Lore'd to Death
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Lore'd to Death
Elden Ring Neightreign First Thoughts & Impressions
This week we talk about Elden Ring Nightreign and my first thoughts and impressions of the game through the network test that happened the past weekend. We talk about everything from how I felt the game compared to other FromSoft titles like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and (of course) Elden Ring, to how the game felt to play and go deep into the mechanics and how they differ from the main game. So join me as I go on a full tangent about one of my most anticipated titles of 2025.
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Over the past weekend, I was fortunate enough to have participated in the Elden Ring, Nightreign Network test. And I wanted to share my thoughts and first impressions here. If you're looking forward to the game, or love the Soulsborne games in general, then this episode might be for you. Hey there, welcome to the Lord to Death podcast, a deep dive into the lore of your favorite games, movies, shows, and more. My name is Brett, and over the past weekend, I was lucky enough to have played in the Elden Ring, Nightreign, Network test. As you might know from my previous episodes, I'm a huge fan of fromsoft games in general, and Elden Ring is one of my top games of all time. So I wanted to take a minute of your time to talk about my experience with the Network test and share my first thoughts. Before we get started, I just wanted to ask that you rate this podcast 5 stars wherever you're listening to it, or like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. The only way that I know that you're enjoying the content that I'm making is if you let me know. So rate the show, leave a comment, or send an email to lordtodethatgmail.com to suggest an episode, or just say hey. So with that out of the way, let's get on with the episode. Also, I think it's worth mentioning that this won't contain any spoilers for the game since there wasn't a whole lot that we could infer about the story of the game from the small glimpse that we got over the weekend. The plan is just to talk about the mechanics and how it felt to play the game. I will be going over some of the mechanics pretty extensively though, so if you'd rather go into the game blind, then by all means, wait for the game to come out and wait for me to inevitably have Seth from Overthinking Games on to gush about it. If you don't want to hear about any of the mechanics and everything else that I'm going to talk about, then let me just give my base zero spoiler thoughts about the game right at the top of the episode. I really loved my time with Night Rain, and even in its limited form it's something that I would gladly play for several more hours. I think that the changes that they made from the main game are all strict upgrades in the context of the game, and it felt like almost a condensed version of the main game, almost like a boss rush mode, but it's so much more than that in the ways that it's unique from its predecessor. If you're a fan of Elden Ring and specifically a fan of the co-op that's present through the Soulsborne games, then I think that Night Rain is a slam dunk for you. I cannot wait to get my hands on it in May, and I think that this is something that will be in my game rotation for the foreseeable future, or at least until FromSoft releases Bloodborne 2. Alright, now that that preamble is out of the way, let's talk about the network test in full, excruciating detail. I only got to play for a brief period since I was busy for most of the weekend, and the time slots that the tests were open were less than convenient in my time zone being at 6am and 10pm. Nevertheless, me and my buddy woke up at 6am on Friday begrudgingly to try to get a few games in, and it was down for almost the entire period. After over an hour of logging in, trying to matchmake, and getting booted repeatedly, we called it a day, because we had stuff to do. However, later on in the weekend, it seems that my body wasn't ready to call it quits after only getting about 5 hours of sleep. I woke up at 6am on Sunday morning and thought, I might as well see what this is all about, and I got to play the entire time that that network test was open. Although, I was running solo, and I had to pair with random people. I must have been pretty lucky when I played the first time that I managed to get into a game, because I was with two people who were clearly playing together, and I was the third wheel in their game. They had clearly been playing for some of the other network time slots because they immediately locked in their characters and hit the ground running to objectives like they had memorized the entire game already. All the way through that run, I felt like I had no idea what I was doing, but having these two guys take the reins on this run was comforting in a way, even though it felt like I was just thrown into the rapids without a life jacket. We got through all three days, all had legendary gear, and beat the final boss without any major hiccups. I was honestly so fortunate that this was my first experience, because without being on voice chat or having any idea what was going to happen next, these two guys gave me the perfect night rain experience. I was able to take the knowledge that I had gained from that one run and use it in my subsequent runs, where I was with people who had clearly been playing for the