It's not the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 2 I'd hoped for, but Elden Ring: Nightreign might just sate my insatiable hunger for FromSoftware to pick up the pace
I am suffering, dear reader, from a Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice deficiency. Despite having a massive impact on the industry at large, with soulslikes copy-catting more mechanics from Sekiro than their namesake, snagging timed blocks and posture staggers, FromSoftware chose to stick to what it knew.
It has officially been more than five years since Sekiro fundamentally altered my brain chemistry, and I am hankering. Imitators may enter the stage and do a damn fine job—Lies of P was great, Lords of the Fallen 2023 was solid, and I'm currently scratching the itch with Nine Sols, a game I'm astonished I missed. But everything only reminds me of her, man. Is this what Bloodborne players feel like?
Despite all this, the vibes I'm getting from the game none of us expected to be announced might just sate my bloodlust for a time. Elden Ring: Nightreign looks supremely, deliciously weird—a spin-off, self-contained, multiplayer, non-live service game where you and two mates drop in to romp around the lands between in an ever-shrinking storm.
Just the trailer has my Sekiro-loving maw salivating like an accursed beast, but our very own Wes Fenlon happened to play around six hours of the thing, and it's enough to make me get down on all fours and bark. I am positively feral for it.
Wes says the cast of Nightreign dash "around on foot like they're set to permanent fast-forward, now nimbly mantling cliffs and walls", and states that it reminds him of "the sudden popularity of bootleg, hacked versions of Street Fighter 2 arcade machines that sped up the combat and added wild special moves like mid-air fireballs". I am rattling the bars of my cage and bellowing 'Sekiro, my son, you've returned from the war!' because that sounds exactly like Sekiro.
While slow, deliberate combat has been a mainstay of the souls series for a time, Sekiro was the first real attempt to iterate on that formula. It did away with fat rolling and customisable equipment, and instead gave you a simple set of defensive tools—timed parrying, mikiri counters, and jumps—along with a few different ninja tools to preserve customisation. The result was a game that played and felt faster than anything FromSoftware would produce until Armoured Core 6.
Elden Ring flirted with the idea of working in more Sekiro-isms, sure, but it only ever teased. Bosses were fast and frenetic like never before, and the game had a jump button that was even a good defensive counter for some of them, like my boy Hoarah Loux. Bonus points if you guess which boss was my favourite. Heck, Shadow of the Erdtree even added a tear that gives you a limited timed block mechanic, mercilessly locked behind a DLC that takes a couple dozen hours to reach even if you're rushing there. FromSoftware, please, just let me relive the glory days.
My inconsolable, mouth-frothing excitement has only been further raised to a fever pitch by Wes' breakdown of the playable characters in Nightreign. They all seem like the Wolf has had his soul sundered into several pieces. The Wylder has a grappling hook, the Duchess is a glass cannon who can only quick-step, and there's even an enigmatic "Parryer" that's not been fully revealed, but that FromSoftware promises will "have a moveset based around the Deflecting Hard Tear parry mechanic in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree." This is too much, I'm comin' down with a case of the vapours.
Listen—Nightreign is a spin-off, so we don't know what FromSoftware is working on next as its big mainline piece. It could be another Elden Ring, it could be Armoured Core 7, it could even be (please please please) Sekiro 2. Or it could be something completely out of left field. But if the combat of Nightreign is as fast-paced and electric as promised, the hungry soul in my chest is in for a feast.