Every once in a while I play a game and get an unholy obsession over playing it exclusively on Hardcore/Ironman mode if available. Here that was likely triggered by the promise of exclusive account-bound gear for playing that way.
What I'm saying is, I could have beat this game a year and some change ago, but instead my friend and I spent 75+ hours on it — 55 hours over the "How Long To Beat" for main+extras.
We had to take several breaks, but I can't say I regret it. Remnant: From the Ashes was, in my opinion, a very charming mix of polished Third Person Shooting, Souls-lite progression systems, and some adventure gamey secrets to uncover.
Gameplay is probably the biggest draw of the game and so where I'll start. My first impression of the game was that it was a cross of Gears of War and Dark Souls, but frankly it just plays way smoother than Gears ever has (not to slight Gears — its weighty gameplay has its own charm). Which lends well to its more action-RPG like structure. Fights are decided quickly, enemies are satisfying to take down, and doing so doesn't disrupt the flow of exploration significantly — if you're a decent shot.
I wouldn't call this a massively difficult game, especially on the base setting, but it can certainly punish carelessness and you have to pay attention in many of the set piece encounters. Having looked at other reviews, I get the sense this game is a bit notorious for its boss battles. Particularly, many of them include waves of grunt enemies to disrupt you. It can be a bit of a learning curve, but even when playing solo I didn't find it to be as aggregious as people make it out to be.
I do agree that this game is better in co-op, however. I wouldn't change my score looking at it entirely on the singleplayer experience, but the promotional art makes it pretty clear the developers likely did switch to seeing this as a co-op first game at some point. Namely because, while it makes some things easier, co-op doesn't break the balance in the way it tends to in a game like Dark Souls.
And the reward for those challenges is an impressive variety of weapons, gear, and spell-like "mods" that give you plenty of options to adjust your playstyle and do some light theory crafting for builds. It takes a non-randomized approach to loot, though the exact locations of where to find them are shuffled about, which I find to be a much better option for a more skill-driven shooter than the Diablo style systems that seem to dominate the market. All items are potentially relevant through the whole game, it's just a question of what you like and what you can upgrade.
I do think there's some polish that could be put into the scaling systems, but the issues aren't worth more words than this.
The variety extends to the enemies in the game as well. Even if I had beat the game in that first 20 hours with it, I likely would not have seen half the enemies in the game. Especially with the DLC adding to the pool of potential encounters, we were 70 hours in and still managed to find bosses or even standard enemies we hadn't seen. Sometimes even in areas we had been to dozens of times. There are very few "pallete swap" enemies as well, or so it felt. Almost every one has a unique combination of model, animations, battle tactics, and weakspot locations. The differences didn't often necessitate a drastic change in playstyle, but it was still enough that they all felt like they had their unique identities as targets. As you replay areas through the different modes and regenerated map layouts, I built up different tactical optimizations for each.
Again, generally subtle playstyle differences, but appreciable nonetheless.
On the downside, I'm not a huge fan of the environments presented. Not that they aren't well put together, but its a pretty bleak set until the last one and the DLC environment, with only 5 total. Now, that number should be compared to the Diablos of the world, as that's clearly the kind of act structure they were going for. So that's not an objective problem, its just that each area that misses for a particular person is 20% of the locations.
Graphically, this was one of the better looking UE4 games of its time. It didn't go for photorealism and instead opted for a stylized look that's very consistent in quality and easy on the eyes. Performance is easy enough to tweak to what your system can handle as well, assuming your system can handle UE4 at all (which should be most of you these days). Some areas do dip worse than they need to (the Swamp, Corsus, of course).
Narrative was, frankly, the last thing I really paid attention to in the game. The world presented does seem interesting... but I was playing it mostly co-op and so what little dialogue sections there were, were often glossed over. I'll say that what detail is there in the implicit storytelling and the snippets you do pick up when monkeying around are enough to give it that extra bit of memorability.
To put a recommendation to it, this game is for anyone who already knows they like third person shooters. Espcially ones with more emphasis on movement than cover. If you're looking for an action-RPG or souls-lite adventure game experience on top, all the better. If you don't like shooters, or aren't particularly good at them yet, you may want to hold off. It's not nearly the hardest out there, but it's certainly not introductory in design, unless you got a good pal or two who can help out, or just super pumped by the art style.
