Hades 2 Early Access: A Roguelike That Keeps Surprising Me
April 19, 2026Why Competitive Gaming Made Me a Better Player
April 21, 2026
• Why the three-day cycle system is both brilliant and frustrating
• Whether new bosses justify the $40 price for existing Elden Ring players
• My honest take after 60 hours across two characters
⭐️ 5 min read
FromSoft Did It Again
The Pre-Order Anxiety Was Real
I pre-ordered Elden Ring Nightreign for $40 in March 2025, the day pre-orders went live. I was excited but also nervous as hell. Elden Ring is my favorite game of the past decade — I’ve put over 600 hours into the base game and Shadow of the Erdtree combined. The idea of a “roguelike expansion” with a three-day time loop sounded like FromSoft trying something experimental, and experimental FromSoft can go either way. Remember DS2’s adaptability stat? Exactly.
The day it dropped, I took a day off work. My boss raised an eyebrow when I filed the PTO. “Gaming?” he asked. “Research,” I said, straight-faced. I installed it at midnight and started my first run at 12:30 AM, fully expecting to hate it by 3 AM and go to bed disappointed.
I went to bed at 6 AM. I was wrong about everything.
How Nightreign Changes the Formula
Nightreign strips Elden Ring down to its combat core and rebuilds it as a roguelike. You pick a class, get dropped into a condensed version of the Lands Between, and have three in-game days to explore, fight field bosses, collect runes and gear upgrades, and prepare for the final Nightreign boss on day three. If you die, you lose almost everything and start over. If you beat the boss, you unlock higher difficulty tiers with new modifiers and rewards.
The map is about 40% the size of the base game but densely packed with encounters. You won’t find legacy dungeons like Stormveil or Leyndell here — instead, there are smaller, nonlinear zones with randomized enemy placements, loot drops, and field bosses. It feels like playing Elden Ring’s overworld but with the pacing of Hades. I didn’t expect that combo to work, but it absolutely does.
The class system replaces the open freedom of the base game. You choose from eight pre-made classes — Warrior, Prophet, Bandit, Astrologer, Confessor, and four new ones specific to Nightreign. I started with the Duskblade class, which wields a magic-infused greatsword and has a built-in parry. It clicked immediately. My second run was with the Desperado — a dual-dagger class with a dodge that leaves a delayed explosion. It was harder but way more satisfying when I pulled it off.
The New Bosses Are the Main Event
Nightreign introduces ten new bosses and rearranges fifteen existing ones into new combinations. The new bosses are the highlight. There’s the Wax Warden, a giant humanoid made of hardened candle wax — it drips molten wax pools that force constant movement, and its second phase sheds armor to become faster and more aggressive. I died to it seven times before I learned the pattern.
My favorite is the Gilded Knight, a massive golden-armored figure with a spear that can transform into a lightning whip in phase two. The fight demands precise positioning — stay too close and get grabbed, stay too far and get zapped. When I finally beat it, my hands were shaking. I actually yelled “YES” at 2 AM and woke up my girlfriend. She was not happy. Worth it.
Not every boss lands. The Crystal Centipede is a reskinned version of an existing enemy with more health and a new AoE attack. Fighting it feels like padding. I was frustrated when I realized it was basically a reused asset with a new coat of paint. For $40, I expected more original content.
What Frustrates Me After 60 Hours
The RNG can be brutal. Some runs you get perfect gear and steamroll the final boss. Other runs you find nothing but healing items and basic weapons, then get destroyed by a mid-tier field boss. The variance is too wide — a bad streak of three or four runs in a row made me close the game and walk away. Hades gives you persistent upgrades between runs to soften the RNG. Nightreign’s meta-progression is too shallow.
The three-day limit stresses me out more than it should. I’m a completionist by nature, and knowing I have to skip content every run because there literally isn’t time to explore everything creates a tension I don’t always enjoy. I’ve had runs where I found a cool optional dungeon on day three and had to choose between cleaning it out or rushing to the boss. I picked the dungeon, died to the boss, and regretted it.
Performance is better than the base game at launch but still not perfect. I run a Ryzen 5600X with an RTX 3070, and I get frame drops in the new lightning-heavy zones. Stutters during boss phase transitions have killed me twice. Elden Ring’s engine is showing its age.
Is It Worth $40?
Yes, but with conditions. If you’re a huge Elden Ring fan like me who’s already done multiple NG+ cycles, Nightreign is a fresh, challenging take on the gameplay you love. The new bosses alone are worth the price of admission — the Wax Warden and Gilded Knight are among the best bosses FromSoft has ever designed.
If you only played Elden Ring once and moved on, wait for a sale at $25-30. The core loop is repetitive by design, and without the emotional attachment to the world and combat system, the roguelike structure might feel thin.
But for someone who owns a Malenia tattoo on his left forearm and has the base game memorized — Nightreign reminded me why I fell in love with FromSoft games in the first place. The challenge, the discovery, the frustration, the triumph. They did it again.
TL;DR
• 60 hours in, the new bosses (Wax Warden, Gilded Knight) are some of FromSoft’s best work
• RNG runs can be frustrating — three bad streaks in a row made me rage-quit
• $40 is fair for fans; casual players should wait for a $25-30 sale
— Rand, SpaceGA