first time. I never ended up getting to a final boss again after that though, but we got close so many times, and it was amazing nonetheless. So I touched on a few things there that I wanted to elaborate on, and I'll give my thoughts on each mechanic as we go. There was the character selection, the map, gear, bosses, and we're also going to talk about the day-night mechanic, and anything else that I managed to scroll down in my notebook while I was playing. I also noted plenty of differences and similarities from the main game, and if you didn't get to participate in the network test or you didn't see Vati's video on it yet, then you might be thinking, well, it's Elden Ring, how could it be that much different? And honestly, it's a totally different game. So let's talk about loading into a game. What does that look like, and what does that mean? You start in a version of the roundtable hold from Elden Ring, but it's dilapidated and there are some notable differences, mainly being able to go outside into a couple of areas and get your bearings on where this is supposed to be in the outside world. But you still have plenty of the areas where the NPCs in the base game were, and so it feels very familiar. When you approach the table, you have the option to start matchmaking, where you select a map, and in this case, there was only one to choose from. And then you start matchmaking and you wait for two other people to join your session or choose to play solo. I didn't see an option to play solo, and I'm guessing that this was because it was solely a network test and they wanted to see how the servers would be with multiplayer. You then get presented with a character selection screen. In the network test, there were only four characters to choose from, Wilder, the Guardian, Duchess, and the Recluse. Wilder is a jack of all trades swordsman with a parrying shield and a long sword as their starting equipment, as well as a grappling hook and explosive punch ability, very reminiscent of Sekiro. The Guardian is a bird man, which is so sick, who has a tower shield and halberd combo to start, with the ability to cause a whirlwind and a flying AoE attack. Duchess is a rogue who starts with a dagger and has the ability to stack damage and turn themselves and allies invisible for a period of time. Finally, the Recluse is a mage who starts with a staff and has a set two spells on that staff, very different from the main game where you have to choose all of your spells. In this one, you're just given spells that are on a staff. The Recluse has the ability to drain elemental damage from foes to regain mana and mark foes with a blood sigil to, I think, increase the amount of damage that's done to them. Each character has two abilities that are unique to them. One of them is a sort of lighter ability and the other is almost like an ultimate ability that charges up over time. A lot of these abilities aren't explained, you just kind of have to test them out to get a handle on them. Each of the characters are very distinctly different from each other and fill a different role in the party, and honestly, it felt like an MMO in that way. It's really important to have either Wilder or Duchess as DPS, the Guardian as a tank and support, and the Recluse as a ranged fighter. The most successful runs I had were with one of each role, but I found that the Wilder-Duchess Guardian combo was really, really strong despite not having a dedicated ranged person, as they were able to stack a ton of damage in a short period of time, which trivialized boss fights. So, there were only four players to select from, but I believe the main game is going to have eight, and then more added in DLC. I might be wrong about that, but that's what I've read. I feel like the inclusion of other archetypes is going to make each run feel very different, as I'm sure that they're all going to be equally usable and people are going to have a varied list of favorites. My favorite person was the Guardian because I'm a sucker for both bird people and playing with a shield, Halbert Lodo. It's like FromSoft was listening to me while I was playing through Elden Ring and blessed me with a character that I fell in love with almost immediately. But all of the characters were really fun in their own right. I really did enjoy playing as the Recluse, although I couldn't figure out how to get my mana back, and playing as Wilder was great because they're just an all-around, like I said, jack-of-all-trades character that you can kind of play however you want to play. The other ones feel very set in their roles, but I found that Wilder had a little bit of leeway. It was pretty cool. So, that's the character run down from the character selection screen, and from there you go into a cutscene where you and your party members are exiting the roundtable hold, and you all run off a cliff and grab onto some sort of spectral bird, which then carries you down to the map. You can control yourself in midair to a degree, and you'll fly in from one side of the map before being dropped to the ground, but you can't really choose where you're going to land. You fly in from one side of the map, and it's going to drop you basically where it wants to drop you, and you're all going to be dropped in basically the same place. That means that one person can't just veer off and decide to go onto the other side of the map, you're all going to be in the same space. Right before you land, a clock comes up with the text Day 