Remnant 2 review – A war of attrition

I have never been more conflicted by a game than I am with Remnant 2. There are so many features of this game that are at war with each other and none of them are winning because of it. In some places, it goes too far and in others, it feels as if it is withholding something from you in a very unfair way. Progression feels impossible at times, but the solutions and how you feel after finding them are almost worth it.

For the entire time I was playing Remnant 2, I was playing with two friends of mine across each of our three worlds, with two of them being the same biome, but different puzzles. Even still, it was impressive to me how many walls we hit that felt like there was no solution within our grasp. Eventually, we would find out the answer, and that felt really cool, but it took forever in a lot of places, with one we still don’t know.

It’s a weird feeling to be so unsure about Remnant 2 as it straddles the line between genius and the fifth circle of Hell. The parts that are good are really good; however, you’ll need to be willing to put up with mental torture at some points. It is a struggle to get to better content and understand the headspace you need to be in to solve the puzzles, as they are all so different.

Go from feeling stupid to smart and back again

The narrative in Remnant 2 involves the custom player character stumbling on a settlement that acts as a live-service game hub where they can progress main story events and also upgrade their gear. Shortly afterward, players are introduced to the multiverse aspect of the game. The player character will begrudgingly teleport through a magical stone called the Labyrinth that allows them to visit a number of different worlds.

I only saw three different ones due to progression being locked by difficult puzzles, but the stark contrast in the worlds I was able to see was interesting. I have a lot of respect for how different they felt in how they were designed, with some having complicated pathways and others being fairly straightforward. The actual aesthetic and monsters in each world are so different, and make the player character stand in such stark contrast sometimes, that it was truly awesome to learn about each new world.

It’s a game where the player never knows where they’ll end up next and what will be waiting for them when they get there and that’s genuinely exciting if you can get through it.

However, progression is locked behind incredible puzzles that are not easy to figure out even when multiple people are working together. Out of the three of us that were playing together, only one of us was able to finish the first major objective of finding a character that had gotten lost early in the game, with the other two unable to progress due to a puzzle or a boss fight that scaled to be too difficult in Veteran, the second highest difficulty.

The gunplay and combat are fairly standard for this type of game, except that the guns have an exceptional feel to them, with the Xbox controller I was using feeling like it was instantly vibrating along with each bullet.

However, the same principle applies here as with the puzzles, the challenging fights you are able to overcome feel incredible. In many ways, the challenges presented in Remnant 2 feel as if they were approached with the same philosophy as the first game, which is Dark Souls with guns, but at least that game doesn’t prevent you from progressing in the story because one puzzle is unclear.

Jumping off more ledges than a cliff diver

It’s incredible what bugs you can find when you have multiple people in the same game. This often ranged from simple animation delays or repeats to character models getting pushed into surfaces and becoming stuck. In a specific boss fight involving a lot of lasers and raised platforms, my dog companion kept getting pushed underneath the map. Paired with the design of some of the boss fights, this also meant my friends and I would often fall off the side when trying to dodge attacks.

Visually, it’s a beautiful game that doesn’t seem to overheat my PC like similar titles and there were little to no visual glitches. That being said, my friends and I were often kicked from each other’s games, sometimes in the middle of boss fights. This just made everything harder and left us disheartened when we were unable to beat it. Then one person beat it alone, which makes me doubt the level scaling.

The sound design, music, and voice acting are pretty well done, admittedly, and set the tone well for the worlds we were able to go in. While one musical challenge in a forest proved impassible in our time before review, it was easy to listen to the soft sounds of the instrument as we struggled to recreate it. It’s nothing extraordinary, but it’s pretty good at setting the tone and letting you know when danger is close.

The loot is probably one of the more exciting parts of the game, with further bosses and worlds providing better item drops with more effects. There are also mods and mutators that can change your weapon while giving it a boost to certain stats. We were even more frustrated by our lack of progression when the third friend who had made it past the first big objective came to play with impressive guns and melee weapons we didn’t even dream of.

I want to like Remnant 2 and to believe that it can be redeemed, but I don’t know how you improve a game where the core philosophy seems to be trying to prove that it’s smarter than you. When you beat it on your own, it’s a great feeling, but being forced to run around the same areas in the hopes of some big revelation is ultimately a waste of valuable time.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website!