Dark Souls with guns. Sold? No? Okay, it’s got a dog too. Still no? You know you can pet the dog... Alright, fine, I’ll do it properly. Remnant II is a shining example of what can happen when two genres mix. A perfect combination of third-person shooter and souls like dungeon crawler. It brings a medley of contrasting ingredients together to create something better than the sum of its parts. It’s the kind of game you can lose hours and hours to, so to enjoy it at its best, play it on a GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet Priority membership with extended session times.
I missed the boat on Remnant: From the Ashes. I imagine plenty of you did as well. It’s gained cult-acclaim since release, but it went a little under the radar back then. The same cannot be said for Remnant II. While its predecessor was a diamond in the rough, Remnant II is cut and polished to a mirror sheen, presenting a package that could be replayed repeatedly until the sun goes out. So, what is it?
Put as simply as I can manage, Remnant II is a third-person shooter souls-like with roguelike elements. As the traveller, you’ll explore world after world, procedurally generated to ensure no two adventures are the same, fight monsters, collect loot, and level up a diverse range of archetypes, combining them freely to find the playstyle that’s just right for you.
Allies and enemies alike will take on strange and wondrous forms. But you’re the guy (or gal) with the gun.
Each of the worlds you explore is unique, from sci-fi colonies in stasis approaching the heat death of the universe, to elven towns filled with fae and Victorian English tastes in fashion, to mystical forests filled with deer all-too eager to push you off a cliff (jerks). The aesthetic of this game is truly something special, and the fact that it manages to weave it all into a cohesive story is all the more impressive.
Your opponent is the ‘Root’, a malignant, semi-sentient entity that has spread through the mystical world-linking labyrinth to infect world after world and, as the game puts it “, destroy them for all time, past, future, and present.”
That’s bad. We don’t want that to happen, so to avoid that occurring, we apply guns liberally and with great satisfaction. The game’s gunplay is fantastic, shotguns are meaty and satisfying, machine guns feel like going to war with a woodchipper, and revolvers have the kind of old west charm I’ve missed since Red Dead. More than that, its weapon selection is unique; every boss drops an item you can convert into a weapon or a mod to alter your existing weapons. These lend further customisation to the dual-class system, letting you really sculpt a character that’s uniquely yours.
It can be hard resisting the urge to play Handler, the class that gets a good boy.
For my part, I played a medic/gunslinger. You’d think I’d be interested in looking after my teammates (brought in by the game’s seamless co-op system, a system that even From Software could take notes from), but their healing was merely collateral to my own. Early on, I found a ring that shared a percentage of my healing with my allies, and from there, my plan came together; I constructed a constant health-regen system that would allow me to wade through monsters like they were chaff before my scythe all while topping off my allies incidentally.
My scythe of choice? The bone saw, the starting weapon for the medic, carried me all the way to the end. With it's 150-round magazines, reloading is rarely a concern, but when it was, it was big. Reloading would cost me four seconds, which would restart any time I dodged, which I’d need to do a lot because this game is not easy. In came the gunslinger as my solution. Their prime perk would reload my weapons and supply infinite reserve ammo for a few seconds whenever I used a gunslinger ability. Combine this with augment mods automatically reloading your gun, and I found my pinnacle. Never stop shooting, constantly healing, to quote a pretty good movie I saw recently; “I am become death, destroyer of worlds,” and the Root had good reason to fear me.
Even the apocalypse is better with friends.
That was my experience with Remnant II, but what’s so great about the game is yours will be entirely unique to mine. Each world has multiple variations with different storylines, bosses, and even aesthetics, so every player will enjoy an experience all their own. This randomisation gives the game fantastic replayability and makes it an excellent choice for those looking for a game they can play for the long haul.
The game’s beautiful, but fair warning, it does have some high requirements. Some of my friends struggled to run it. Me though? Smooth as the summer wind. I was playing it on GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet, so all the way through, I got to enjoy the game at its very best. Keen to do the same? Well, my good tidings follow you, traveller, and may the Root not take your world but instead, a whole lot of buckshot.
This spotlight was written by Pentanet team member "Motley" and does not represent the opinions of NVIDIA or Pentanet.
