Remnant II is a third person action shooter. A lot of people call this game a souls-like but I wouldn't make that comparison. Sure, it borrows ideas from the genre with the general level structure and some mechanics like limited heals and bonfires, but the combat is nothing alike and the exploration isn't rich enough. I also didn't experience the same learning curve you get in every souls game, it was fun but I ended the game no wiser nor more skilled than I started.
With that out of the way, the core gameplay was very enjoyable for me. The shooting feels good and each level has a cool new environment to keep things fresh. On paper, there is good variety here but after playing for a while you notice that each area plays out very similarly. The game throws some new ideas around every now and then but primarily you have the same shooting gameplay vs the same enemies. Even totally different levels with unique environments and enemies ultimately play out the same, feeling like reskins of the same generic template.
Despite this repetitive grind, I found the game mostly engaging and even addicting at times. It's difficult for me to find a good comparison to this game, the closest I can think of is maybe Borderlands or Left 4 Dead but I never committed to those because shooting the enemies wasn't intrinsically fun, Remnant II has no such problem.
While I did enjoy the game a lot when everything was going well, I noticed a lot of problems surfaced when dealing with more difficult or annoying encounters. You have a dodge roll which is nice but the heal animation is incredibly slow and gets cancelled by any enemy attack, which sucks when you are surrounded by tiny enemies that continually flinch you. This gets exponentially worse with boss fights, which almost always have a bunch of adds running around. Again, some boss fights have surprisingly cool ideas or designs but the actual gameplay experience is terrible and I don't think I enjoyed any of them. The game just feels fundamentally flawed in situations like this because you have to zoom in to shoot at the boss which lowers you field of view but that massively reduces your awareness when dealing with the adds.
Pretty much every death in this game just felt bad. It never felt like I was punished for my mistakes or taught a lesson but rather I just got unlucky or the game was being bullshit, it's incredibly frustrating. Fortunately most boss fights weren't too hard once you know how they work so I could push through them to get to the main exploration content. Sadly the last couple of levels became almost as tedious as the boss sections so I ended up just being carried in coop through the final area because I wanted it to end.
With that out of the way, the core gameplay was very enjoyable for me. The shooting feels good and each level has a cool new environment to keep things fresh. On paper, there is good variety here but after playing for a while you notice that each area plays out very similarly. The game throws some new ideas around every now and then but primarily you have the same shooting gameplay vs the same enemies. Even totally different levels with unique environments and enemies ultimately play out the same, feeling like reskins of the same generic template.
Despite this repetitive grind, I found the game mostly engaging and even addicting at times. It's difficult for me to find a good comparison to this game, the closest I can think of is maybe Borderlands or Left 4 Dead but I never committed to those because shooting the enemies wasn't intrinsically fun, Remnant II has no such problem.
While I did enjoy the game a lot when everything was going well, I noticed a lot of problems surfaced when dealing with more difficult or annoying encounters. You have a dodge roll which is nice but the heal animation is incredibly slow and gets cancelled by any enemy attack, which sucks when you are surrounded by tiny enemies that continually flinch you. This gets exponentially worse with boss fights, which almost always have a bunch of adds running around. Again, some boss fights have surprisingly cool ideas or designs but the actual gameplay experience is terrible and I don't think I enjoyed any of them. The game just feels fundamentally flawed in situations like this because you have to zoom in to shoot at the boss which lowers you field of view but that massively reduces your awareness when dealing with the adds.
Pretty much every death in this game just felt bad. It never felt like I was punished for my mistakes or taught a lesson but rather I just got unlucky or the game was being bullshit, it's incredibly frustrating. Fortunately most boss fights weren't too hard once you know how they work so I could push through them to get to the main exploration content. Sadly the last couple of levels became almost as tedious as the boss sections so I ended up just being carried in coop through the final area because I wanted it to end.