1. Like we just entered Majora's Mask, and I immediately got flashbacks to having panic attacks at my baby's citrus house trying to play that game. And this is not explained at all, at least in my experience. Maybe there was a tutorial pop-up that I was supposed to get that I skipped over, but I had no idea that there was a day cycle, and I didn't know what that meant. Essentially what that means is that there are three in-game days that you go through. Each one starts as an open map that slowly closes in battle royale style, with a ring of fire that shrinks and shrouds everything in darkness. Your goal is to go around the map and kill as many bosses and as many enemies as possible to get better loot and level up, so that you can face the main bosses at the end of each day. While you're outside of the ring, you take incremental damage, again very battle royale inspired, so you're encouraged to stay within the ring, and when it closes to its smallest, a boss will appear, and you best hope that you manage to level up a few times before that happens. That brings me to three things. Loot, leveling up, and bosses, so let's just go in that order. Around the map there are chests and item drops just like in the main game. Sometimes you'll get a weapon, sometimes there's a consumable like a firebomb or some boluses to heal status effects, and sometimes there are talismans or passive buffs. Whenever you defeat a boss, a sight of grace appears as well as a drop for each player, where it will give you either a choice of weapons, buffs, or both. This is mostly where you're going to find the good weapons and buffs, so looting around the map is great for consumables, but it seems like you're almost better off rushing a boss or two to upgrade your arsenal in my opinion. Weapons that are dropped will sometimes have a weapon art, just like in the base game, and sometimes they'll also have a passive buff on them, and one thing that I noticed that was really neat is that the passive buff applies to all weapons that you have in your inventory, not just the one that's equipped. So if you have three weapons that give a 5% increase to charge attacks, for example, you'll have a total of 15% added to charge attacks on any weapon that you equip. Staffs and seals are interesting in this regard as well, seeing as each staff or seal comes with a set spell attached to it, kind of like I mentioned before. So if you want a healing spell, you no longer have to memorize a spell, but you have to instead hope that you get that spell in a drop. This can be kind of frustrating for a mage because you can't really customize your loadout very well, but I think this is a great way to keep the game going as fast as possible without having to take the time to rest and memorize spells or worry about a loadout, you just kind of have to find the thing that suits you best. And thankfully these drops are very abundant, and it seems like even though the enemies are going to be procedurally generated, there are some chests and some areas that drop the same things almost every time. I found there was one cave system that regularly dropped seals and staffs that all had relatively the same spells attached to them, so if you're playing as the recluse and you want different spells or you want specific spells, then it might behoove you just to rush to that place, grab a better staff or seal, and then continue on with your run. And I like that even though things are going to be procedurally generated, there is that sense that some things are always going to be the same. I don't know if that's going to carry over into the main game, but I really hope it does because adding some sort of memorization aspect on top of being a bit random like a roguelite, I think is really important to maintaining some sort of consistency throughout the game. So, anyways, back there I mentioned resting and memorizing spells, so speaking of that, when you rest, now the only option is leveling up. So, just like in Elden Ring, you have to accumulate runes in order to level up, and you get these from fighting enemies and bosses. You can then find a site of grace and level up, but this time leveling up is static and you don't get to customize your build at all in the same way that you can in the base game. Each character will get a set health, mana, stamina, and damage increase based on who you choose, they all have their own stats that they level up, which means that you can't just decide that you want to change your build like choosing a swordsman and wanting to be a mage afterwards. You're kind of set with whatever the archetype supports when you choose that character at the beginning of the session. So, I think this is one of the biggest changes from the main game, because of course if you're familiar with FromSoft games, leveling up and changing your build is very important, it is a staple of the series. But, again, I think that this was implemented so that the game can move as quickly as possible. And considering that you have to worry about a circle that's closing in and only have a limited amount of time to get to the end game, if you had to level up individual stats every single time, I think it would just take too long and people would get left to the wayside while they're trying to customize or optimize their build or do something unconventional and ruin everyone else's run. So, having set level ups and set upgrades, you just have to go to the site of grace, click level up as many times as you can, and