Over the past decade, FromSoftware has been slowly perfecting its dragon battles, trying new ideas to offer players epic encounters against fantasy’s most popular beast. In Elden Ring, the developer seemingly reached a sweet spot by adding dragons of all kinds to the overworld, offering fast and mighty challenges that demanded mastery of horseback movement. Elden Ring also features two of the best boss battles in the developer’s history, Bayle and Placidussax, dragons designed to fight on foot and head-on for a breathtaking spectacle. As expected, dragons return in Elden Ring Nightreign, FromSoftware’s first attempt to craft a roguelite experience. Sadly, while dragons remain almost the same in both games, fighting them in Nightreign is much less exciting, as removing Torrent from the equation severely affects the flow of some battles.
Warning: Spoilers below for Elden Ring Nightreign
In Elden Ring Nightreign, two-legged dragons frequently appear in the field as optional challenges players can tackle, offering a bounty of runes as a reward. There are also the mighty four-legged ancient dragons, which can appear as the main boss at the end of a day cycle. Both creatures retain the same attack patterns from Elden Ring, raining destruction from above while using their mighty wings to fly away. In Elden Ring, these animations usually meant it was time to summon Torrent and ride away from a fire breath and closer to your target, quickly closing the distance with the dragon and keeping the pressure on.
With no Torrent-like means of transportation in Elden Ring Nightreign, dragon battles can become a chore that forces you to run from one place to the other after landing only a few hits. So, since the health pool of bosses has been significantly increased in Nightreign to compensate for the cooperative nature of the intended gaming experience, dragons are now a battle of attrition that are just not worth your limited time in most situations, especially since each day cycle is short. There’s only so much you can do before the night falls, and you must rush to a specific point on the map.
To be fair, Nightreign added a sprint option that vastly increases the player character’s running speed, allowing you to cross distances as fast as if you were on horseback. Like Torrent, sprinting doesn’t deplete stamina if no enemies are aggroed, so you can rush from one place to another quite fast. However, sprinting depletes the stamina bar incredibly fast when locked in combat, making it an unreliable tool when fighting dragons. That means the only way to consistently challenge these mighty beasts is by relying on ranged-based classes, as melee-based classes are at a serious disadvantage. That would be bothersome if dragons were the only enemies with a similar issue. Unfortunately, the problem extends to the Nightlords, too.
The Nightlords Show the Issue with Removing Torrent from Elden Ring Nightreign
In Elden Ring Nightreign, you aim to survive two full days and defeat a mighty boss each evening, pushing back the night. After that, you get transported to an ethereal arena where you and your teammates can face a Nightlord, a powerful creature that manifests the dangers of the night itself. While there are eight different Nightlords to face, they all reuse the same arena, a vast terrain of white sand without any objects on the horizon. This arena design echoes the one from the Elden Beast in the original game, the final boss you must face in Elden Ring. Like the Elden Beast, most Nightlords use the empty arena to its fullest, rushing from one place to another and forcing players to chase them.
There’s a reason why, for years, the Elden Beast was the most-hated Remembrance Boss in Elden Ring, as the showdown felt like a downgrade from the thrilling duel against Radagon. Without Torrent, a significant chunk of the Elden Beast fight was spent running from one place to another, instead of engaging in combat. Some Nightlords, unfortunately, feel the same, extending the duration of the battle due to how hard it is to keep close to them as a melee character. Even the highly cinematic Caligo, the ice dragon, suffers from this issue to some extent, preventing the fight from reaching perfection. The problem is even worse with Nightlords such as Augur, a watery blob that floats around the arena at incredible speed. It’s exceptionally frustrating to hit Augur with a melee attack, sucking out all the fun of the fight.
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Since you don’t build your character in Nightreign, using classes focused on specific weapon types and strategies, it’s not always possible to have ranged attack options. Plus, since the clock is always ticking, you have to find rewards that improve the offensive abilities you already have, instead of focusing on secondary sources of damage, or you risk being at a considerable disadvantage when facing the more demanding bosses of the game. So, it’s disappointing to see some creatures favor ranged attacks so much as they do, especially because you don’t have Torrent to help you close the distance and be once more in the forefront of the battle.
It’s worth noting that Elden Ring eventually allowed players to summon Torrent for the Elden Beast battle, FromSoftware’s admission that the lack of mobility got in the way of the fun. There are different ways Nightreign could tackle the same issue, either by granting every class some form of ranged combat ability, reintroducing Torrent to the gameplay loop, or, even simpler, just reducing the amount of stamina sprinting consumes. Any of these changes would solve one of the main problems with the game as it was released, making every boss battle equally exciting instead of a prolonged game of tag.
Elden Ring Nightreign is currently available for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and PS5.
How’s your playthrough of Elden Ring Nightreign so far? Do you agree that you would ideally need more ranged or mobility options for some bosses? Join the discussion in the comments!
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