Elden Ring Nightreign DLC REVIEW! | Brutally Honest Thoughts…

Elden Ring Nightreign DLC REVIEW! | Brutally Honest Thoughts…

All right, what’s going on, guys? So, we just wrapped up the first playthrough of the Forsaken Hollows, the DLC for Elden Ring Night Reign. And by that, I mean I killed both Night Lords, the Balancers, and of course, not really a spoiler anymore, the Dreg Lord. And forgive me, my voice is kind of gone. Been playing this all day, but I got a lot I want to say about it. The Balancers took a ton of games. That was by far the hardest fight for me. We managed to beat the Dreg Lord first try. Surprisingly, I don’t know how we did it. Everything just kind of fell together and it was genuinely a terrible run. But we locked in on that fight, pulled it out of the fire. Sometimes it just happens and we got lucky. Now, if you’re wondering how we’ve been playing all day, we did the New Zealand trick on Xbox. And the DLC actually released quite a bit earlier on console, so that’s why. But I want to give my just overall review and thoughts on this DLC. How good is it? Is it worth the price? What are some of the highs? What are some of the lows? Because there’s a lot of both. Some very good things here, some very poor things, some very bad decisions I think they made, and some negative circumstances actually surrounding this DLC that we’ll get into. But the things that are really cool are amazing, and I’ll give it a score out of 10. Now, let me go ahead and say right off the bat, this video will contain spoilers, but I will let you know before I show any gameplay, and that’s because I want to talk about both fights, but I will let you know before I show gameplay of the more spoilery stuff. So, if you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to. But of course, as always, as we get started today, if you want to stay up to date on all things Elden Ring Night Re, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. And now, let’s get into it. Now, first things first, before I get into any specifics, the Forsaken Hollows is only a $15 DLC. And for two new expeditions, I think that’s a fair price. Now, let me start with the very first thing you’re going to realize about this DLC. The new Shifting Earth, the Great Hollow, is not a shifting earth. This is an entire new map. They really baited us with this in a good way because while it does queue up as a shifting earth, there is no limbfeld on this map. It is all new and there’s a ton to explore. Now, I have a lot of thoughts I want to share about the layout of the great hollow. But one thing that is absolutely mastered in this shifting earth are the vibes. It’s beautiful. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing. You could be getting pieced up and cursed by basilisk, but you’re going to be doing so too serene. Absolutely beautiful music, so it’s not going to be that frustrating. In spite of that, however, the layout of the Great Hollow is extremely hard to learn. Even on our sixth and seventh run, we still had no clue how to navigate this place. I fell to my death several times from jumps I thought I could make or pits I couldn’t tell were there. It is extremely confusing and even looking at the map can be misleading at times because there’s so much verticality and there’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think the map really needs some work to communicate that especially as the night’s closing in and you’re trying to find your way up and you just can’t. And that actually led us to switch off of this shifting earth so that we could actually focus on learning the boss fights rather than use all of our mental energy just trying to figure out where the heck to go. Now, I don’t say that to say that the map is bad by any means. I’m sure we’ll learn it in time, but it was so frustrating here that I think until you watch a full breakdown or guide of this, even playing it yourself, it’s going to be very, very hard to master. And maybe that’s a good thing. I really can’t say one way or the other. We did manage to get the power of the area, but I didn’t really get to see it in full action because I think the true benefit of it is tied to one of the castle towers that’s almost like a boss rush as you climb up it, which is super cool, but I didn’t get to finish it because every time we tried, it just took way too long to get there and the knight was already on us before we could kill all the bosses. So, right now, my opinion of the map is generally positive, but I still have a lot to learn before I really see the full potential here. But as of right now, I have no idea what the optimal route is going to be. There just seems to be so many possibilities and so many secrets hidden in here. But now, let me talk about the new nightfares. And I’m going to be honest, I started on Undertaker and I’m not about to switch off. Undertaker is amazing, and that’s the way I always play Souls games. A lightweight strength faith hybrid is my favorite build and now that we have one in Night Rain, it’s perfect. Everything about Undertaker just works. You’ve got the ability which gives you rapid stamina regen, improved dodging, and surge sprint. And with that, you’re able to dodge attacks that I swear no other character has been able to. And the ultimate is just fun, especially when you start chaining it with other ultimates. You can put out some crazy damage and is super efficient, too. Now, I know Scholar is going to work great in trios and in the team setting, but I’m just having way too much fun on Undertaker. I don’t want to switch off. This is my new main easily, and I already enjoy her much more than Raider. Now, I want to spend some time on the night bosses because there’s a lot of new ones, and I’m going to be honest, this is not what I was expecting. Now, Moog was already a pretty hard fight in the base game, but man, they put him on crack in this DLC, and this is hard. This is a very hard fight. It’s not just the clone that you fight down in the lane delurs. This is a beefed up version of the Lord of Blood that you have no true counter to. And I actually wonder if it’s even possible to do this fight without taking damage because it doesn’t seem like you can stop the knee heals. But if there is a counter, please let me know down in the comments because this ended several of our runs. Now, the other night bosses, like the demon princes, are pretty cool. But I really got to talk about Artorius. Man, they did Artorius justice. This fight is absolutely awesome, and it is not easy by any means. They really beefed him up and made this fight the evolution that it needed. He’s way faster, has a ton of new attacks, and can easily combo you and roll catch you. Even though those moves are the same as they were back in Dark Souls 1, the