then you're on your way, it takes less than a second to do, and I think that this is really great for the game. Of course, I would hate this in a main FromSoft game, but for the setting of Night Rain, I think it's perfect because, again, it keeps passive play and removes another mechanical layer so that you can focus solely on what you need to do, which is get stronger so you can take on the bosses. And in addition to just leveling up your stats, your levels are also needed for certain weapons. So, you won't be able to use a weapon effectively if your level is too low for it and the requirements are varied. Sometimes you'll need to be level of 4 to equip a better weapon, and sometimes you'll have to be level 12, like for legendary weapons, which usually come in the form of boss weapons, like Radon's Skarskirch Greatsword, which is the only legendary that I actually encountered in my time playing. It didn't fit with my playstyle in the slightest, but I still used it because it was just way too cool not to. And honestly, the damage that legendary weapons have and the abilities that they have over just common weapons are exceptional, so if you find one, you might as well just use it, even if it doesn't fit your current playstyle. For example, I was playing as the Guardian, and I was using a Halberd and a Shield. And over the game, I upgraded to different weapons, but Halberd or Spear and Shield were the playstyle, but then I picked up the Skarskirch Greatsword, and I'm like, well, I'll put this in my one hand, but my attacks were super slow and I just wasn't feeling it, so I just two handed it and I decided to forgo the shield. The shield is a really important part of the Guardian's arsenal, and it seems kind of crazy just to get rid of it, but during the final boss, I didn't really feel like I needed it, and I felt like the extra DPS that I could get from dual wielding these Skarskirch Greatsword was far better than just using a regular weapon, because again, the damage was so much more. Okay, there was a bit of a tangent, I apologize, but the main reason you're running around like a madman around the map to get levels is so that, of course, you can take on each boss as it comes. I would say that there are three different classifications of bosses in Night Rain. The first ones are going to be mini bosses that are scattered across the map, and you can run into these as easily as you do regular enemies. They are literally everywhere, and they could be anything from a group of soldiers that when you kill one of them, the main health bar goes down and you quote unquote beat the boss once you've killed enough of these enemies, or they could be something like the tree sentinel or other mini bosses from Elden. There are a wide variety for these bosses, but I would say that they are, for the most part, just buffed versions of enemies from the main game, hence why I classify them as mini bosses. But every time that you kill one of these mini bosses, you get a Sight of Grace, and you get a Weapon or a Towersman or a Buff Drop. And pretty much every time that you beat one of these mini bosses, you're almost guaranteed a level. Maybe when you get later on, it'll take you a couple to actually get to a level, but fighting the mini bosses is by far the easiest way to level. So that's why there's so many of them. Then at the end of each day, when the circle closes in, it'll close into a boss arena. These bosses are more like regular bosses from the main game, so I'm just going to call these main bosses. You'll fight three in total in accordance to the three-day limit each run, and I encountered a range of different ones. One was a mob fight with a group of Demi-humans and their queen, as well as a sword master. I would say that this one was the hardest because of the sheer number of things going on at once. I found that we actually had to strategize when going into this fight, and this fight was the run killer, honestly. It was pretty tough if you all weren't coordinated enough to take it down. But this was usually the first boss that I fought at the end of the first day, along with the Centipede Demon from Dark Souls 1. And yeah, other bosses from other Souls games are going to be in the game, which I think are so cool, because you have enemies like the Centipede Demon that in Dark Souls 1 because of the arena, because of the lighting, because of when it was released, the model was super janky, and it just looked like a blob of nothing. I couldn't really tell what was going on with it, but seeing it in modern graphics, in basically broad daylight, it's so cool. It adds another layer of intrigue to the game, because I wonder what other bosses we're going to run into from the older games. Are they going to bring anything in from Bloodborne? Are they going to bring anything in from Sekiro? I don't know, but I guess really they wouldn't bring in anything from Sekiro, because that game was way too specific to meld with the Elden Ring playstyle. But anyways, I digress. Meanwhile, at the end of the third day, I found that the boss I encountered most often was Morgoth from the main game of Elden Ring. So it's interesting how they're just mixing in these different bosses. It feels kind of random, and it feels disjointed, and a little chaotic, but I think it's really interesting. But these bosses are meant to end your run if you're not fast enough. They're really tough, and I think that they're meant to be there as a checkpoint to make sure that