Elden Ring Nightreign is a hard game—no, not just hard, sometimes downright unfair. It’s in a way that’s incredibly charming, mind, but as our own Ted Litchfield wrote last week, it’s “player hostile” or, in other words, occasionally “such bullshit”. I had my own taste of this recently as, while playing with a couple of other PCG folks, we got a boss down to around 2% HP, decided to try and finish it off, and got insta-gibbed by a muddily-telegraphed AoE. Nightreign’d.
However, combat director Junya Ishizaki wants you to believe in yourself, especially in the face of a capricious game that mostly hates and wants to murder you. That’s per an interview with CNET, wherein Ishizaki says:
“I can hopefully give you reassurance to know that I have beaten all of the game’s bosses. I’ve seen everything it has to offer, both in multiplayer and as a solo player. So I want you and players to know that this is very possible, and I want you to have the confidence to give it a try yourself.”
Phew, alright. Well, you’d hope that the combat director of Nightreign is good at the combat, given he’s directing it and all. Even though solo is a momentous challenge, it tracks he’d be able to pull off some lone ranger runs. At the very least, he’s making use of the game’s relic systems to do so, right?
“Yes. And without relics.” Aw, man.
Bless Ishizaki—he’s trying to be motivational here—but I’ve never heard a more polite, perspective-shifting clarion call to git gud since Bandai Namco tweeted out “this is a suggestion to level up your Scadutree Blessing” in the early days of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.
It’s certainly possible if you’re absolutely cracked at soulslikes, mind. It’s not exactly sans-relics, but someone’s already beaten the game solo without levelling up once—and every single time I’ve thought a FromSoftware game was a bit spicy, some kung-fu master’s rocked up to Twitch armed with only a controller and a level of patience and focus forged in the mountains of some far-flung monastery and done a no-hit run before I can blink.
Mark my words, Ishizaki won’t be the first person to depress you with his accomplishments. Here’s my prediction: Not only is Ishizaki right, we’re about two months maximum from someone doing a full Nightreign solo level one run, blindfolded, armed with only a dance pad and a saxophone, no-hit, while underwater with their hands tied. It’ll happen.
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