My co-op partner and I have found completely different main bosses, basic enemies, environments, rewards, and puzzles – shockingly good puzzles, I should add. There's a deep well of replayability here that most RPG shooters would rightly covet. My subsequent runs of Remnant: From the Ashes felt like obvious rearrangements, whereas Remnant 2 is capable of fuller rewrites. A few worlds into my second campaign, I've already encountered far bigger differences than I did during multiple campaign-lite Adventures in the first game. Remnant 2 immediately looks and plays much better than its predecessor, but I didn't fully understand its depths until I started another playthrough. Just ask my co-op partner, who's scraped me off the floor of many a boss arena. I love that I can invest so much into this specific niche and reap huge rewards, even if it does make me a bit squishy. After beating the game once, I've looked into the Remnant 2 community a bit and realized every Nightfall owner had the same idea, but I regret nothing. My whole build wants to fuel the innate mod on the incredibly broken boss gun Nightfall, which has not left my hands since I got it on my first playthrough. All four of my rings, as well as my amulet and estus flask-like relic heart, are built around mod power and power generation. The interplay between your classes and your equipment has also improved immensely. This system also reminds me of the weapon grind in Ratchet and Clank in the way it encourages you to try stuff you thought you might not like, only to fall in love once you get it leveled up. I could, for example, just keep Summoner as my permanent second class so I don't have to spend points on its health regen trait. It's a grind, but a fun one, and it makes the two classes you equip feel more important by saving trait points. I actually like that you're incentivized to level multiple classes to unlock their powerful traits. There are 11 classes total, and the buildcrafting potential between them is huge. That's right Remnant 2 has an entire class about an attack dog, and that's why it's the best. Once I max out Summoner and unlock its innate health regen trait as a class-wide option, I'm jumping straight into Handler to trade my pet demons for a pet dog. I started as a Hunter and soon picked up Summoner, and I've now slotted in Challenger as my main to beef up a bit. Its starter classes are more plentiful and infinitely more meaningful, and you quickly end up dual-classing to combine passive buffs and active abilities. The tightest synergy I found was combining an amulet that boosts bleed damage with a weapon that deals bleed damage. You also only had a few accessories and three bits of armor with fairly generic set effects, so I never felt like I got a true build going. You still had traits for a light skill tree, but no true archetypes. There were 'classes,' but they're ultimately just a choice of starter weapon mod. In Remnant: From the Ashes, your build is essentially your guns. Remnant 2 hasn't so much improved the RPG elements as it has added them. It's one of my favorite RPG shooters ever, frankly. I still like Remnant: From the Ashes and would encourage you to try it, at least if you can get it on sale, but from visuals and quality of life to RPG systems and replayability, Remnant 2 is head-and-shoulders above it. That's the magic of Remnant 2.Įven the significant improvements made in The Surge 2 don't hold a candle to Remnant 2's revolution. That's partly because they're so rare, and they are so rare partly because it's hard to greenlight a sequel to anything less than a stone-cold banger. Good things are good and I'm usually happy to get more of them, but I'll always prefer the sequels that turn something decent into something great. As someone who sees, plays, and evaluates a metric ton of games, it's always exciting to see sequels that significantly improve on ideas rather than simply offering more of an already good thing. Well, OK, Lords of the Fallen 2014 was honestly a bit shit, but I'll cut it some slack here. My point is that a lot of decent games are built on ideas that deserve more, or at least could be more. The Surge 2 is probably the best comparison for sequels I know some people actually prefer the original Nioh, and though Lords of the Fallen's reboot looks quite good, it isn't out yet to review. Maybe that's just my perception because it's the genre I can't quit, but I'd put the likes of The Surge, Nioh, and possibly Lords of the Fallen in the same camp. This happens with a lot of games, and it seems to be inordinately common among Souls-likes.
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