Elden Ring Nightreign once again highlights FromSoftware's biggest flaw

I can forgive game design flaws like Elden Ring Nightreign's frustrating solo experience, but I cannot excuse FromSoftware hampering its PC ports. From has relied on the modding community to fix its games on PC for over a decade now, and Nightreign is the latest entry in a long line of middling (Elden Ring) to outright bad (Dark Souls) ports from the legendary studio. What makes this specific port particularly egregious is that modding (read: adding basic PC functionality to) the multiplayer game triggers its anti-cheat system, stopping you from booting it up.

Yes, modders quickly found a way to disable Nightreign's anti-cheat, but going down this route stops you from playing with anyone using a non-modded copy. The only solution is for your friends to mod their game so that you can play together. It was hard enough to get mine to buy the game after Nat dropped our 6/10 Elden Ring Nightreign review, and now I've got to convince them to run mods too? You're killing me, From.

Fortunately, it's pretty easy to make the case for Nightreign mods when you consider they're the only way to access basic features like ultrawide monitor support and a frame rate above 60fps. How is it possible that a game released in 2025 features an arbitrary 60fps cap? The same can be said about failing to support ultrawide aspect ratios. If modders can patch in support for alternate aspect ratios within days of release, then I'm struggling to see why From can't.

High refresh rate displays are so commonplace these days that it's unusual for televisions and mobile phones not to support 120Hz or higher, let alone monitors where it's basically the norm. The fact that Elden Ring is one of the most played Steam Deck games shows how scalable it is, making this limitation even more annoying. As a result, there's a good chance that many people would benefit from the cap being lifted.

The argument we've all heard before is that the engine's physics are supposedly tied to the frame rate, so running the game beyond the self-imposed 60fps limit could cause issues. However, we know that isn't true, as every Souls game running on From's custom engine has received a mod to remove the cap. Besides a weird bug in the original Dark Souls where you'd fall through the world if you slid down a specific set of ladders, these mods have never caused any gameplay problems.

From's odd behavior dates back to its first PC port, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die, which infamously required DSFix to remove the 30fps cap and lift the internal resolution above 720p. This vital mod became so popular that it's partially responsible for creating Peter 'Durante' Thoman's PC port studio, named PH3 Games. It seemed that From had finally learned from its mistakes with the release of Armored Core 6, which raised the cap to 120fps and featured ultrawide support. But after just one release, the studio has gone back to the dark side. It's already annoying enough to have to mod a single-player game like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, so that frustration is felt tenfold in games like Nightreign that rely on connecting with other players online.

Technical issues aside, some of the mods for Nightreign improve upon the base game in ways From didn't consider. I've been playing Nightreign with my partner since it launched, and because we can't party up with random players anymore, the Seamless Co-op mod has been a godsend in allowing us to play as a duo (a feature that took From two months to add!). Not only does it allow us to access the Everdark Sovereign events at any time, as the mod doesn't rely on the official servers, but it also scales the game to account for our reduced party size, making the Nightreign bosses more forgiving.

While I appreciate everything the Nightreign modding community has done to improve the base game, they shouldn't have to step in because From struggles to put the finishing touches on its PC ports. Yes, I could live without these mods as they don't fundamentally change the game, but by having these absurd limitations, it takes away everything that makes PC gaming so appealing. It's not like we're talking about major performance issues that desperately need to be addressed; these are relatively small things that make a big difference when you add them all up.

It's been over a decade since From promised that "there will be more care put into PC development" with Dark Souls 2, and while things have inarguably improved since Dark Souls' woeful 2012 port, I'm still waiting to see the studio fully and consistently embrace the flexibility of PC gaming like I know it can.