Chris InglisRemnant II is a third-person shooter and action RPG developed by Gunfire Games and published by Gearbox Publishing. It is the sequel to 2019’s Remnant: From the Ashes, and was released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on July 26, 2023. It’s taken the best bits of the first game and added to and enhanced those in many ways. This is a fantastic game with a lot of attention to detail, outstanding voice acting, incredible gunplay and clever puzzles, with enough story to keep you moving forward. It’s turned out to be one of my favourite games of 2023 so far.
The story of Remnant II takes place several decades after the events of Remnant: From the Ashes. The Earth has been rebuilt, but the threat of the Root still lingers. Players take on the role of a new survivor who must travel to different worlds to find the resources needed to fight back against the Root. Along the way, you will face off against new and powerful enemies, and learn more about the origins of the Root and their plans for the multiverse.
Character creation is our first step into the game, and while the level of detail of the characters is fantastic, it isn’t as customisable as similar recent games. There are enough presets available, but I couldn’t quite match any of the voices to the face I chose, which I hope is just a me problem. Once in game though, far out, the level of detail of the environments, monsters/creatures and other humans is insanely good. I hear my GPU fan whir up as I get into the game and I suffered several crashes, but my bro-in-law Justin who I played co-op with didn’t crash at all. His GPU ran quite hot in the game but never at dangerous levels.
I must give credit to all the voice actors in the game. Their performances were all outstanding, suiting the aesthetic of the characters perfectly. It really helped build the story and situations, and I loved the quips our characters make when in missions, especially in co-op. I really enjoyed the intro as it taught you the movement, shooting and looting mechanics, and gave you a short boss fight to get you warmed up before entering the main hub of the game, Ward 13, and for what was coming next.
The four starting archetypes are Medic, Hunter, Challenger, and Handler, with a fifth archetype of Gunslinger available as a pre-order bonus (Gunslinger and other new archetypes can be unlocked through looting special items during gameplay – there are 11 archetypes total in the game). Justin chose Gunslinger and I chose Medic, which was an excellent combo in co-op. We both started our first missions solo and got confused when we were trying to join up together as his starting mission location was different to mine. This is because the game is procedurally generated and you’re taken to a random world out of Yaesha, Losomn, or N’Erud.
Justin joined my game and off we went, shootin’ and lootin’ our way through forests, caves, temples, and heaps of interesting places to explore. The world design is phenomenal, though some of the outdoor areas felt a little empty at times. Eventually we came across a dungeon that had trap sections that felt like we were playing Indiana Jones and took us multiple attempts to work out. We then explored deeper, and the revamped 3D map was great to see where we had been and places we hadn’t visited yet. We got into the habit of smashing every vase or box we saw to collect scrap and other resources.
We could see an area on the map that was red but after running around for ages, we just couldn’t work out how to get down to it. We were about to give up and zone out when I smashed some random vases in the corner of a room, which then revealed there was a gap in the stone floor that we could drop down into, and it gave us access to the final area where we found a new set of armour. We thought that dungeon was fantastic then later came across the Labyrinth and man, what an amazingly well-designed dungeon that featured portals that switched destinations and enabled access to more loot for us to find.
Once we had levelled up and obtained ten trait points through defeating bosses and discovering Tomes of Knowledge in the world, we unlocked the ability to slot dual archetypea. This means we can choose another archetype to compliment or replace our initial choice, but first had to either buy or find special items in the world. You can just have your main archetype slotted, or you can split the XP you earn between two archetypes allowing you to utilise a mix of skills and perks. I went with Medic/Handler because we were playing with two of us and having the pet helped a lot, especially when we got swamped which happened regularly and kept us on our toes.
It was great that we could use a worldstone to return to town, upgrade our weapons and then return to continue without losing progress. That helped us a lot when my game crashed a few times. There are various stories woven throughout the different worlds, encouraging exploration and multiple revisits, and once you defeat a final boss in each world, it unlocks adventure mode for that world. Once an area is unlocked, adventure mode can be accessed by interacting with a worldstone and then clicking on world settings at the bottom.
Once loading up adventure mode on a zone, you’ll enter the area from the very beginning and the layout may differ from what you played in the Campaign Mode due to the procedural generation. In addition, most zones have two storylines that give you completely different final bosses. This means if you enter an area you played in the campaign, you can click reroll adventure mode to get the alternate version. This adds a ton of replayability to the game, in addition to more co-op adventures which is what I got the most fun out of.
Overall, Remnant II is an outstanding sequel that builds upon the first game in many ways and is one of my favourite games of 2023 so far. The voice acting is superb, the world design phenomenal and the gameplay was rock solid, especially in co-op. Just as we were impressed with discovering something new in the game, the next sequence would open up something else we didn’t know, furthering our excitement and enjoyment of the game. Learning that we could unlock more archetypes gave us even more drive to keep playing, and being able to reroll a zone in adventure mode mixed the gameplay up enough to not feel stale. If the post release content for Remant: From the Ashes is anything to go by, I can’t wait to see what other content is added in future updates to Remnant II.
This review utilised Steam keys provided by Gearbox and Remnant II is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam and Epic Games Store.
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