you're strong enough for the next day. Thankfully, if you make good use of your time and kill a few bosses and level up a handful of times each day, you should be able to make it through these bosses with minimal issues as long as your team is coordinated. The last category would be what I call end game bosses. So after the end of the third day, you'll get teleported into what looks like a divine tower that's wrapped up in a minor urd tree, which is interesting. I wonder what the lore implications are there. I don't really think there are going to be lore implications because this game is supposed to be entirely separate from Elden Ring, but I'm getting way ahead of myself. Here, you will fight a final boss that is meant to really test your metal. Like I said, I only got there one time, but it was tough. It was a long fight, and I don't want to spoil what that fight was. But it was something that if the entire party wasn't carrying legendary gear, I'm not sure that we would have gotten through it. The entire run before that we barely had to revive each other, but at the last boss, it was really a game of duck duck goose, having to take turns running around and reviving teammates. It was pretty chaotic, but we got through it and it was really fun. So as it stands at the end of this fight, we just got a screen that thanked us for playing the network test, but I can't wait to see what they do with the full release. I'm sure that there are going to be story elements, and those story elements are going to be pretty light in Night Rain, so I'm not expecting a ton in terms of epic cutscenes or lore implications, but I'm sure that the full release is going to be much more exciting with a wider variety of enemies, maybe something that happens after you beat the run. I'm not really sure, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they have in store. And that's really the cycle of the game. In the network test, there wasn't much more to it than you start a raid, kill a few mini bosses, end the day and kill the main boss, and then rinse and repeat for a couple more days until you get to the endgame boss. At the end of each raid, you get to carry over some trinkets and currency from your run that will serve as buffs which can be applied individually to each character for future runs, and I think that this is necessary. And I know I said this before, but having a bit of continuation in a session-based game means that each time you complete a run, whether or not you got to and killed the main endgame boss or not, you'll come out with a little something that will serve you. It'll make you stronger and help you in your next runs. I mentioned currency and I didn't really see what that currency was used for. I'm not sure that there was a use for it in the network test, but I'm really interested to see where that goes and what it's used for. I'm sure it'll just be to buy materials and make more buffs for your character, but I wonder if it'll be used for anything else like a different starting loadout or perhaps abilities for each character or maybe different skins. Who knows. If they do go for skins or loadouts or different things, I just really hope they don't fortnightify it. Do you know what I mean? I'm a sucker for the modern Call of Duty. I like the Modern Warfare series, but in most recent iterations of that, the game starts great on launch where it's all milsim skins, everything's very tame and it fits within the setting, but then you get a year into playing that game and suddenly there are leprechauns running around. You have Snoop Dogg running around. You have Eminem and you have other people. It just takes you out of it. It takes me out of it anyways. All I'm saying is that if they decide to add skins, I don't have a problem with that as long as it fits the setting and they're not doing crossover skins. That's all I don't want to see. So that's my own personal take and I don't think that they'll add skins for the game, but if they do, I just hope they're tasteful. So now that I'm done talking about what the gameplay looks like, I wanted to talk about these mechanics and give my thoughts on them. I won't go crazy in depth on any of these, but these are just a few points that stood out to me and that I noticed were either just interesting or mechanically different from the main game. First up, I just wanted to talk about fall damage because there was none. I was absolutely floored when I saw my teammate just hop off a tall cliff without looking for a way down. I had time to get to the edge and watch them hit the ground and just keep running and I had to try it out for myself and lo and behold, there was no fall damage in Night Rain. This really grabbed my attention because I think that fall damage is something that I've always complained about in the Soulsborne games. It always feels like the main character has the weakest ankles in the game that I've seen since Geralt of Rivia and I wondered what a Soulsborne game would look like without fall damage or at least without the aggressive fall damage. Let me tell you guys, it was really beautiful. Again, I think that this was added for the sake of pace of play. If you've played Elden Ring, you know that the map has a ton of verticality. So if the player had to look for a way down every cliff that they ran up or had to backtrack the way they came to get down, I think they would be wasting too much time to be leveling up and surviving each day. So I imagine that they just took fall