Austin strongly recommends: Remnant 2 (Review)

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and see what all the fuss was about so I've played about 30 hours of Remnant 2 now completed the campaign at about hour 25 and then went back and did some other stuff played mostly co-op with a friend of mine but also played around solo for a bit I'll try to be as spoiler free as possible here as far as Story Goes I won't show any cut scenes from the main story outside of the prologue I'll only Show gameplay from three of the world and I also won't be showing off any of the major bosses just a few mini bosses now I was going into this expecting just a fun little double a co-op ROM a standard third person shooter gunning down room after room of enemies through procedurally generated corridors with a little flourish of that souls-like difficulty what I did not see coming was a game with a diverse range of Worlds to explore with jaw-dropping visuals rivaling the best this industry has to offer these lands filled to the brim with an abundance of character interactions secrets and puzzles that handsomely reward your curiosity this is a game with visceral combat and fantastic boss encounters propped up by some seriously flexible build craft finally tying all this together is a very compelling gameplay loop as a result of the game's rather novel procedural systems that enhance replayability tenfold it's not a Flawless game there's still a few blemishes when it comes to the main story and item economy for example but overall I can confidently say that Remnant 2 is one of the best games I've played this year in a year already chock full of excellent titles I seriously can't stop thinking about this game and even though I've completed the campaign even when this review is out the door I cannot wait to re-roll and do it all over again because God damn this game [ __ ] slaps right now so your Journey Begins here in character creation your customization options here are limited but for what it's worth I think the character models actually look quite good a huge upgrade over the first game that's for sure you do get to pick a voice as your character does indeed talk so make sure to pick a voice you like because you're going to hear it a lot throughout both gameplay and cut scenes next you'll pick a difficulty yes this game has difficulties despite being a souls-like and after that you're straight into the game we load in and I open the settings menu nothing fancy but it's sufficient I turned motion blur off the implementation of motion blur here isn't that bad to be fair but this is just my personal preference the game honestly ran great for me on an RTX 3080 with an i7 at Max settings dssr enabled the game never dropped below 60 or if it did very rarely I did see other reviewers reporting performance issues though and digital foundries video does show consoles struggling with that as well so I highly encourage you check out other videos on that matter if that's a concern for you as I just don't have the equipment to do much further testing jumping into the story now and I'm sure you're asking the question the game has a two in the title do I need to have played Remnant 1 to understand what's going on here in Remnant 2. honestly no not at all uh the plot is pretty straightforward an alien species known as the root has infected the world it's corruption killing most of the population you and your friend are wondering about the Wasteland in search of a safe haven you run into some survivors who take you to that safe haven known as Ward 13 and this place houses a big red Crystal called the world Stone the world stone is a gateway to well you know other worlds and you must use it to find the source of the root ending it once and for all so to be honest I found the overarching plot regarding the root was nothing to write home about there are only a couple characters you'll interact with here none of them you'll find yourself particularly invested in don't go into this expecting some kind of you know Triple A Story with you know crazy twists or interesting character moments that core story is basically like half a dozen cut scenes all up and I found the ending quite lackluster as well leaving a lot of questions left unanswered but thankfully that's not the only story going on here while there is that Central golden path this game has an interesting campaign structure where the order in which you visit these worlds and your journey within them is procedurally generated I'll avoid sharing too many details because I think it's worth going in totally blind but here you'll encounter all Mana of peculiar characters that'll really immerse you in the drama and Mysteries of these lands it's the kind of Storytelling you're used to from the souls-like genre these otherworldly characters provide some light Exposition but the environments and hidden journals deliver the bulk of the World building all while leaving just enough loose threads to spark your Intrigue these interactions also serve a gameplay purpose because how your journey unfolds here is also largely determined by you the player this is when I knew this game was going to be something special when you talk to these characters you're often given many dialogue options and I found myself absolutely agonizing over these just saying the wrong thing to a character could result in your encounter suddenly becoming a boss fight say the right thing to them and they may offer you a new weapon as thanks for your respect the thing is neither of these outcomes feels like the correct option both are just as compelling both end up being rewarding one way or another Elden ring had similar systems regarding character interactions and quest lines but they're far less obtuse here they feel more intuitive Quest items clearly State their significance and you even have a quest log of sorts so while the main narrative left a lot to be desired I really enjoyed the stories of these worlds especially given how much player agency is involved the best part is I haven't even seen it all uh there's only like one world where I've played through both campaigns but even on that world there's quite a number of bosses encounters and