type that is significantly more beneficial, so you'll mainly be using one moveset on each character since playing outside of the preferred weapon type is likely not great for you, some rare gear excepted.
The loot you can find mid-run is fun and fine, but you'll likely be ignoring a lot of it because you're looking a specific combination that you can usually force to occur. You're looking for a weapon of your preferred type with an elemental effect on it that the final boss is weak to. Each final boss has an element that interacts with them in a special way, usually dealing more damage and creating more opportunities for damage by stunning the boss. If the boss is weak to holy damage, you and the gang should be focusing down all of the enemy camps that can give you holy weapons so that you can each get one of your needed types. With direction like this, runs can feel very on-rails unless you get what you're looking for early.
META PROGRESSION:
This game has it. It's important too. Winning a run is absolutely doable without meta-progression, but you have no reason to avoid it. It can be quite annoying because it comes in the form of randomized rewards. You get a bunch of relics at the end of a run. You can equip 3 relics before a run. Each relic has 1-3 effects, some of which are very specific, some are general use, and some are run-defining ways to play. The effects are random, but some guaranteed ones can be found in the shop or from beating bosses. I quite enjoyed this system when my friends and I were playing a lot at launch (though i'm not a fan of the inventory cap), but I understand where the frustrations come from. Because what you get as a reward is random, you might get a relic that you will windmill slam into every loadout ever and you'll find it hard to cut from your build. On the other hand, you might get a lot of bad relics that you'll sell or look to upgrade ASAP. I enjoy that it adds a form of infinite progression to the game, there's always more relics to get, but it can be annoying to try and farm for something with the 3 specific effects you want.
Because you can only equip 3 relics, for a maximum of 9 small benefits, there isn't a lot of build-crafting to do. It's difficult to make any one build stand out and feel unique without also being inefficient.
Build-crafting mid-run isn't much better. You can hold 6 items. One of these will be your main weapon, which you'll want to be a weapon of your preferred type that has the element matching the boss. One of these will be a skill or a shield or whatever you want in your off-hand, if anything. The rest of your slots are just for holding the best passive effects you can find on loot. Sometimes, [i]sometimes[/i], things will line up so that you will have multiple weapons with skills you want to cycle through, but you'll probably just swap to the skill you want, use it, and then swap back to your main weapon. Oh yeah, have I mentioned yet?
WEAPONS NEED TO BE UPGRADED MID RUN and it's very important that you do so for your own sake. More damage = good. Never ever end day 2 of the fortnite circles without at least having the materials necessary to upgrade a weapon to max. I know some people really don't like this, and I agree that it feels bad to give up on finding the weapon you wanted for the final boss, upgrade something else, then find what you were hoping for but no longer have the funds or the mats to upgrade it. I think it adds a fun tension to the run, and another layer of resources to manage with your limited time taking up brainspace is good and keeps the game's risk-reward in a good place, but it is a sticking point for some that you might be "punished" for committing to a weapon at the wrong time.
At the end of the day, I look back on Nightreign very favorably and I think it's a great game to play with friends who don't mind acting like squirrels bouncing between trees as if the sky is falling down on top of you, but there's some weird holdovers from the main souls games and odd design decisions. They didn't go far enough into the roguelike genre in my opinion, but they still made a really fun game. 8/10
