ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN The Forsaken Hollows Review Summary

Unique & Fun Playable Characters: The two new playable characters, Undertaker and Scholar, are highly praised for their unique mechanics, fresh playstyles, and engaging designs. Undertaker excels with aggressive damage and ultimate spam, while Scholar offers strategic support through consumables and buffs, adding significant depth to gameplay.

Excellent DLC Value & Content: The DLC delivers a substantial amount of new, high-quality content, including characters, bosses, and maps, all at a very fair price of $15. Players consistently report excellent value, often stating it exceeded their expectations and provided a refreshing experience.

Stunning & Vertical Map Design: The new map, often referred to as "Shifting Earth" or "The Great Hollow," is widely praised for its gorgeous visuals, innovative verticality, and engaging, challenging design. It offers a fresh, expansive environment that deeply enhances exploration and makes the game feel new.

Challenging & Masterful Boss Fights: Players celebrate the new bosses, including main encounters like Dreglord, King of Rubble, and various Nightlords, for their fun, challenging, and often cinematic design. These fights are frequently described as intense, fair, and among the most memorable combat experiences in the game.

Enhanced Core Game Experience: The DLC significantly revitalizes the overall game experience, bringing back the excitement of launch and reaffirming the base game's quality. Players appreciate FromSoftware's commitment to high-quality, challenging design and continued support, enhancing the game's long-term appeal.

New Map is Frustrating to Navigate: The new "Shifting Earth" map (also referred to as Great Hollow/Grand Cavern) is overwhelmingly criticized for its confusing verticality, numerous fall hazards, and difficult traversal. Players find it poorly designed, unintuitive, and tedious to navigate, especially under time pressure and with poor in-game map functionality.

DLC Lacks Content Value: The DLC is widely considered overpriced for the minimal content offered, with many players feeling it provides only a few hours of gameplay. This leads to significant disappointment, as it is perceived as rushed, insincere, and more akin to a small update than a full-priced expansion.

Limited Boss & Enemy Variety: The DLC introduces a limited number of new bosses and enemies, with many being reused from the base game or other FromSoftware titles. Players report repetitive boss encounters, particularly with recurring enemies and frustrating multi-enemy "gank fights" that feel unbalanced and unfair, especially for solo players.

Missing New Weapons and Spells: Players are severely disappointed by the almost complete absence of new weapons, spells, incantations, and Ashes of War. This is exacerbated by the perception that existing assets from Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC could have easily been integrated, leading to a lack of build variety and replayability.

New Characters Underperform: The newly added characters, particularly the "Scholar," are widely regarded as weak, clunky, and unrewarding to play, especially in solo mode. Their abilities are often ineffective, slow, and require excessive item management or specific relics to be even marginally useful, making them a liability rather than an asset.

Significant new characters and bosses: The DLC introduces two new playable characters, the Scholar and the Undertaker, each offering distinct playstyles. It also adds several challenging new bosses, including powerful Nightlords and the notable boss Artorias, alongside new events like the Tricephalos wolf invasion, greatly expanding the game's roster.

New map is complex and vertical: The 'Shifting Earth' map is a significant new addition, characterized by its large size, multi-layered design, and high verticality. Players report that its unique layout and integral crystal-breaking mechanics make initial navigation challenging and confusing, requiring a steep learning curve.

Scholar character offers unique support: The new Scholar character is an Arcane-based item user, specializing in support through applying debuffs (e.g., rot, frostbite, poison, attack down) and buffs (e.g., stamina, damage negation). While offering a unique playstyle, many players find the Scholar difficult to master, requiring specific item-leveling strategies and party experimentation.

DLC offers high difficulty challenge: The DLC significantly increases the game's overall difficulty, presenting a substantial challenge compared to the base game. Players frequently compare its unforgiving nature and design philosophy to FromSoftware's Elden Ring DLCs, indicating it is explicitly for those seeking a tougher experience.

Future updates to add SOTE weapons: Players have expressed a strong desire for more weapons and Ashes of War. Developers have acknowledged this, stating that Shadow of the Erdtree-themed weapons and equipment are planned for implementation in future updates, with balancing considerations being a key factor before their release.