puzzles that I've seen from other people's playthroughs that I never came across see a core part of the gameplay Loop is that when you complete a World's main campaign you'll unlock it in adventure mode which is separate from your ongoing campaign this allows you to select a world and difficulty then jump back in and ReDiscover The Zone with a different campaign and layout you can re-roll this world as many times as you like until you get the desired result there's just a staggering amount of replay value here and I simply cannot wait to explore those alternate outcomes [Music] all right so I just have one question for the good Folks at gunfire games what are you feeding your artists this game is stunning unless I'm mistaken I believe this is the first game aside from fortnite to be running on Unreal Engine 5. and you can really tell the artists over at gunfire have taken full advantage of that ue5's Flagship nanite Tech allows meshes to be extremely high fidelity without tanking performance details that would otherwise be faked through textures and other methods are instead just part of the geometry it's why all these bricks and rubble and rock can look so hyper realistic and high detail even up close ground clutter is plentiful vegetation is dense the lighting and the visual diversity of environments here is just spectacular light shafts spill in from above in crumbled temples foliage at night lit up by the roots bioluminescence Scarlet Red overgrowth atop floating Islands illuminated by a blood Moon's Rays these examples were from just one world Believe It or Not each of the other worlds have just as many distinct biomes and locations keeping things fresh the whole way through one of them made me feel like I was transported into a Resident Evil game a decrepit village with pitchfork wielding citizens complete with chainsaw men and a spooky house and let me tell you I'm glad I played this game Co-op because I would have noped out of the game then and there but yeah every new Zone I discovered I had to like take a moment to soak it all in mouth a gape my experience can be summarized by the word whoa every Vista Boss Arena building interior Justin whoa I don't know if this video is doing it justice but I was genuinely taken aback by how good these environments look absolutely standing Toe to Toe with recent AAA outings like God of War Ragnarok and Horizon forbidden West I think because of its procedural nature you don't get as many of those iconic awe-inspiring landmarks as you see in those titles I mentioned but at least in terms of raw graphical Fidelity Remnant 2 is punching well above its weight you may think that the procedurally generated layouts would Tire after a while once you've seen the same tile set repeated over and over this was definitely a concern of mine early on as we started in a place called narud which was a very open Zone that required a lot of aimless backtracking through similar looking areas to find the thing we needed to progress that was one specific case though the other worlds are more linear easier to navigate and I found that by the time that location had overstayed its welcome you're then shuttled into a whole new Zone those handcrafted sections do still exist though it's not just procedurally generated shooting galleries the general layout of the levels and dungeons are randomized but between those are some very well crafted combat Arenas set-piece moments and labyrinths that often house some sort of puzzle and I mean let's talk about the puzzles because I can safely say I was not walking into this game expecting to engage my brain as much as I did don't worry I won't spoil the solutions to any of these I'll try to be very vague but yeah these are not the typical run-of-the-mill third person action adventure puzzles you know the ones you know the pull this lever here okay cool the great is moving up now shoot the thing it exposes okay door is open although grab this ball from here and throw it at the thing back there wow puzzle solved look I like Ragnarok and Jedi Survivor as much as the next guy but I thought these puzzles were kinda lame not gonna lie but here the puzzles have this very escape room style of design and if you've done an escape room before you'll know exactly what I mean you'll come upon things in the world that require you to insert an object or input a code or move some dials you can clearly see the problem you might think that you can so solve it then and there through some trial and error but you'll likely need to move on for now holding this puzzle in the back of your mind as you Traverse the level the solution is simple but you'll need to explore for it this game strongly encourages you to wander off the beaten path search every nook peek over every ledge but you know the opposite can happen too where you might just pick up some innocuous objects like a coin a gear or maybe you see a sequence of symbols you don't know what these things mean yet but you'll be glad that you found them when you happen upon a lock and you've already got the key the reward is also always worth it I can't stress this enough like it's not some consolation prize like a bit of currency awesome upgrade materials it's often actually impactful pieces of gear I feel like outside of some exceptions modern video games have just like rotten my brain like if there's no way marker or obvious ping on the radar or you can't see a big red chest with your X-ray vision I just assumed assume there's nothing there worth searching for but on multiple occasions here we'd solve a puzzle and I think to myself wow I cannot believe the developers did that I noticed so many puzzles that required you to think outside the box and look at the environment like actually really look I know I'm being vague to avoid ruining anything but I just really admired the confidence with which gunfire games implemented these puzzles they trust the player's critical thinking will prevail that they don't need to hold your hand and you're always appropriately rewarded for your curiosity if you make that extra effort some may find these puzzles too contrived and I kind of get that but the good news is that a lot of them are totally optional