This is a review of Elden Ring Nightreign’s Downloadable Content (DLC), The Forsaken Hollows. For a review of Elden Ring Nightreign (which is recommended before reading this one), check out Pixel Perfect: As Night Falls.

Since my initial review of Elden Ring Nightreign, I have been patiently waiting for its promised expansion to be revealed and released. Now, that time has come–though the product isn’t exactly what I had hoped for.

The Forsaken Hollows, as the DLC is named, is honestly an apt description of the product. The inclusion of only one new map, two new Nightlords, two returning Dark Souls bosses and two new Nightfarers isn’t exactly what I had imagined for Nightreign’s promised expansion. Honestly, those new features, though all really well done, don’t do enough to justify how hollow the DLC really feels.

The story of the DLC is centered on the appearance of a new threat to Limveld, the game’s world, known as “the Dreglord.” With the help of two new characters, the Scholar and the Undertaker, your mission is to take down the Dreglord to stop his corruption from spreading across the land. This story isn’t nearly as well told as the main game’s, but it’s sufficient for the DLC’s content and price range, which is $15. It’s clearly not what FromSoftware was focused on for the DLC.

It is very evident, though, that they put a lot of effort into the new Nightfarers. Undertaker has become an instant hit with most of the Nightreign community online. She is a hammer-wielding cleric that packs a serious punch. Her focus on the “Strength” and “Faith” stats was a very popular decision, as it fills a role that many players wanted to have from previous Souls games. She’s also incredibly powerful. Her character skills do ridiculous damage to enemies, which is always a good thing.

The other new Nightfarer, the Scholar, is a true support class, which is something the game has been missing since launch. His abilities to increase consumable strength and player damage, along with a “link” ability that makes all linked enemies take damage and all linked players regenerate health, are fantastic, and can definitely round-out a team.

The new Shifting Earth, “The Great Hollow,” is really interesting. It has an incredible atmosphere, taking place in a crystal-strewn cavern with ethereal music seemingly shimmering off of the rocks. The map takes a lot of elements from Elden Ring’s own expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, and scatters different points of interest and enemies across the map. It is really hard to traverse the map, however. It incorporates a similar verticality to Shadow of the Erdtree, which is interesting at least, until you fall so far down that you can’t find out how to get back up. To top it all off, the addition of the super-easy-to-fall-into chasms that sit right by these lower areas are just great. I just love running around with a bunch of runes, then making a wrong jump because it isn’t clear where I’m supposed to go and I lose all of it. So, overall, the new map might look and sound really nice, but it isn’t that fun to play on.

It is also weird that they didn’t include any new weapons, spells or Ashes of War from Shadow of the Erdtree, which would have definitely made the DLC much more valuable and fun to experience. In fact, most of the negative reviews I have seen and heard from players and friends are because of this.

Something I will support are the new Night bosses that were added. A bunch of them are taken from Elden Ring, while two are pulled from previous games in the Dark Souls series. One of my personal favorite bosses in Elden Ring, “Mohg, Lord of Blood,” is now a Night boss with some fun new twists that make him both challenging yet invigorating to fight.

The standouts, though, have to be the Dark Souls bosses. The Demon Twins and Demon Prince from Dark Souls III were added, which are an incredibly designed duo boss that works surprisingly well with three people. I love having to shift focus between the two Demons to effectively take them down. But I think the best of the two Dark Souls bosses has to be Knight Artorias, who was teased in the DLC’s trailer. Artorias has been revamped from his initial appearance in Dark Souls to be faster, stronger and far cooler. It doesn’t even bother me when his greatsword caves my skull in, because the dark purple aura emanating from him is so cool.

However, I think the biggest draw to the DLC for most people has to be the two new Nightlords, which are some of the best bosses in the game, one of them reaching new heights in boss design.

(Though both of these bosses are easily accessible from the start of the DLC, if you want to save the surprises that each of them have in store, I would recommend skipping this next section.)

Balancers: Weapon-Bequeathed Harmonia

When I went into the DLC, I had absolutely no idea that this boss had seven enemies in it. Leading up to its release, fans were incredibly skeptical about if FromSoftware could pull off a boss many were calling the “Ultimate Gank” (or large group of enemies that are somehow a boss).

Well, I’m glad to report that they did. The Weapon-Bequeathed Harmonia are seven white-and-gold valkyries that each wield spears of light. Despite having seven enemies in the arena, each of the valkyries are fairly passive, mostly opting to slowly walk towards you rather than perform an attack most of the time. There are also normally only one-to-two of them on each person, which spaces out the large number of enemies to naturally give each player more breathing room. It also helps that each of them have a pretty limited health pool, making defeating them much easier.

The attacks they do have are some of the coolest in the game, and that’s saying something. Pink-coated spears penetrate through the ground around them as they quickly stab at you, making dodging them feel rewarding. It also helps that the music and arena are both gorgeous. The female choir singing through the fight really brings it together.

So, overall, I really like the Weapon-Bequeathed Harmonia. They strike a good balance in pacing, attack rate and spectacle. But, they are absolutely nothing compared to the final boss of the DLC.

Dreglord: Traitorous Straghess

The Dreglord, as the characters in the game refer to it as, is the central antagonist of the DLC. For a character with so much build-up, the boss fight has to live up to fan expectations and hype.

Of course, FromSoftware knocks it out of the park with this boss. The Traitorous Straghess is the first truly four-phase boss they’ve ever made, meaning that it has four unique movesets based on its health and your progression in the fight. The Dreglord is incredibly powerful, using a large staff to smack your team while also unleashing a set of Scarlet Rot-infected powers later in the fight.

The Straghess’ rampaging and quick attack combos are so fun to dodge, especially in its second healthbar, when the fight picks up pace and damage. It is able to summon large wooden amalgamations around the arena that he can jump to and from to gain a height advantage over your team. His rot attacks are brutal, yet really fair to dodge and learn. It was horrifying to see him leap into the air and launch balls of rotten sludge at me the first time.

The spectacle of this fight is one only matched by Heolstor the Nightlord from the base game. The Straghess’ design is like a massive amalgamation of flesh and bone, its cloth-covered mass trudging through the arena with the pace of an Olympic runner. Its soundtrack sounds like a combination of a bunch of different instruments that starts out dark, but comes together into a harmonic and beautiful melody in Phase four.

Honestly, this DLC is worth the $15 just to fight this one boss. That’s how good it is.

But alas, the DLC isn’t just one boss, and it wasn’t marketed that way. For a $15 DLC, it has enough content to warrant the price, which is something that people have been concerned about. Yet the stuff that is here, while some of it is really good, others are lackluster at best.

So, overall, The Forsaken Hollows is good, but not great. It has excellent bosses, great new music, Nightfarers and a reasonable price tag, but the painful new map, lack of weapons from Shadow of the Erdtree and disappointing story keep it from being great.

With that being said, I give Elden Ring Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows seven-out-of-10 stars. If you are a fan of Nightreign, you should get it. If you aren’t, then it probably isn’t for you.