Late To The Party: Remnant 2

 All of my free videogaming time has gone into Remnant 2, since it was released in July. With the new DLC being announced yesterday, now is as good a time to talk about the game.

The opening statement alone should tell you something about how much they improved on the first game. It's primary gameplay loop perfectly in tact, the team at Gunfire Games focused on making a better experience overall, from the options to build your characters in interesting ways, to providing challenging but not severely punishing bosses and arenas to fight in...mostly.

The game is so packed with interesting secrets, it feels like I find something every week-which since I've logged in over 200 hours, is impressive. The game still feels not just worth playing, but challenging enough to be enjoyable. 

I'm given so many options and with some forethought and practice, nearly any kind of build I want to make is worthwhile. It is just fun to play. 

There are some drawbacks: the so many options part means that sometimes, the game's organization can be really challenging. There are over 100 different rings you can pick and while having them in alphabetical order is helpful, breaking them down into further categories would be nice. Unfortunately, there are so many options that I'm not sure that's feasible!

Armor is effectively cosmetic in this game and I'm hard pressed to decide if that's a great decision or merely an OK one. Fashion is fun to run on your characters, and having one less thing to think about for players is nice. We're already so focused on spec-ing out our characters for maximum value, adding defense doesn't really add much.

Still, it would feel nice to have a little more say in the character than weigh class & looks.

And, like many games of its type: Remnant 2 requires players to have access to the internet to really get the most out of it. There are so many secrets (as noted above) that there is just no way to find all or even most of them without guidance. 

Though I feel that's less of a negative and just a state of the industry right now. Guidebooks have always been useful but they weren't always necessary. Games like Remnant 2 make them required-if you're like me and want to dig into all that.

On the other hand, the game is also content to let you play through it as often as you like, and let you miss or acquire or ignore whatever you want. In the end, I think that's better design. 

So I like it. I like it a lot.