Posted by Elden Ring Nightreign‘s The Forsaken Hollows DLC released in the middle of December of 2025, so I know that this review is a little late, but it took me a while to reach a point where I could review it. I played Nightreign in duo co-op with one of my friends, and over the holidays we got a third friend into it, so we had a lot of catching up to do, which in turn slowed down my progress with the DLC. Now that I’ve beaten most of what it has to offer, I can actually share my thoughts on it.
The Forsaken Hollows introduces two new characters, a few new bosses, and a new shifting earth event. Let’s start with the characters. Scholar is a character who focuses on consumables. He prefers thrusting swords and has good arcane scaling. His passive skill gives him additional consumable item skill slots and allows him to level them up by using them. His character skill allows him to buff allies and debuff enemies, but it does take a minute to use, so he does require some skill to use effectively. Lastly, his ultimate ability links enemies togethers so damage dealt to one is also dealt to linked ones. Damaging linked enemies heals you and allies. I have not personally used Scholar, but I have seen him in action. He’s pretty strong, especially under the right circumstances, but he’s probably one of the most technical characters in the game since he requires a lot to really reach his full potential. Undertaker specializes in the strength and faith attributes, allowing her to be a tankier frontline fighter who can also cast incantations. Again, I haven’t personally used her, but I have seen her used extensively and she seems quite good. Her passive skill allows her to freely use her ultimate ability whenever an ally uses an ultimate ability, which can lead to some really nice bursts of damage. Her character skill grants her a temporary boost to speed, poise, damage negation, and attack power, and you can chain it with your ultimate ability for even greater effects. As for her ultimate ability, it’s a big attack with really good range. Both characters are strong and fulfill interesting new niches that we haven’t seen in the game yet. One area of design that Nightreign excels at is making unique characters that can all do different things. The DLC is no exception.
The Forsaken Hollows adds in two new expedition bosses: Balancers and Dreglord. Balancers is the first of the two, and required to defeat to unlock Dreglord. I have a very mixed opinion on the new bosses. There are some elements that I really like, but there are also elements that I really don’t. Beginning with Balancers, they are a seven enemy gank fight with three phases. The first phase is fairly manageable because they don’t have a whole lot of health, and their damage, while respectable, isn’t horrible. Phase two sees all of the Balancers rising from the ground with one of them entering a powered up state. Phase three is similar with a few new attacks thrown in. Phase two and three are rough because the buffed up one deals very high damage, and is very aggressive. Balancers frustrates me because the seven enemy gank does not feel very balanced. It’s very easy to end up in a situation where two you’re facing two or more of them at once and one hangs back while the other attacks; once you go in to punish the one that just attacked, the second then immediately attacks, thus covering the first one’s punish window. It’s really annoying. Oh and they have command grabs that they love to spam, so it’s also not uncommon to get command grabbed from off-screen. And there’s seven of them that do this. All of these issues are compounded and made worse by the big one, who hits insanely hard and is very, very aggressive. The tactic we ended up using was for one person to distract the big one while the other two whittled down the rest. Now, there are a few strategies that can make Balancers more bearable. First, they’re very weak to the sleep ailment, so it’s easy to inflict one with sleep and leave it be while finishing off the others. Second, they can be parried pretty easily, which allows riposte chaining for consistent damage and I-frames. Third, since there are so many of them, AoE abilities or ultimate abilities like Scholar’s can be very effective for damaging all of them at once. Lastly, they only deal physical damage, so getting defensive buffs against physical damage can really help. Balancers also have an enhanced version akin to an Everdark Sovereign. The enhanced Balancers features the same phase one, but upon defeating the last normal one, you’re transported to a blood soaked battlefield where you have to contend with seven hyper-aggressive enemies who inflict blood loss. They have plenty of new attacks, like fusing into a giant worm and blooming into a blood flower. Enhanced Balancers feels a little better than regular Balancers because there isn’t the super annoying big one anymore. However, they are AGGRESSIVE and can easily combo you to death, even with good levels and gear. The strategy that my friends and I found was to immediately run away and let them come to us. That way we could limit the fighting to one or two or three at a time. Once we killed one, we would run away because it would quickly revive itself and receive an attack buff. After a few engagements, it does the worm phase, then we’d just rinse and repeat until it was done. Enhanced Balancers are hard, but at the same time they feel a bit easier, and more balanced, than their base fight. Balancers is an incredibly rewarding fight to overcome, but I can’t say I think it’s particularly fun or enjoyable. Dreglord is the final boss of the DLC, and he’s pretty good for the most part. First and foremost, his design is awesome. He seems reminiscent of other bosses, including Manus and Gael, which is really cool. He has two distinct phases with their own health bars. His attacks feel pretty fair and well telegraphed, for the most part. He does have a massive AoE that can be frustrating because it always deals way more damage than I expect it to, and its range is deceptively large. My two main gripes with Dreglord come down to damage and health. He hits VERY hard, and he is TANKY. My best character, is Ironeye, who is quite squishy, so Dreglord usually one- or two-shots me if I get caught by an attack or combo. That being said, his attacks are well-telegraphed enough that I have had some good fights where I’m barely using flasks. The other issue is that he might be the tankiest fight in the game. He has so much health, which makes the fight pretty grueling when you factor in his crazy damage output. I like Dreglord more than Balancers, but there are definitely elements of Dreglord that I find a smidge overtuned.
