Elden Ring reveals the Confessor and Samurai classes

Two Elden Ring classes, the confessor and the samurai.
(Image credit: Fromsoft)

In the runup to the game's release, FromSoftware is gradually revealing Elden Ring's playable classes: Today we got two more, the awesome-looking Confessor and a facemasked Samurai. 

The Confessor is "a church spy adept at covert operations. Equally adept with a sword as they are with their incantations." So, that's sounding like a hybrid dex / magic class, which is a fairly classic Souls build. It's also, interestingly enough, a theme in the lore: Dark Souls fans will recall that Vinheim boasted some especially stealthy magic-wielders.

The Samurai, on the other hand, is "a capable fighter from the distant Land of Reeds. Handy with katana and longbows." Both of those weapons typically scale with dexterity in the Souls series, so that's what you'll be wanting to start as for a pure dex build (which is always a fantastic choice). 

We've previously seen the Bandit and the Astrologer classes, as well as the weird-ass Prisoner, and while it's easy enough to say that class X means build Y, that's not really how things tend to shake out in these games. The RPG side of the Souls games is very much bound-up in how you choose to develop your character over time, and it's perfectly possible (though some would argue not optimal) to start with a class that is theoretically a magic-wielder and build them into a club-swinging brute.

This brings the total number of Elden Ring classes revealed so far to ten: The five that were available in the network test—Warrior, Enchanted Knight, Prophet, Champion, and Bloody Wolf—plus the Prisoner, Bandit, Astrologer, Confessor and Samurai. There may be more to come but don't expect a boatload: The Dark Souls games had 10 classes and Bloodborne had nine. We'll know for sure when the game launches on 25 February.

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Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."