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dkirschner's Remnant II (PC)
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| [July 12, 2024 01:33:05 PM]
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Just finished. Ended up burning through, and would have been even faster if I didn't listen to so much dialogue trying to make sense of the story. (Hint: don't bother!). Remnant II is an interesting game. It's some mixture of a third-person looter shooter, Dark Souls, and a procedurally generated game. You can also play co-op, and I almost shelved it to play with a friend before deciding to solo it.
Well, not quite solo. You pick a character class to start (an "archetype"). I chose the Handler, who gets a dog companion. The dog tanks for you. It reminded me of playing a Hunter in WoW, and the game itself kind of reminded me of an MMORPG too. So, in Remnant II, really, you can ignore the story. Imagine playing a lore-heavy game. Then imagine that game attempts to tell you all of its lore at once, and that you have a ton more lore from disparate worlds to hear about every few hours as you encounter new worlds. TLDR: You're attempting to stop the bad stuff. Follow the exclamation marks. Shoot everything in your way.
You get two guns and a melee weapon, as well as four ring slots, an amulet slot, a "relic" slot, and armor slots. I literally NEVER found a piece of armor, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I also couldn't talk to the armorer in town. Like, there was never a dialogue option; he ignored me. I used the same "long gun" I got as an early reward the entire game, and then I did craft and upgrade a special small automatic pistol, which had unlimited ammo. That was super useful. By the end, it was almost as strong as the rifle, so I'd expend the rifle's ammo then switch to it until I'd collected more rifle ammo. I can imagine that the game might get frustrating later on or on harder difficulties without having an infinite ammo gun. At the very beginning, it tells you to purchase ammo from town because you'll run out. Well, I never ran out!
Shoot shoot, kill kill. It's intense fun, and boss battles were a real treat, very creative. Some of them were pretty hard, especially the final boss, who has two phases and in the second phase "glitches" in and out (keep track of what attacks he was doing before he glitched!). My favorite were the cubes in the labyrinth. There were, say, 8 cubes, several floating and several rolling on the ground. You, in the labyrinth, have to avoid (1) energy orbs and energy walls that the airborne ones shoot and (b) being crushed by the cubes on the ground. You damage them by shooting lights on some of their sides. Doing so creates craters in the cubes on the ground, which you can stand under to avoid being crushed if they try to flop on top of you. Of all the cubes I've fought in video games, these were among the best (what a weird sentence). There is also a boss that wants you to kill it but doesn't want you to kill it (and tries to convince you to kill the other part of it), a couple that attempt to trick you, and an AI that takes over a train.
Your other goal in exploring the worlds (aside from following that exclamation mark and killing the bosses) is collecting loot to use to upgrade your gear. NPCs in town will do this for you, and it provided motivation to poke around the worlds. I keep saying "the worlds." Remnant is meant to be replayed. You can, at any time, "re-roll" the world you're in. You keep all your stuff, and the world randomizes. Each world is unique, and there are secrets and special bosses in each. I never re-rolled anything (went straight through, as I said), but I imagine that some of the stuff that I didn't really see (like armor, inexplicably) takes some time traversing multiple worlds to get. A couple times, I had a choice, and if you go back through, you can make the alternate choice and get a different reward. So, players who replay worlds are rewarded not only with new layouts, different bosses, and so on, but also with all the rewards they missed in previous attempts.
You can also get a second archetype. I had no idea how to do this, and it didn't happen for me by the end of the game. I looked it up, and apparently you collect various special items, bring them to a vendor, and he unlocks new archetypes for you. I don't recall the game telling me that and am not sure I had any items to get a second one anyway. But the Handler was fun enough.
That's about it. Tons of shooting that feels good, epic boss fights, lots of running around levels to find where the next exclamation mark is, looting stuff, upgrading your character. And a convoluted story. I would ignore the story, ignore the NPCs. Treat the game as a single-player or co-op looter shooter or MMO, enjoy upgrading your things, and play with different builds. I won't revisit it, but it was definitely something a bit different, yet familiar, to spend time with.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jul 12th, 2024 at 13:37:24.
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dkirschner's Remnant II (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 11 July, 2024
GameLog closed on: Friday 12 July, 2024 |
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