In addition to the two new expedition bosses (I can’t say Nightlords since they technically aren’t), there are eight new boss fights for the end of each day. The night one fights for Balancers are Demon in Pain and Demon from Below, and the Curseblade and Divine Beast Warrior. The night two fights are Demon Prince and Lord of Blood, respectively. The night one fights directly correlate to the night two fights. Demon duo is ok. I think that they’re the harder of the night one fights since they can both be really tanky and output pretty high damage, but they’re also really easy to wail on relentlessly. And depending on which one you kill, it’ll influence which Demon Prince spawns because there are two versions. I find the laser version much easier than the meteor version. Demon Prince is fine. Again, he has a lot of health and his slam attacks can be devastating for squishier characters, but I’ve fought him so many times that I’ve gotten fairly good at him. The Curseblade and Divine Beast Warrior are more annoying than anything. The Curseblade is very squishy, but he makes the arena dark and obscures your vision, which is just as annoying as it sounds. The Divine Beast Warrior hits like a truck. Whenever I play Raider against him, I struggle because he’s not a boss Raider can really trade blows with. They’re definitely a bit easier than Demon Duo in my opinion, but they can end your run if you aren’t prepared. Lastly there’s the Lord of Blood. I hate him. He’s awful, which is really annoying because I loved his fight in Elden Ring. The reason Lord of Blood is so awful is because he combines some of the worst things you can in a boss: high damage attacks, deceptive range, obnoxious AoEs, obscenely tanky, and undodgeable attacks. Just like in Elden Ring, Lord of Blood has his nihil attack that bleeds you three times, heals him, and transitions him to phase two. It can be counteracted, but you need to get a specific item from Libra when he appears as a merchant on the map. He also has an attack that summons replicas of his spear around the arena. The spears can be destroyed, and you better do it, otherwise you’ll get hit with constant damage in a disgustingly large AoE. What makes Lord of Blood so difficult is that he specifically requires levels of preparation that no other end of day boss does, which isn’t always feasible in the grand scheme of a run. The Dreglord expedition features a Death Knight trio (kinda) and the Great Red Bear for night one bosses, and the Divine Dancing Lion and Knight Artorias for night two bosses. The Death Knights are a trio gank fight first preluded by a single Death Knight. They deal crazy damage, but are really squishy, so it feels somewhat balanced. The Great Red Bear is such a weird fight for my friends and me because we either delete him or nearly get deleted ourselves. It doesn’t help that he has some powerful AoE attacks. The Divine Dancing Lion is a direct port from Elden Ring, and it’s honestly my favorite fight of the end of night bosses. His stats actually feel balanced. Knight Artorias is cool, but holy crap does he hit hard and have ridiculous health. He’s definitely an upgrade from his original Dark Souls version.
As you’ve likely noticed, a big critique I have of the bosses added by the DLC is that generally speaking, they just have way too much health. Sometimes damage might be an issue, but when compared to bosses in base Nightreign, the health pools just don’t feel comparable. Fights sometimes become such slogs because the boss just will not die.
The Forsaken Hollows introduces a new shifting earth event, but that’s doing it a disservice; it’s basically a new map. The Great Hollow is a map of all time. There is a lot to do here. There are two massive castles filled with high-tier enemies and good drops. There are two boss rush towers with decent rewards (that are also locked behind, you guessed it, three obscenely tanky fights). There’s a unique mechanic and hidden power where areas halve your health until you break crystals and claim the region’s power. The map is also very vertical, which can be utterly infuriating to navigate. In my opinion, the single most difficult part of Nightreign is learning to navigate the map and properly route. The Great Hollow is very challenging to effectively route because traversal, especially between levels, takes a very long time. I really want to like the Great Hollow, but every time I play on it I just get aggravated and find myself wanting the base map. The Great Hollow also sucks for casters because Rise locations are few and far between. Oh and there are no Evergaols, which can mess up some strategies and run planning if you’re banking on those. The base map receives a makeover with revamped areas and new DLC enemies. The new main inclusions are swampy castles and village settlements. Village settlements can be really annoying to navigate at first, but they aren’t the worst once you get the hang of it. Plus they give you the ability to reroll ashes of war on a given weapon, which is awesome. I actually like the swampy castles a lot; they’re pretty simple. Finally, there are three new raid events that can disrupt your runs: Gladius, Caligo, and Balancers. Gladius raid is more of an inconvenience than anything else. Three Gladius bosses spawn across the map and your screen turns orange and you take constant tick damage. The reward for clearing the raid used to be a mediocre stamina buff, but it has since been improved. My biggest issue with the Gladius raid is that the bosses rarely spawn near each other, so you have to run across the map and waste a ton of time trying to reach all three bosses. It also spawned a disproportionate amount during Balancer expeditions. Seriously, I think I got it like two to three runs IN A ROW once. The Caligo raid is arguably worse because your vision gets completely obscured by fog and ice will fall on you from overhead, and the ice WILL kill you. At least all you need to do to clear this one is get to the middle of the event and give Caligo a good smack. The reward for this one is really nice, basically getting you a one time get out jail free invisibility card. The Balancer raid is probably my favorite. You and your teammates get teleported to a random camp/settlement location and need to defeat the boss and a Balancer at the end of it. All the while, enemies are fighting each other. Your flasks are limited, but it’s not too bad. It rewards a pretty generous amount of runes, and gives you an ability where if you’re downed, there’s a chance you automatically get revived. It’s incredibly strong, and really the only raid I welcome whenever it appears.
Overall, I do think that The Forsaken Hollows is a good DLC. For a mere $15, you get A LOT of content. Do I think that some of it is overtuned? Yeah a little. Is it still fun? I mean, I enjoyed playing through it with my friends. If you like Nightreign, I think that you’ll like the DLC. It’s definitely worth checking out, and for such a modest price, I know that I got my money’s worth.
Broad Scope Entertainment 