We've all come to understand that most Souls-like games are little more than poorly made imitations of the tried and true FromSoft formula. A game dev comes along and tries to make their own Dark Souls game and what they end up with is Lord's of the Fallen, Gilson B Pontis games. Usually when someone tries to copy Dark Souls, the most successful and best games that come out of this are games that take the Souls idea and put it into a different type of game. Games like Dead Souls, Salt and Sanctuary, Nioh, etc. They always end up being something more than just Souls rip-offs.
Remnant From Ashes was one such game that took the Souls idea and combined it with a 3rd person shooter-looter game. While Remnant 1 was very well received, I fucking hated it. It was a game that was trying to be a souls game, a rogue-like, a borderlands-em-up, all wrapped up into a package that didn't make any fucking sense to me. Top that off with being incredibly imbalanced from a gameplay perspective. The game swarms you with enemies, but forces you to deal with them with fairly low pools of ammo, and a stamina bar and burns quickly when trying to avoid 17 different attacks at once. Add to that boss design that expects you to have eyes on the back of your literally head and you have a game that is frustratingly terrible in my opinion.
But for some reason people really liked it, and here we are with a sequel that is most more of the same.
I do like Remnant 2 better than the first game but i still don't think it's a good game based upon it's sheer gameplay design. Constantly getting swarmed with enemies, very low pools of ammo, with rather low damage output, all of this makes for more of a frustrating experience that makes you feel lucky for winning rather than "getting gud".
So the main thing about the game is that it has a very sideways mindset in regards to loot. Much like Souls games, items for the most part aren't strictly better or worse than each other, only different. So your guns never feel more powerful as you get new ones and in fact your better off just leveling the guns you like as opposed to trying to find "the best" weapons. Just like using a broadsword isn't any better or worse than using a Halberd in a Souls games. They both work perfectly fine and it's about how they feel to play. So that same system works for the most part here.
What Remnant 2 does differently is that it offers a lot more gear and modification abilities. Armor sets are mostly fashion, but the main gear is jewelery which offer different build options. You get one amulet and 4 rings to wear that will provide you various effects. However the roguelike nature of the game creeps in as RNG for what items you'll find in the world. Maybe you'll find a bunch of explosive damage rings, or maybe you'll find rings that provide bonuses when you have a barrier active, or in my case I found a bunch of rings that gave me life barriers under certain conditions like taking a big hit, reloading, etc. So I was barriered out for my run.
The problem with RNG loot in an extremely difficult world is that you can get gear that offers you no help. My friend got a bunch of rings that gave him bonuses while he had a barrier active, however he had no ways to give himself a barrier which meant his rings did nothing at all. So RNG can fuck you, which is terrible game design because Remnant isn't a true rogue-like system. When you die, the run doesn't reset completely the way something like Rogue Legacy does. No this is a souls game remember so you die, you go back to a checkpoint and all the shit respawns. So if the RNG gives you useless shit, you are completely stuck with it until you eventually push past the difficulty to new areas with new items in the hopes you get something good, or you just delete your character and make a new character to refresh the run entirely.
Both Remnant games try to be a lot of different games mashed together, but the combination doesn't work full stop. There needed to be a better adjustment to these systems to compensate for all the other systems. Like the difficulty is fine, but only if the player can reliably gain power through new weapons and items. The RNG of the loot is fine if it continuously comes at the player after death. But none of that shit happens, so what you actually have is a mess of systems that all seem to fight each other rather than come together to make something enjoyable to play.
However people love this game too and I don't get it. So fuck if I know what to do with this review.
Remnant From Ashes was one such game that took the Souls idea and combined it with a 3rd person shooter-looter game. While Remnant 1 was very well received, I fucking hated it. It was a game that was trying to be a souls game, a rogue-like, a borderlands-em-up, all wrapped up into a package that didn't make any fucking sense to me. Top that off with being incredibly imbalanced from a gameplay perspective. The game swarms you with enemies, but forces you to deal with them with fairly low pools of ammo, and a stamina bar and burns quickly when trying to avoid 17 different attacks at once. Add to that boss design that expects you to have eyes on the back of your literally head and you have a game that is frustratingly terrible in my opinion.
But for some reason people really liked it, and here we are with a sequel that is most more of the same.
I do like Remnant 2 better than the first game but i still don't think it's a good game based upon it's sheer gameplay design. Constantly getting swarmed with enemies, very low pools of ammo, with rather low damage output, all of this makes for more of a frustrating experience that makes you feel lucky for winning rather than "getting gud".
So the main thing about the game is that it has a very sideways mindset in regards to loot. Much like Souls games, items for the most part aren't strictly better or worse than each other, only different. So your guns never feel more powerful as you get new ones and in fact your better off just leveling the guns you like as opposed to trying to find "the best" weapons. Just like using a broadsword isn't any better or worse than using a Halberd in a Souls games. They both work perfectly fine and it's about how they feel to play. So that same system works for the most part here.
What Remnant 2 does differently is that it offers a lot more gear and modification abilities. Armor sets are mostly fashion, but the main gear is jewelery which offer different build options. You get one amulet and 4 rings to wear that will provide you various effects. However the roguelike nature of the game creeps in as RNG for what items you'll find in the world. Maybe you'll find a bunch of explosive damage rings, or maybe you'll find rings that provide bonuses when you have a barrier active, or in my case I found a bunch of rings that gave me life barriers under certain conditions like taking a big hit, reloading, etc. So I was barriered out for my run.
The problem with RNG loot in an extremely difficult world is that you can get gear that offers you no help. My friend got a bunch of rings that gave him bonuses while he had a barrier active, however he had no ways to give himself a barrier which meant his rings did nothing at all. So RNG can fuck you, which is terrible game design because Remnant isn't a true rogue-like system. When you die, the run doesn't reset completely the way something like Rogue Legacy does. No this is a souls game remember so you die, you go back to a checkpoint and all the shit respawns. So if the RNG gives you useless shit, you are completely stuck with it until you eventually push past the difficulty to new areas with new items in the hopes you get something good, or you just delete your character and make a new character to refresh the run entirely.
Both Remnant games try to be a lot of different games mashed together, but the combination doesn't work full stop. There needed to be a better adjustment to these systems to compensate for all the other systems. Like the difficulty is fine, but only if the player can reliably gain power through new weapons and items. The RNG of the loot is fine if it continuously comes at the player after death. But none of that shit happens, so what you actually have is a mess of systems that all seem to fight each other rather than come together to make something enjoyable to play.
However people love this game too and I don't get it. So fuck if I know what to do with this review.
