Elden Ring Nightreign makes me nervous for Duskbloods

Elden Ring, the hardcore action RPG made by FromSoftware, is one of the best games ever made. That fact sets an impossibly high bar for Elden Ring Nightreign, but the multiplayer spin-off is drastically different from the original, thanks to its roguelite nature and multiplayer focus. That multiplayer focus is one of the weaker parts of Elden Ring Nightreign, which lacks standard features like cross-play and voice chat. The multiplayer failings of Elden Ring Nightreign make me nervous for Duskbloods, a Switch 2 exclusive FromSoftware game coming in 2026. The game is described as being a PvPvE game, where up to eight players must battle each other and NPC bosses. Duskbloods also being multiplayer focused, has made me nervous after what I saw from Elden Ring Nightreign.

A lack of standard multiplayer features

No voice chat or cross-play in 2025 feels like a mistake

The first glaring issue for Elden Ring Nightreign is the lack of cross-play and voice chat built into the game. Those features aren't present in base Elden Ring, but that's a much less complicated multiplayer experience. You summon other players into specific areas, usually boss fights, after which they leave. In Elden Ring Nightreign, you work with two other players, usually coordinating where to go and which bosses to fight. There is a ping system, but being able to call out to a teammate that there is a weapon or item they should have is a lot quicker with words than a ping. It also lacks a duos mode, despite supporting both three-players and solo play

While Duskbloods won't have to worry about cross-play, since it's a Switch 2 exclusive, a lack of some pretty basic multiplayer features concerns me. It's not yet clear if having voice chat even make sense for Duskbloods, but a combined FromSoftware and Nintendo online multiplayer experience sounds like a recipe for disaster.

An extremely lackluster single-player experience

FromSoftware should not advertise this as a single-player game

Another big concern is how Elden Ring Nightreign was talked about ahead of release, and how it actually plays, specifically when it comes to the solo experience. Playing Elden Ring Nightreign solo is a nightmare. It's already been patched once to give a single revive, but the enemy scaling and flow of the game just don't make sense solo. In all of my successful runs, my teammates and I got knocked down during boss fights a ton. Currently, in single-player, you get one self-revival in boss fights, which is nowhere near enough to beat them alone unless you are the best of the best.

It's not clear if you will be able to be cooperative with other players in Duskbloods, but I want to know if the game can be played alone. Most of FromSoftware's catalog is single-player-focused games, so not being able to provide a good solo experience is one issue, advertising that there is a solo mode when it feels like a half-baked experience sucks.

Finding a way to make multiplayer FromSoftware feel as good as the rest

Elden Ring Nightreign takes away some of the best parts of Elden Ring

One of the strangest aspects of Elden Ring Nightreign is how it removes some of the best parts of the Elden Ring experience. The biggest aspects are exploration and discovery. Elden Ring excelled at rewarding you for going slow and really investigating your surroundings. You can find new dungeons, bosses, or items in all sorts of nooks and crannies. Elden Ring Nightreign moves at an incredible speed, thanks to the closing ring and roguelike run nature, so every round is spent sprinting from point-of-interest to point-of-interest. While there are discoveries to be made, spending too much time on anything puts you at a disadvantage moving forward.

Another oddity is boss fights. The boss fights at the end of each night can only be challenged once, and if your whole squad falls, the run is over. So much of Elden Ring is learning boss patterns by fighting them repeatedly, but that requires a full reset in Elden Ring Nightreign.

Duskbloods is an entirely new game though

Duskbloods won't have the baggage of a game of the year winner sharing its name

Duskbloods has one clear advantage over Elden Ring Nightreign, which is that it's a brand-new series. While having FromSoftware on the box will give people some expectations, it won't be so closely tied to something that came before. With Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree so fresh in my memory, I can't help but directly compare those experiences to Elden Ring Nightreign. Perhaps Duskbloods will be able to better buy in from players, thanks to it being a multiplayer experience from the jump. It's also unclear just exactly how much multiplayer will actually matter in Duskbloods.

The description of the game almost sounds like an extraction-shooter, which would make battling other players a requirement, but it could be less direct. You could avoid players, or it could have a solo option that actually works the same way as the base game.

But FromSoftware still needs to improve its multiplayer offerings

Even one missing feature could make Duskbloods feel lesser

Duskbloods being a new game might save it from some of the baggage that Elden Ring Nightreign has, but that doesn't mean FromSoftware can slack on standard multiplayer features. Considering that Nintendo isn't the best when it comes to online multiplayer, it feels fair to be concerned about it not having a complete suite of multiplayer features. Voice chat feels important, but solid matchmaking and stable connections feel deeply important to the kind of game Duskbloods appears to be, and neither company involved has a great history of stable multiplayer games. Regardless of how exactly Duskbloods works, Elden Ring Nightreign has not instilled any faith in FromSoftware's understanding of multiplayer games.