Remnant II
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
In many ways the final boss fight of Remnant 2 is an encapsulation of the entire experience. It's a fresh experience that is as punishing as it is bewildering. At face value it's a two-phase, mixed dimension boss battle, but it goes beyond that in ways I've not experienced in another game to date. That last thought is pervasive throughout the experience.
Up To The Challenge
While its predecessor has adequately been described as "Dark Souls with guns," Remnant 2 uses the presumption of this descriptor to blow expectations off the map. While there are elements that feel inspired by FromSoftware's trademark series, that is only one item in this recipe. One of the most notable pieces is the procedurally generated ethos that enhances all the other elements. A single run through of the campaign here means you'll miss some bosses, some areas, some secrets, simply because your seed doesn't have them. With this in mind, the game begs you to not only wring out those locations for all that they're worth, but also to experience the game's alternate mode.
The inclusion of an Adventure Mode, which allows you to re-roll worlds, allows you to focus on learning the broad strokes of Remnant 2's mechanics and world in your first play through, and also means you won't have to jump through the same story again to experience the differences. As someone who rarely, if ever, plays through a story experience more than once, this was a standout decision for me. Then there's the secrets themselves. Forgive me if I sound redundant: there's ideas here I've never seen or even thought about before.
The Meat of the Experience
While I have to force myself to keep many of the finer details under wraps, the secrets, puzzles, and variations aren't what the typical player is likely to appreciate; gameplay is still king. There's excellence here in that regard, too. Even though third-person shooters have somewhat fallen out of favour, this is a new torch-bearer and gold standard for them moving forward. The shooting is tight and satisfying, the movement snappy and effective, and the abilities unique in their own right and synergistic in a co-op setting. Above everything else it has to offer, Remnant 2 feels great to play.
The additional mechanics on top of the satisfying combat help it punch even further above its weight. You can't equip a sub class, you can equip a second class. You're not just getting weapons with different stats, you're getting weapons that encourage vastly different play styles. Even your healing item can be changed out to provide different types of buffs. Even though I spent roughly 25 hours in my first play through, I was still making discoveries that made me audibly gasp in that final hour, and I'll probably find more still.
Chef's Kiss
No game is perfect, but I feel Remnant 2 gets just about as close as anything. It does so by coming in with low expectations, throwing every unique idea the team had into the mix, and mixing the elements that work from existing games and genres together like only The Bear could. Destiny, Bloodborne, Gears of War, just to name a few, all appear to be clear inspirations.
If I were to try to make a succinct and salient point: Remnant 2 feels like a single-player (or co-op) version of a live-service game without a single microtransaction. The feelings of making new discoveries, the stories that are actually shared between friends about where one got that gun or piece of armour, the gameplay loop that feels like getting an infinite number of pulls at a slot machine. It’s not actually perfect, a few persistent bugs dragged an otherwise extremely polished and graphically impressive game down, but I find few other impactful faults. I imagine the story, especially against some contemporaries, won't be for everyone, but as a package it's going to be hard to top what Remnant 2 does well. In a word: satisfaction. When it all comes together, when a challenge is overcome, when a genuinely great puzzle is solved, when you do nothing more than fire your gun. With the addition of the first, of presumably at least a few, DLC there's potential for Remnant 2 to get even better, but as an existing, standalone, base package, it already stands extremely tall.
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9.8
fun score
Pros
Exceptionally tight combat and gameplay loop combined with unique, engaging worlds, discoveries, and enemies.
Cons
A few nagging bugs persist even months after release, and the story is by far the worst part of the package.