damage out to expedite the game, make it run faster, take a little bit of the thought out of the game so you can just continue going and fighting bosses. But I think that's pretty much the reason for any changes and that includes adding a Sekiro style vault that you can get around faster and a sprint that replaces the need to hop on Torrent to get around the map faster. These are both very very welcome additions and I'm really glad that they're in the game. I don't think that it would be the same without them, I think it would be much slower. The vault is nice because it means that gone are the days where you try to jump over a knee-high wall and the game just tells you no for no reason. So now you can just jump up a wall that's lower or slightly taller than your character and they'll grab the edge and pull these are both really great replacements for Torrent because the vaulting means that you don't have to rely on the double jump anymore because you have that traversal built into your character. Speaking of traversal, there are still the spirit springs in Night Rain and just like with these other two mechanics, they are just on your character so you don't need Torrent. You just run up to a spirit spring, press the jump button and your character flies 150 feet into the air and you can get over that cliff you're looking at. I love that all this traversal is now just built into your character. It's a lot of fun being able to break into a sprint and just climb up a cliff face that has some jagged outcrops or see a spirit spring and just fly into the air with enough G force to kill a man. All of these make the game feel much faster and I feel like that was the intended effect. I mentioned this before but you can revive your teammates and I didn't really get into the specifics of the mechanic but I really like this mechanic and I wanted to talk about it. So whenever a teammate goes down, they'll get onto their knees and get a circle above their head that's split into three segments. The first time they go down, they start with one segment filled in and they get an additional one each subsequent time they go down. To revive them, you need to attack the downed character and remove the circle above their head so every time that you attack them, a chunk of that segment is removed and once that segment is entirely removed then they get back up. I think it's damage based because I noticed that if I used a heavy attack or a charged ability they would revive almost instantly but if I just used light attacks it would take a few hits to get them up. But again, once the bar was depleted they get right back up with a bit of health and they're able to immediately get back into the fight. I love this mechanic again but it felt strange seeing it in a from SOP game since I can't think of a time that they've ever used a similar mechanic but it makes Night Rain a bit more forgiving and adds another layer onto combat. Not only do you have to get your allies up but you have to actively stop fighting the boss to do so and this leads to some really interesting play because if one teammate goes down then it's up to the other two members to figure out who's taking the full aggro of the boss while the other gets their teammate back into the fight. And it's always really exciting but it's harrowing when both of your teammates go down and it's all up to you to take all of the boss aggro and try to revive your teammates. It's tough and it really makes you think but I think it's much better than having your allies just die when they go down. Then I could be wrong but I think that if they're left in a down state for long enough they do just die. If that happens then I think they just spawn in at the sight of grace when the rest of the team defeats the boss that they're fighting so it's not just a run killer from what I've seen which is nice. But I have to admit that I didn't fully understand how the mechanic worked at first. I literally walked up to a man who was downed and watched him die because there was no extra revive prompt and it wasn't until a few sessions later when I got downed and someone came rushing over to me and they attacked me that I realized what was happening. At first I thought this person was lashing out at me for going down and I'm not gonna lie I got pretty salty about it for a half second before I was revived and I got back up into the fight. But then I realized all the times I just stood over a companion's body and looked at them waiting for the prompt to revive them to come up and it just never did. So that must have seemed really passive aggressive from their standpoint where I'm just standing over them and they're like come on just attack me just attack me they're probably screaming at their TV like get me back into the fight but I'm just standing there watching them die. It seems like I missed all of the tutorial pop-ups for the game and I wonder if that's because the first session that I tried to join I wasn't able to get into the game at all and I just constantly kept getting booted. Maybe the tutorial messages were just kind of like lost in that time I have no idea but I felt like I didn't really know how to play the game. Another interesting deviation from the main games is the way that they handle critical attacks. It still works the same in the sense that if you do enough damage in a short period of time you get a critical attack on the boss. But it's different in the way that when you're doing a critical attack your allies