Unplayability, crashes, poor optimization: Many players cannot load or play the game due to general bugs, crashes, and white screen issues, even after extensive troubleshooting. The overall game optimization is described as 'shockingly bad' and has worsened, leading to an unplayable experience for some regardless of PC specifications.

Severe FPS drops from events: Players report significant frame rate drops, often below 20 FPS, during various in-game events such as ice storms, frost dragons, and specific 'Fracture' occurrences. This makes gameplay feel like a 'powerpoint slide' and hinders the overall experience.

Widespread server and network lag: Players are experiencing high ping, severe lagging, and stuttering, indicating that the game's servers are struggling to cope and require repair. This issue has not improved and significantly hinders the online gameplay experience.

Unfair crowd boss fight bug: A critical bug in a new crowd boss fight makes it 'functionally impossible' as enemies float in the air after an attack, allowing them to hit players but making them untargetable. This creates a highly frustrating and broken gameplay encounter.

vcruntime140.dll launch error: A specific technical issue prevents players from launching the game due to the 'vcruntime140.dll' file being deemed 'untrustworthy'. This completely blocks access to the game for affected users.

Mixed DLC Value & Recommendation: Player reception for the DLC is highly polarized. Many recommend it strongly for existing fans of the base game 'Nightreign' who seek more content or replayability. However, a significant portion feels it's overpriced for the content offered, should wait for a sale, or is not worth buying in its current state, especially for casual players or those who didn't love the base game.

Demand for New Content: Many players strongly desire future updates, especially requesting new weapons, spells, and character skins to enhance build variety. Some even state they would change their negative review to positive if these content additions were made, indicating their high importance for player satisfaction.

Developer Reputation & Future: Feedback touches upon the developer's (implied FromSoftware) reputation. Some players express disappointment leading to skepticism about future purchases, while others show continued support and hope for sustained updates and innovative future titles.

Community Review Dynamics: The community shows divided opinions on the review process itself. Some reviewers mention using negative reviews as an 'informational act' or express intent to refund, while others caution against 'review bombing' for unadvertised features, highlighting a polarized debate around player expectations versus actual content.

Niche Audience & High Difficulty: There's a consistent sentiment that the game or its DLC caters to a niche audience. It is often deemed unsuitable for casual players or those who prefer less challenging games, indicating it targets a hardcore or dedicated player base expecting significant skill demands.

Missing SotE Content & Future Updates: A prominent concern among players is the initial absence of Shadow of the Erdtree weapons, ashes of war, and other content in the DLC. While developers never promised these for launch, they have confirmed that such content is planned for future free updates, attributing delays to balancing challenges. There's a strong anticipation for these additions.

DLC Content Scope & Quality: Player reception of the DLC's content scope is mixed. Many found it to be a smaller offering than major expansions, which some attribute to limited development resources. While some reviews were positive (7.5-8/10), others expressed disappointment, particularly regarding the game's 'fake roguelike' aspects, and desire more substantial, potentially pricier future DLCs.

Unfair Expectations & Review Bombing: A significant portion of the player base believes that negative reviews are largely driven by 'review bombing' tactics and unfulfilled, often unadvertised, player expectations. These expectations primarily relate to the immediate inclusion of Shadow of the Erdtree content, which developers never promised. This suggests a disconnect between player hopes and official communications.

Future Support & Game Improvements: Players overwhelmingly desire continued developer support and updates for the game, expressing trust in FromSoftware to enhance the experience. There's an expectation that the game will become more fleshed out over time, with significant improvements and additional content drops leading to higher overall satisfaction. Many loyal players remain committed, ready to purchase future DLCs.

Acceptable DLC Price: The DLC's price point, typically around $15-$20, is generally considered acceptable by most players for the amount of content provided. While some reviews suggest a slightly lower price might have been ideal, many believe it offers fair value, especially when compared to the cost of cosmetics in other games, for a smaller content drop.