“Dark Souls but with guns” was the pitch for Remnant: From the Ashes. It basically delivered exactly that – each encounter felt challenging and the towering bosses at the end of the stage required astute use of all the character’s tools. What was more interesting than the really well put together gameplay was the proc-gen. No two playthroughs would be exactly alike and there were areas, bosses, and stories that the player would not see on their first run. On top of that choices and decisions made would alter weapons and equipment dropped.
After the prequel – a VR and then console game Chronos – I didn’t expect to see any more from this series. Not that the game wasn’t great but it felt like it was drowning in a sea of other games following Fromsoftware’s footsteps.
I’ve now played roughly a hundred hours of the game and it is great to see a worthy full bodied sequel in Remnant II and for the development team to have leaned into what made the first one so special.
A third-person shooter at its heart, Remnant II is based around an unnamed protagonist who, after a short tutorial, comes in to contact with many of the characters from the original game but with a new mystery at its central core. I’ll not say too much so as to not spoil it for those that get invested in the plot, but I will say that there are multiple perspectives to explore and the answers that player gets are deliciously muddy.
The core gameplay has remained unchanged, the player starts with a main gun, sidearm, and melee weapon, and get to choose a class (known as an archetype) that give them a special ability. Each weapon can have a mods attached to them that add another special. Healing can be done by using Dragon hearts, a limited resource that can be recharged at red crystals (that also respawn all non-boss enemies in the area). Keeping the core unsulied has allowed Remnant II to focus, instead, on all of the periphery.
There are more archetypes in the sequel, and the design has gone to great pains to make them feel more distinct. The new handler archetype gets a dog that follows them everywhere, the healer gets specific skills that can be used to revive or buff others, the gunslinger can give themselves endless bullets, and so on. The weapon customisation has been given additional depth by allowing for mutators that add extra benefits to each weapon such as aiming down sights for extended periods of time giving damage bonuses, or activating a weapon mod granting a shield. It is through this system that Remnant II has made melee builds more viable in a lot of encounters. To top this off there is now an option to add a second archetype that allows for multiple playstyles within one class. The options are a lot.
The procedurally generated nature of each adventure has been more heavily emphasised too. In From the Ashes there were side missions and bosses that would change. This is still in place in the sequel but now the order in which players tackle each biome is different, on top of the levels being different therein. For me, it made it more fun to jump into a friend’s game because it was much harder to settle into a routine.
The game looks gorgeous as well. Gloomy Bloodborne-esque streets are hazily lit by lamps, glittering palaces shine with opulence, and sad dead worlds threaten with gaseous clouds. The enemies sport the same attention as they are varied to suit their areas, stomping robots, sluggish blobs, and gaggling fae. Remnant II goes all out.
For those that found the From the Ashes too punishing, with some of the early bosses acting like brick walls to progress, challenge on Remnant II’s standard difficulty seems to have been softened. I think a lot of players will welcome this approach, for me it did end up meaning that I took less care and attention to my armour, loadout and sub-settings.
On the basic difficulty there was little need to do so, but I imagine harder difficulties will expect more diligence when customising the archetypes.
Multiplayer, so far, has been top notch with little lag, even when playing with people in Europe. Remnant II continues with allowing a team to run through the whole game, no dropping out after a boss is completed so it feels much more co-op friendly. The advanced ping system also helps when playing with randoms and there have been multiple times where I finish a run by high fiving (a supported emote) my wingman before parting ways.
I want to stress too that all this window dressing would be nothing if Remnant II didn’t also play well. Walking into an encounter and emptying an entire long gun magazine into a horde of enemies, switching to pistol to kill the stragglers, then popping an ‘evil eye’ mod to burn a tough opponent, and deliver the finishing blows with a mace feels good to do. Remnant’s gunplay was never in question but to add so many more options and still have every gun feel fun to play with (Electricity! Poison!) is a testament to the developers not resting on their laurels.
Remnant II is a bigger and better sequel in every way, there are bugs and blemishes that I hope to see adjusted. There are a couple of bosses that are annoying in their puzzle like instant death setups but it is not enough for me to shy away from telling everyone that they should be playing this game.
Conclusion
Remnant II improves on its predecessors in every way, adding depth and variety in all the places it needed to. Whether played solo or with friends it is a polished and accomplished sequel that Gunfire Games should be proud of.
Become a Patron!This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