content I personally found them intriguing enough to chase after they were very well paced and honestly they became one of the core reasons for my enjoyment of this game those light bulb moments were addicting and while gunfire games are not the first to do this sort of thing it was certainly a nice surprise Discovery was clearly one of the core design pillars upon which this game was built and like the character interactions it doesn't just deliver on that promise in your first playthrough it holds up even on subsequent runs because the procedural generation systems here ensure that sense of Discovery is reignited with every re-roll so combat and Gunplay in Remnant 2 feels meaty for lack of a better word a result of great sound design in combination with how enemies Flinch and recoil to your shots you feel the weight of a body shot as it sends the enemy flying onto their ass shooting legs or kneecaps can cause them to trip a devastating shotgun to the face might blow off their entire upper torso I didn't experiment a lot with melee here but the option is there so long as you're prepared to put yourself In Harm's Way though I personally found it didn't quite stagger enemies enough to be effective unless you're really built into it something that took a little getting used to was the Dodge roll uh it felt sluggish at first the Dodge is slower you cover less ground the invincibility window is tighter but that is by Design though this game is viewed as a Souls like your Panic rolling will not work here you'll need to really study the attack patterns of these enemies learn to roll to the beat of each swing as doing otherwise will punish you ideally in that way CQC becomes a sort of dance one that felt very satisfying when you successfully pull it off however there is the option later on to be able to upgrade things like your evade distance if you need that sort of Safety Net One minor gripe I have is the Sprint felt a little awkward to use mid combat it feels like it doesn't move fast enough or that the animation doesn't differ enough from the default run but I found it hard to tell whether or not I was actually sprinting outside of looking down at the stamina bar I couldn't see any option in the settings to set Sprint as a hold key instead of a toggle either there are often boss mechanics that are pulling you in or tracking your position and I just found those mechanics in particular a tad clumsy to contend with due to the Sprint being a little weird the boss fights overall though are Stella again I won't show any of the major bosses gameplay on screen will just be some of the mini bosses you might encounter they're multi-phased fights that take place in these custom built Arenas with epic music the dramatic to the zone that they reside in some of these Arenas shift from underneath you some have entire stage transitions there are some boss fights in particular with very creative mechanics one involving cubes you'll see what I mean when you get there I think some mechanics are a little difficult to keep track of when they're being telegraphed off screen but that happened very rarely and just required a bit more spatial awareness during those encounters enemy variety is decent enough for each faction you have the standard melee ranged flying units as well as a couple major brute type enemies with special attacks and three hit combos to say that they're just re-skinned variants would be reductive though as each of the factions has their own flavor in how they engage or where their crit spots are located some use Shields to block upfront damage some burrow underground others teleport you won't encounter any crazy mechanical depth here with these enemies aside from them sort of ducking and weaving your shots but there's enough diversity here to keep fights interest thing right the way through but for that you're gonna need a weapon you have three slots a primary a secondary and a melee weapon there's a vast Arsenal at your disposal this includes old reliables like shotguns rifles pistols and machine guns note this isn't a Luda shooter you aren't gonna be picking up new weapons or pieces of armor that's the same thing but with higher stats you just upgrade the ones that you like to increase their damage you can attach mods to these guns which give them unique abilities that can be fired off once you've accumulated enough mod power through Landing shots these range from you know a healing bomb to Flaming tornadoes to concentrated laser beams there's also more like outlandish weapons with special baked in mods these often come from bosses or secret Areas even if these weapons didn't fit into my build I was excited to pick these up and give them a spin just because they all had super unique functionality speaking of builds there are not just mods good Lord no there are mutations which can be added to all weapons for further enhancements things like aiming down sights to stack up a damage buff or giving this weapon a chance to refund ammo these can be leveled up and provide another special bonus at max level but that's just your weapons you've also got amulets and rings and this is where all the real BuildCraft happens amulets are basically your build defining item and then rings are where you really put it all together you've got four slots for them these contain all sorts of special bonuses you've got your Relic which is your healing item and there's many variations of these that you can collect with distinct effects and you can also slot in these Relic fragments for minor stat boosts there's also trait cards which allow you to allocate points into Health mod power generation ability generation damage reduction all sorts of things you start with about half a dozen of these but like everything else I've mentioned you'll collect more of them in your playthroughs and the great thing is is all these slots are available from the get go you don't need to reach certain levels to unlock them or something you can begin to formulate your build right away you'll just need the components that's all before I've even mentioned classes there are four class archetypes to start with each specialized in specific roles you've got a traditional tank-like class