Elden Ring: Nightreign Boss Fight Videos

 

With the Duskbloods network test starting today, it's a good time for another compilation of boss fight videos from a game. I'm hugely into these Fromsoft games and their boss fights, which tend to be great duels that are often incredible-looking to boot. Each fight here includes liner notes about the fight., as usual. This is a super fun game if you bring your own group of friends and communicate via some third-party chat program; a bit less so if you only do randomly generated runs - with no communication - as the game intends.

Nightreign is an interesting game that I wish I liked more. Found it very tedious and difficult because of how hard it was to make any gainful progress off of unsuccessful runs at levels. You're also very reliant on how experienced your teammates are. It was nearly impossible to beat a level with a randomized group in the first week the game was out, but later I was able to go back and do more once the playerbase had more experience (that or all the noobs had quit by then) and managed to beat the game in about 12 hours.

Do yourself a favor and avoid the DLC though. Waste of $15 and the underworld levels are a real pain in the ass. Had I just quit after the main game concluded, I would have had mostly positive memories. So this is only covering the main game.

Gladius, Beast of Night - The first boss, which you have to defeat to unlock the level select with all of the other bosses. Not sure why they structured it this way, because this is one of the tougher bosses, and it walls you off from everything else. I would have had the first seven levels all available from the beginning. Then again, doing it the way they did quarantines most of the noob playerbase into this one area, where they can be avoided by the rest of the players. So it does make sense to have one level be an "intro level" before the rest unlock. However, this boss didn't need to be blisteringly difficult. Once it splits into three, most noob groups fall apart as mass chaos erupts. A more normal first boss would have eased players into the game.

You don't want half the potential players tapping out on a game before they even have a chance to get going with it; I had a ton of fun with this game after I beat this level and unlocked the rest, and I nearly quit before getting to that point because the first level is such a death trap. All of that said, now that the playerbase is thinned-out, this level/boss isn't bad anymore, so that was more of a launch week problem. It's also worth noting that this thing will still be a problem for premade friend groups tackling the game. Ironically, randoms will have less of an issue with the fight at this point since they'll be drawing from a more experienced pool of players.

It's a very pretty fight, I'll give it that. Fitting that a Cerberus guards the rest of Nightreign from players, considering that the Cerberus of legend guarded the gates of Hell. I see what they did there.

Adel. Baron of Night - One of the easiest bosses, though I still managed to die on it by the end. This thing looks weirdly familiar, like it's been in one of these games before. Is it the finished form of one of those unfinished monsters from Lost Izalith in Dark Souls 1? Looks like it might well be. This thing would have been a good candidate for the first boss, though it's a bit bland so maybe not.

Caligo, Miasma of Night - An ice dragon, this has to be one of the prettiest fights in all of Soulsborne. My favorite boss in the game, and one that absolutely deserved to be in main game Elden Ring. A slightly easier version of this fight being the first boss would have also been a good candidate for that. Just a beautiful fight here. Might have been the first boss I managed to beat after the intro level was down. If one only watches one video from this list, this is the editor's pick.

Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow - Another of the easier fights. Though you can't tell from the video because I got hit by all of his attacks. This was my first attempt at this fight, that's why. Some of these videos were first attempts, all of them were first wins, so my playing isn't amazing. We were down one ragequitter (lame how the game doesn't replace people if they're gone for more than 10 minutes, but then again, the replacement won't have time to get up to snuff anyway) and had to do this with two people. Still, wasn't an issue. It's a bit more interesting than Adel, so if it came down to it this probably should have been the first boss.

Libra, Creature of Night - This one is very interesting, and probably my second-favorite fight besides the ice dragon. Basically a Lucavi demon from Final Fantasy Tactics, this guy takes a humanoid form first to offer you a choice of various power increases. I heard that each choice carries with it a tradeoff., but this fight is still very isoteric to me. Make a good choice and it can help a lot in the battle, I assume. Interesting how many bosses use Holy element in this game; it's probably the dominant element on most of the fights. Would have expected Dark to be the main boss element in a game called Nightreign but it barely exists.