ones he kept killing me with were just his basic move set from the Artorious DLC. Don’t ask me why those out of all of them were what was catching me. It’s crazy. But yeah, this fight is awesome, man. I’m so glad he’s not just a pushover. Genuinely, I do think this is the coolest fight in the game now. And I promise I’m not just saying that because it’s Artorius. Now, I’m going to talk about the Night Lord. So, if you don’t want to see those fights, here’s the spoiler warning. But we’re going to start out with the first one, the balancers. Now, I am not a fan of gank fights at all. I really don’t like them normally, but something about this one does work. They did a really good job in making it not feel too overwhelming, and you can still actually focus on the boss itself. Now, am I tripping, or did they straight up make a lot of this boss’s move set air from Armored Core 6? Maybe I’m crazy, maybe it’s not that, but that’s what this fight felt like. Now, for what it has in frustration, I think it makes up for in spectacle because this is a beautiful fight. I love the designs. I love the arena, the music, everything about it. But again, it’s a fight where you’re having to focus on multiple enemies, and you’re going to get hit a lot by something you actually couldn’t see. And some people aren’t going to like that. Now, you can make up for it by kiting the enemies around the arena, trying to focus on the ones on the outskirts. But I think this is going to be a very rough fight in solo, especially when its weakness is sleep, and you almost never get sleep weapons. So, not my favorite fight, but it’s definitely still a very cool one and plenty difficult. But now, let’s move on to the other night lord, the final boss, the dreg lord. And I am going to show some gameplay, so click off if you don’t want to see that. Now, it’s hard for me to really get my thoughts about this fight because we really just zoned out and beat the brakes often. Now, this was a terrible run. We were only level five on night one. We had Noleto and we managed to get a devource scepter for Undertaker and the dragon crag blade for Wilder and duplicate them. And with those, we were really able to keep him staggered for a lot of the fight. And that was pretty much the recipe for phase one. Wasn’t too hard here. Like I said, we kind of just beat him up. Now, as for the second phase, I really couldn’t tell you what was happening. There’s so much going on, and he has very long combos that I kind of just spam dodge the whole time and attacked when I thought I had an opening, which wasn’t that often. But with Undertaker’s ability, you can kind of just wing it with the dodge. Even his big AoE explosions, I could dodge through, which again, maybe luck, but it’s super powerful. And you combo that with Undertaker’s ult that charges very fast, and if you’re keeping a ton of damage, like I said, he seems to stagger pretty easily. Now, we did die and had to be revived by the Nateo power, but we did manage to overcome the fight. Like I said, just zoning out, being aggressive, and keeping him staggered as much as possible. Now, should we have been able to first try the final boss? I want to chalk it up to luck and good weapons, cuz I would say we’re average players. I don’t think this fight was easy. I really don’t. But there wasn’t anything about this fight that really surprised me. Even though his combos are very long and he has a ton of moves, it all seemed very familiar. So, maybe I’m going to have to have a second look at it. Maybe he’s based off an old boss somewhere. I don’t know. But I’m excited to fight him again, and I know I’m going to struggle more the second time. Now, I’ve been very positive so far. Let me talk about some of the negatives, and there are quite a few. Now, if you read the interview with Ishaki lately, then you would have seen that he mentioned that the resources for making this DLC were very limited. It seems they have a majority of From Software on other games at the moment, and they didn’t have a very big team to make this. Even so, it doesn’t make sense why there’s no Shadow of the Archery weapons. That is a massive letdown and that is a huge blow to replayability. The majority of the time you’re going to be playing this game exactly the same way with exactly the same weapons and fighting a majority of the same enemies you’ve been fighting all along. And because of that, and you’re going to be feeling that the entire time you’re playing, even though it is on a new map, most of it is just exactly the same as it has been this whole time. And I got to reiterate another complaint. We got Artorius, we got Demon Princes, but I believe those are the only returning Dark Souls bosses in this DLC. You got us all hyped up expecting a new Dark Souls II DLC boss like Sir Alon, like Fume Knight, but there just isn’t, and that’s really disappointing. In addition to that, I would say about 90% of the runs we had were all on the same seed, at least when loaded in on the Great Hollow. It would be the same enemies in the same places, the same night bosses in sequence. And that was another feeling of disappointment. And then finally, after beating the dreg lord, there’s just kind of nothing. Scholar says a few lines and that’s it. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe you got to do the remembrances first, but I just expect it a little bit more. This doesn’t feel like the conclusion. And as they stated, there’s no plans for more long-term support for Night Rain. I don’t want this to be the end, even though the majority of this DLC is absolutely awesome. I don’t think it really hits the high note that a conclusion to Night Rain should. Maybe I’m missing something, though. I really hope I am. Regardless, for a $15 add-on that’s cheaper than a Call of Duty skin, this is absolutely worth the money. The Night Lord fights make it all worth it and I freaking love Undertaker. But yeah, those are my initial thoughts on the Forsaken Hollows after beating it for the first time. I’m having a blast. I’m going to keep playing, but y’all let me know what you think about it so far. Either way though, if you enjoyed today’s video, be sure to leave a like on it and subscribe if you’re new around here, and I will catch you in the next one.

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Elden Ring Nightreign DLC The Forsaken Hollows is here. Elden Ring nightreign is a new coop survival game from Fromsoftware set in the Elden Ring universe. Play as new heroes and survive the night plaguing the Lands Between.
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0:00 Intro
1:26 New Map
3:43 Nightfarers
4:29 Night Bosses
5:47 Balancers
6:58 Final Boss
8:30 Concerns
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Music:
Metroid Prime OST