Yahoo News Remnant 2 is shaping up to be better than the original in every way
With so many Souls-like titles coming and going in the past few years, it seems almost impossible to not only stand out from the crowd, but also bring your own memorable hook to the genre — especially one with a world and lore deep enough to keep players engaged in a way FromSoftware seems to have mastered so well.
Gunfire Games, the team behind the much-loved Darksiders III, took a shot at this back in 2019 with Remnant: From the Ashes and not only delivered a world we couldn't wait to get back into, but also some unique gameplay loops that made for an addictive experience.
"Dark Souls with guns" is a phrase you've no doubt heard before when describing Remnant, and while that shorthand isn't wrong, there were so many other elements in there too. For example, some powerful and unique weapons could only be unlocked through defeating bosses in particular ways — some of which you might not even find on your playthrough as each dungeon is a procedural dice roll.
It wasn't perfect, of course. The team's first outing in the genre and world was toeing the line between an open-world and a linear experience, but it was clear the bones were there for something greater.
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Enter Remnant 2. Four years in the making, everything we'd seen before getting our hands on it looked like the team at Gunfire Games had taken lots of feedback on board and refined the concept to make something a bit darker, even more challenging and with an amplified dice-roll concept.
Gunfire Games CEO David Adams was excited to share the preview build, and while many games start off with lofty goals they don't always achieve, he believes the team have nailed what they set out to do. "We're really lucky in that. I think everything we set out to do with Remnant 2, we did it," he told Digital Spy.
After going hands-on with Remnant 2 for some hours, we're confident that not only is he right to be so pleased with the work they've done, but that Remnant 2 is shaping up to be something really special, both for new fans and old.
Visually, Remnant 2 has had a huge upgrade, not just technically but also with its colour palette. While From the Ashes had its own style that wasn't miles apart from what Darksiders had popularised, it could feel drab in places, falling into dim browns and greys. Remnant 2 is almost the complete opposite, with vibrant, warm colours filling the screen and there's so much more detail in the characters and the environments around you.
There are some major quality-of-life tweaks we've seen as well. Your stamina bar now only applies in the middle of a fight and, thankfully, your character is now able to jump across gaps, adding a much-needed layer of verticality to the world — with more avenues to search out secrets dotted around each map. Just be careful not to wander off a ledge or mistime your jump.
More importantly, combat benefits from the addition of that verticality, allowing for a lot more interesting encounters as enemies pour in from all kinds of directions and hide just out of shot.
The gunplay feels leaps and bounds better too. There's an array of weapons at your disposal and each feels suitably solid and in some cases brutal. The shotgun was a particular favourite in our playthrough, and felt crunchy with some harsh stopping power — which is handy as Remnant 2’s enemies are also cunning and much more challenging, swarming in tandem and keeping us on our toes.
As we wandered through one lush forest biome, with the remains of ancient buildings crumbling within, looking for keys to a puzzle, it was easy to turn a corner and be ambushed by an array of enemies that tested our reflexes — archers being one of the key culprits in making us see the death screen more than we'd like to admit.
Remnant 2’s bosses have been refined and amped up, with everyone we were lucky (or unlucky) to square off against giving us an interesting challenge that had our pulses racing. Our favourite from the time we had was an eldritch-looking lord whose head was a black void, casting a gaze that would send you mad over time.
Unravelling the trick to doing damage while fighting off waves of creatures and staving off madness was an exciting test of our mettle.
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Archetypes played a part in From the Ashes, essentially giving you a good jumping-off point with a unique angle for armour types, etc., but ultimately didn't alter the experience too much. Remnant 2 is looking to take this further with Archetypes playing a much more important role as you play, making the initial choice a much weightier one.
You'll still pick your starting character class such as Gunslinger and Handler, but while specific gear and weaponry is still a thing, Archetypes now have their own progression trees with unique skills and perks. Each Archetype also has its own trait which will automatically grow as you level up naturally.
Eventually, you'll be able to select dual-Archetypes, making for some fun combinations to be had, the ultimate end goal being the complete freedom to build whichever character you want that suits your playstyle. Experiment, level up and change to suit your needs.
There are plenty more ways to customise your character, from rings and amulets you can find to alter your stats to modifying the dragon heart itself to offer various advantages. There's a deep system in here, and one that would take more than this preview to do it full justice.
However, Remnant’s most unique concept, the dice roll of procedurally generated worlds around you, is still the star of the show, and for Remnant 2, this has been doubled down on — making for a truly special experience that we can't find anywhere else in the genre right now.
This is clearly something the team are immensely proud of, and rightly so. "You can 100% the game and still not have played everything, who does that, right? Replayability is a huge thing for us," David Adams said.
Everything from enemies, NPCs, side quests and more — even your starting world — will change from playthrough to playthrough, which should mean Remnant 2 has buckets of replay value baked in, and in the age of £70 games becoming the norm, it's great to see.
After our hands-on, we haven't been able to think about much else and truly can't wait to dive back in and experience the whole package next month.
Remnant 2 will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on July 25.
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