What I'm saying is, I could have beat this game a year and some change ago, but instead my friend and I spent 75+ hours on it — 55 hours over the "How Long To Beat" for main+extras.
We had to take several breaks, but I can't say I regret it. Remnant: From the Ashes was, in my opinion, a very charming mix of polished Third Person Shooting, Souls-lite progression systems, and some adventure gamey secrets to uncover.
Gameplay is probably the biggest draw of the game and so where I'll start. My first impression of the game was that it was a cross of Gears of War and Dark Souls, but frankly it just plays way smoother than Gears ever has (not to slight Gears — its weighty gameplay has its own charm). Which lends well to its more action-RPG like structure. Fights are decided quickly, enemies are satisfying to take down, and doing so doesn't disrupt the flow of exploration significantly — if you're a decent shot.
I wouldn't call this a massively difficult game, especially on the base setting, but it can certainly punish carelessness and you have to pay attention in many of the set piece encounters. Having looked at other reviews, I get the sense this game is a bit notorious for its boss battles. Particularly, many of them include waves of grunt enemies to disrupt you. It can be a bit of a learning curve, but even when playing solo I didn't find it to be as aggregious as people make it out to be.
I do agree that this game is better in co-op, however. I wouldn't change my score looking at it entirely on the singleplayer experience, but the promotional art makes it pretty clear the developers likely did switch to seeing this as a co-op first game at some point. Namely because, while it makes some things easier, co-op doesn't break the balance in the way it tends to in a game like Dark Souls.
And the reward for those challenges is an impressive variety of weapons, gear, and spell-like "mods" that give you plenty of options to adjust your playstyle and do some light theory crafting for builds. It takes a non-randomized approach to loot, though the exact locations of where to find them are shuffled about, which I find to be a much better option for a more skill-driven shooter than the Diablo style systems that seem to dominate the market. All items are potentially relevant through the whole game, it's just a question of what you like and what you can upgrade.
I do think there's some polish that could be put into the scaling systems, but the issues aren't worth more words than this.
The variety extends to the enemies in the game as well. Even if I had beat the game in that first 20 hours with it, I likely would not have seen half the enemies in the game. Especially with the DLC adding to the pool of potential encounters, we were 70 hours in and still managed to find bosses or even standard enemies we hadn't seen. Sometimes even in areas we had been to dozens of times. There are very few "pallete swap" enemies as well, or so it felt. Almost every one has a unique combination of model, animations, battle tactics, and weakspot locations. The differences didn't often necessitate a drastic change in playstyle, but it was still enough that they all felt like they had their unique identities as targets. As you replay areas through the different modes and regenerated map layouts, I built up different tactical optimizations for each.
Again, generally subtle playstyle differences, but appreciable nonetheless.
On the downside, I'm not a huge fan of the environments presented. Not that they aren't well put together, but its a pretty bleak set until the last one and the DLC environment, with only 5 total. Now, that number should be compared to the Diablos of the world, as that's clearly the kind of act structure they were going for. So that's not an objective problem, its just that each area that misses for a particular person is 20% of the locations.
Graphically, this was one of the better looking UE4 games of its time. It didn't go for photorealism and instead opted for a stylized look that's very consistent in quality and easy on the eyes. Performance is easy enough to tweak to what your system can handle as well, assuming your system can handle UE4 at all (which should be most of you these days). Some areas do dip worse than they need to (the Swamp, Corsus, of course).
Narrative was, frankly, the last thing I really paid attention to in the game. The world presented does seem interesting... but I was playing it mostly co-op and so what little dialogue sections there were, were often glossed over. I'll say that what detail is there in the implicit storytelling and the snippets you do pick up when monkeying around are enough to give it that extra bit of memorability.
To put a recommendation to it, this game is for anyone who already knows they like third person shooters. Espcially ones with more emphasis on movement than cover. If you're looking for an action-RPG or souls-lite adventure game experience on top, all the better. If you don't like shooters, or aren't particularly good at them yet, you may want to hold off. It's not nearly the hardest out there, but it's certainly not introductory in design, unless you got a good pal or two who can help out, or just super pumped by the art style.