with the Challenger A Healer with the medic your ranged assassin with the Hunter and also the Handler a sort of all-rounder class with a trusty Canine Companion very handy for solo play and if none of those classes take your fancy well good news would you believe me if I told you that there are even more classes that you can unlock don't worry I won't reveal what they are how many there are or how to get them hopefully you've been able to avoid spoilers but yeah how cool is that gunfire games have some serious balls to keep entire classes a secret just wild I feel like I've never seen a game do that before anyway on top of everything I've mentioned you'll unlock the ability to multi-class this means you can combine the passive perks of two archetypes and also select an active ability from each I built my hunter to be a complete DPS monkey stacking every crit multiplier and range damage buff Under the Sun I then combined this with the Gunslinger class for maximum ammo efficiency and increased fire rates as well as this rad ability for quick add clear my friend went through multiple builds at one time a sort of Bruiser maximizing uptime on Shields to proc damage Buffs and Ensure High sustain the next he's a full-on support using the medic class with the Handler's dog in the Healer stance and then boosting his health regen capabilities through items resulting in our health being constantly topped up all the time so yeah as you can imagine there's so many levers to pull so much item experimentation and class combination to explore I do have a couple grievances though number one there is no list in game that defines what each of these various Buffs or status effects do you can read them in your inventory screen when they're active but that doesn't help a lot when you're trying to piece all this together in the menu number two while you can swap around trinkets weapons classes and mods for free at any time traits are costly to Respec so you're more or less locked into those at the moment regardless of what your build might favor additional classes and consumables are also a little costly to pick up especially when so many items in the game are competing for your materials that said gunfire have said that they're looking into these economy issues and number three you're unlikely to have the necessary pieces for a real build early on as it mostly picks up in the later game when you've collected way more trinkets like Eldon ring your initial Journey Through This World Isn't predetermined so you're going to pick up a lot of these bits and Bobs that don't necessarily interact with each other in any meaningful way unless you look up a guide your results May Vary of course but while the Rings and amulets I was looting in the early game did provide more power through damage increases or survivability there wasn't a lot of synergy to play around with for that first 10 hours or so even now 30 hours in there's a lot of builds I'd like to try out but I just don't have the right gear don't know if what I want even exists or I haven't leveled up the other classes enough to take advantage of them there's also no Loadout system to store these builds and with how many items there are to manage here shuffling all of that around every time you want to play a new build does get tiresome despite all that though the prospect of searching for those components to perfect my builds is exciting to think about and a major incentive to dive back into the game's worlds all over again services in closing this review I'd like to touch on the difficulty discussion as I'm sure those souls-like label will immediately turn off more than a few players as mentioned at the top this game has difficulty options I played on the easiest option figured this would be the default pick for most people on their first playthrough your experience will vary of course based on what class you pick who you play with what bosses you encounter Etc but after completing the campaign with one other friend you know it didn't feel too difficult enemies hit hard but with aggro split between two players most encounters didn't pose too much of a challenge bosses were intense some we managed to kill by the skin of our teeth but they only took a few attempts at most aside from the final boss who was a total pain in the ass all this is to say that you shouldn't pass on this if you're concerned about difficulty you can play the entire game co-op with up to two other players it's all seamless no weird summoning items required if you don't have any friends picking this up then the Handler archetype was built specifically with the solo player in Mayan so this might be the way to go there overall this is just damn good video game especially if you like Souls like if you like third person shooters or if you're just seeking Refuge from the live service hellscape there are no microtransactions premium currency or battle passes anywhere in sight here it's worth jumping in on the ground floor though because gunfire have confirmed that there are three DLCs on the way and if they're anything like what they've produced here in the vanilla game we're in for a very good time indeed Remnant 2 is a Triumph on almost every level it's a full price game but worth every penny this is gunfire games's crowning achievement they should be really proud of themselves for pulling off such an excellent Sequel and I suspect it'll be up there on many game of the year lists despite 2023 already being a fantastic year for video games so with all that in mind I strongly recommend remnant 2. 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Channel: Skill Up

Views: 433,144

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, gaming news, video games, videogame reviews, videogame review, game review, reaction, ign, steam deck, remnant 2 review, remnant 2, remnant, remnant 2 gameplay, remnant 2 bugs, remnant 2 impressions, remnant II, remnant II review, coop shooters, goty 2023, remnant II gameplay, remnant II coop, remnant II ps5, remnant 2 ps5, remnant 2 xbox, remnant 2 secrets, remnant 2 guide, remnant 2 build, remnant 2 reddit

Id: IbrFg2hfkBo

Length: 27min 47sec (1667 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023