Gnoster, Wisdom of Night - Easily the toughest boss in the game (aside from maybe the final boss on pure firepower, but it certainly took more work to bring this one down). This is a double-boss gank fight. This fight took me 3 runs to take down, which is more than anything else besides the Cerberus. Besides that and this, only the final boss managed to take more than one run.

Double-boss gank fights have a rich history of ruining people's day in Fromsoft games, going back to Ornstein and Smough in Dark Souls (or maybe even the Maneaters in Demon Souls). Even From-likes often carry over this aspect: Code Vein's toughest boss with a bullet is Bladebearer and Cannoneer. This one is particularly nasty since both bosses tend to operate very independently most of the time and have big AOEs, so you need to have eyes in the back of your head.

The game being balanced around three players really factors in for things like this; ideally you end up with one player tanking each boss and holding their attention  a good distance apart while another player (preferably one with range like Ironeye here) either focuses damage on the one that's dropping faster, or gets ready to run interference and heal anyone who falls.

Maris, Fathom of Night - Another ethereally beautiful boss fight, this is a rare boss that uses the Sleep status. Probably why the fight took so long compared to the others, people were asleep for good portions of it. At one point we damn near lost the fight, except that someone had that crucial "shadows die twice" item that lets you stand back up. I managed to get the killshot. This was a one-shot win for me, like most of these fights. I appreciate the boss fights in this game for their general awe and splendor largely because I only got to play most of them once.

Nameless King - Not a brand new boss or a world boss like everything else on this list, but Nameless King (of Dark Souls 3 fame) is probably the biggest and baddest sub-boss you can encounter in this game. So it gets a special mention here along with all of the unique new world-bosses. Nameless King lacks the amazing battle arena he had in DS3, and he's much easier with 3 people beating him up. Formerly the toughest postgame uberboss in the entire Dark trilogy (not counting DLCs), now a bit of a pushover...but not really. He just isn't designed to fight 3 opponents at once, and as a result isn't as formidable as the eight main bosses. I'm glad that the eight main bosses are entirely new fights designed solely for this game.

Heolstor the Nightlord - The final boss is a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping for Godwyn to be the Nightlord. Would have made a lot of sense if he was, given he was the lord of night and the underworld and so forth, but I guess they just kinda forgot about him. We got an unsatisfying Miquella resolution too, in the main game's DLC, so I don't know what I expected. All of that said, whoever the hell this guy is, it's still an awesome-looking fight.

As for the battle itself, this is a really tough one, probably the toughest in the game once he changes phases and starts using mega-attacks. That second phase is sheer death and makes even the double gank fight earlier look minor in comparison. It lulls you into a false sense of security with the first phase being so easy, too. Pretty sweet final boss, and I would have had no chance whatsoever of beating this thing one-on-one so I'm glad the game is what it is in this case.

One last thing: The John Wick Run. Just a full level run with Wick music playing (music I was actually listening to as I played, so this is an authentic Musical Run)

Total Runs Needed To Take Down Each Boss:

Cerberus: Like 15

Gnoster, Wisdom of Night: 3 (The gank duo was an ass of a fight)

Final Boss: 2 (The first time was an almost immediate shutout and I thought the boss would be impossible; second time was the fight seen above, which went considerably better)

Everything Else: 1-shot (some I really wish had taken a few tries, like Libra and the Ice Dragon)

I reiterate that this game would have been a lot better if all seven non-Heolstor bosses were unlocked from the start, rather than six of them being locked behind the Cerberus. That funnels noobs into the Cerberus run, making it even tougher to have a successful go at that level. This game was a ton of fun, outside of struggling with the first level (and the DLC, which I had nothing but issues with). Hopefully Duskbloods gets all of the good DNA from this game and none of the problems.