can still do damage to the enemy that you're performing a critical on. In previous games if a crit was being performed on a boss then they entered a state where they could only take damage from the crit. So it was almost always more worthwhile for the team just to lay on them with regular attacks instead of having someone perform the critical. Now one person can crit and the other people can just keep slapping the boss at the same time. I think that this is great and it keeps pace of play moving very nicely because now I don't have to wait for the animation to finish before continuing attacking. I can just keep attacking and get free hits in. Other than those mechanics as you run around you'll still encounter familiar things like churches where you can go in and get more charges for your flask and you can collect stone sword keys to use at everjails to fight more bosses just like in the main game. I like that they kept these things but I just wanted to touch on the fact that I couldn't figure out how to allocate my flask from healing to mana and I don't know if I'm just brain dead or what but if they exclude the mana flasks I think that's going to hurt the sorceress class really hard. I hope it's something that I just missed or something that they just didn't put into the network test but please have the ability to have me allocate my flasks to restore my fp as well because otherwise I'm not going to play work loose. And just as one quick final point I just wanted to point out the UI because as someone who works professionally in the design field it was something that caught my attention almost immediately. On launching the game even just in the roundtable hold I immediately got the sense of nostalgia for something I couldn't quite place and then I realized that the UI was very much something like the newer Final Fantasy games or certain MMOs or even the Kingdom Hearts games from way back when. It really harkens to that JRPG style. All of the menus have this ethereal translucent blue frames with white and blue text and yeah it just reminded me of like Final Fantasy 15 or 7 Rebirth and again it just felt like I was in another JRPG it didn't feel like I was in a Souls game. This was I'm sure a very deliberate change. They could have just kept the same UI as the main game but they specifically wanted the UI and Night Rain to not only be slightly different but stick out in a very unique way. I just thought that was interesting because I really want the art director to come forward and explain why they decided to make Night Rain's UI look like a Final Fantasy game but I feel like that'll never happen. But this is a little bit of an insight to my brain and how it works when I'm playing games. I'm very drawn to the design elements and the little things that make the game just come together. So I spent a little bit too long thinking about the UI going through it and comparing it to different games that I've played and wondering why they decided to make those changes and I've mentioned MMO a few times and I really feel like that's what they're going for is a more MMO feel even though the game isn't an MMO by definition but again it still has that vibe. And I think that's all I really have to say. I'm glad that I got to play even if just for a little bit and I'm really quite excited to play the full game when it comes out. I'm a sucker for anything from Soft and I think that this is the game that we've been waiting for for a long time. Co-op has been a huge part of the Soulsborne community and I think it's a big reason why the games have had such staying power and why people continue to play them after all these years. I'm glad that we're finally getting a proper multiplayer game set in this universe. I know that there are plenty of details that I didn't talk about but hey I was only able to play for one session so there's only so much that I can gather from that short time. But that brings me to my favorite question which is what did you think? Were you able to get into the network test and if you did what did you think of Nightrain? Are you going to buy it on release or skip it entirely and wait for the next main installment? I know personally I'm going to be playing this day one and it comes out right before my birthday so I get to just have the excuse of sitting on my couch and doing absolutely nothing but no life again. You can find us online at Lord2Death on your favorite social media apps, Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We're also on YouTube so if you head over there and hit subscribe I would really appreciate it. If you have any questions or suggestions for topics please send me a message wherever you could find me or at Lord2Death at gmail.com. If you're using these Spotify apps there's a comment section attached to the episode where you can submit any questions or topics and if you're on YouTube then you know what to do drop a comment I would love to hear from you. And remember life is better with a bit of companionship. Finding someone or some people who you can really lean on is really important and you shouldn't be afraid to ask for help when life is getting to be a bit too much for you to handle. We're not in this alone and only together can we truly bless this mess. So remember live laugh love and I promise I'll lure you to death in the next episode. I know the last couple have not been lore episodes but we're getting back to it one day we'll do a lore episode so I'll see you that I can't see ya.
