A few months ago I’ve decided to finally give Remnant: From the Ashes a go and found it surprisingly good and highly enjoyable. A unique mix of a third person shooter, Diablo II-like action RPG and some Soulslike elements, it was a fun experience from start to finish, despite having plenty of budget-related compromises. Afterwards, I’ve decided to wait until its sequel will get all of the planned DLCs out before giving it a go, hoping that it will turn out to be a straight improvement over the predecessor. Sadly, that isn’t the case and while Remnant II is still an enjoyable game, for all of its improvements it also takes a few steps sideways and back.
Just like its predecessor, Remnant II plays like a third person shooter with a more “methodical” approach to combat, where mistakes are costly and you have to plan your moves carefully. You still get to travel across multiple visually different worlds, gather new gear and upgrade it, unlock new “Traits” that provide passive bonuses you can level up and gather “scrap” that falls out of enemies instead of gold of a typical aRPG. Enemies still respawn when you rest at checkpoints – a system similar to Dark Souls’ bonfires. And they also still respawn when you die, which is the only “punishment” death brings as you don’t need to “corpse run” to where you died and can even use suicide runs to your advantage. The difficulty remains relatively well balanced for the standard (lowest) setting and I’ve still had zero desire to try the harder ones, as I rarely do in action RPGs.
The biggest difference that comes with Remnant II is, perhaps, the fact that different “archetypes” (as classes are known in the series) are actually unique this time around. The first game had no real class system and the choice you’ve made at the beginning just defined your starting gear. But that’s no longer the case – each archetype now has a unique active skill and a set of other benefits, only one of which is transferrable to other classes once you upgrade the archetype to level 10. In addition, Gunfire borrowed the cool concept of double classes from Titan Quest/Grim Dawn. So as soon as you find a special item that unlocks additional archetypes, you can not just swap your main one to a new one, but instead mix them together, getting most of the benefits of both (apart from the main passive skill of the secondary archetype). This can be done at will with no restrictions, so if you do wish to focus on creating different builds, Remnant II provides far more variety than the first game. It’s not something I care about, so I just kept the first two archetypes I had on and it was enough for me.
Apart from this, you basically get the game that plays the same, just mostly better. There are minor but meaningful improvements in most of the things. The game looks considerably better. A lot of things are explained far better than they were in the original game and the DLCs feel better integrated into the main game itself this time around, rather than feeling like a weird hack. It also focuses a lot more on the story, just like the last DLC for the first game… And does it as poorly as in said DLC – the writing and storytelling here is quite bad for the most part and doesn’t do the genuinely curious world designs justice.
Speaking of the worlds, the progression through the game is also handled quite a bit differently this time around. After the introductory section you will get thrown via story events into one of the three worlds you explore in this game. And I do mean “one of the three”, as the game decides randomly which world will be your first and even more curiously, which world story you will experience. The idea here is that each of the worlds has two storylines, plus an additional one added with the DLC. The storyline dictates the big overworld (also know as “field”) maps in the world and several key dungeons you get to enter, while the rest of the entrances can lead to dungeons that are shared between all storylines of the world. On top of that, each of the dungeons and fields may or may not have quests and events on them, which is also random. And only after completing this first world and then going through a particular world that you always go through, you unlock access to the other two.
It’s an interesting idea and in concept I like it. But unfortunately, not all worlds are equally well done and not all stories feel as a good introduction to the game, even excluding the DLCs. You once again get the classic “town, jungle, desert” selection of worlds so commonly found in Diablo II-inspired titles, but only one of these is returning from the first game. The town world this time is seemingly trying to evoke a Victorian era town full of strange beasts and crazy people that is highly likely to remind people of Bloodborne, but I think a reference Gunfire Games were going for was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (that was adapted into a rather popular miniseries a decade ago). Visually and conceptually it’s a wonderful setting, but mechanically – it’s easily the worst of the worlds in the game. And if you get it first, I won’t be surprised if your first impressions of the game will be skewed appropriately.
My experience was quite bizarre as well, however, as the first world I got was the storyline of the last DLC. It has lots of verticality that’s completely absent from all other maps and feels far closer to what you’d wish to see in a static action adventure game world, rather than an action RPG, where what you want to do is go forward while killing enemies. Nonetheless, The Dark Horizon DLC is the only one I can recommend, but only after you’ve played the main game and wish to get more of it, as it has genuinely interesting field maps and its new enemies are mostly better than the ones that were there in the main game. The Awakened King DLC is not great and makes the already least interesting world even worse. And The Forgotten Kingdom is just utterly bizarre, with many additions pretending that it’s a precision platformer instead of an action RPG, or hiding one of its selling points behind standing in a random spot of the map for five minutes for absolutely no reason.
Without the DLCs, I feel, my experience with Remnant II would’ve been more enjoyable. But even so, the game has so many odd choices that keep it from being as good as it can be. I suppose, the difficulty is all in the attempt to appease fans of so many different genres, which would never work well. But I fear that the developers might take the route in the future with appeasing the groups I don’t belong to and potential sequels will simply be not for me. As it is now, however, Remnant II is a fun game that I can recommend. But not over Remnant: From the Ashes – play that one first.