I started this game with a friend and we weren't expecting much, just an indie type game with a semi decent story. Well, my friend and I quickly found out that we had been thrown into this very interesting post apocalyptic world that had so much more depth than we thought. The story grabbed the both of use right away and we thoroughly enjoyed discovering more lore as we traversed through the game. This game kept drawing us in and we just had to figure out what was next.

Later we added a third to our gaming party and it was perfect for playing with a group of 3. It really enables you and your friends to create a rhythm, and everyone figures out what their role is for the team. We liked it so much that when we added the 3rd we started the game from the very beginning, again. In total I have played this game through 3 times, and loved each playthrough, ended up with over 100hrs in this game.

The best part about playing Remnant three separate times was that each playthrough I saw something new. Either a new area of the randomly generated map, or fighting a new interesting boss, it was great. I would go back and share my findings with my friends who where playing with me.

This game was above and beyond what I was expecting it to be. I believe it is best played with a group of friends. It brought me and my friends so many laughs, and also made us all feel like badasses.

Remnant: From the Ashes isn't the first Soulslike with guns game, but it's arguably the most successful. A few hours in though, and I wasn't enjoying myself. The game begins with a brief, but cliché riddled and incredibly vague cutscene, after which your player character is dumped into a drab, grey, post-apocalyptic environment to fight some drab, black and grey enemies with a sword*. This tutorial section ends with you being overwhelmed and then waking up in the game's hub area. Things don't improve much as you find it's populated by boring, static NPCs. It's not the best of starts, being underwhelming and not really preparing you for the game to come. Dark Soul's Asylum was much better at introducing you to the game's mechanics and it's world, and culminated in a manageable but still impressive looking boss fight. Similarly that game's hub helped flesh out the wider world and its history through conversation with its varied and changing NPCs. In Remnant the hub become little more than a place for quests givers and vendors.

So on arriving in this forgettable hub you have to seek out the commander who gives you your first proper mission; to help deal with the base's power problems. It's here that you're properly introduced to those enemies from the tutorial, as you fight off a wave of them. They're known as the Root, possibly due to them looking a bit tree-ish, but regardless, they appear to be the reason the earth is in such a ♥♥♥♥ state. The game also introduces Remnant's version of bonfires here, again in the vaguest possibly way. All you really need to know is that the big red floating crystals act as teleport stones and save points.

After this little interlude you set off on your true quest, to find the founder. The reasons why are unclear and not at all interesting but whatever, I guess it's a motivation of sorts. You're finally given a computer code that lets you activate the big teleport crystal in the hub and it transports you to Earth.... Hang on, I thought I was on Earth? The newly arrived at location certainly looks the same as the tutorial section, keeping up that monotonously depressing 50 shades of grey vibe, only now with the occasional flashes of red, like we're playing a Schindler's List Soulslike.

Earth is where I'd say the game truly begins if I was talking about Dark Souls. Or I might say "opens up" instead, but Remnant's levels are procedurally generated so there's none of that wonderful Soulsy level design. Instead you have fairly linear corridor like levels that might have multiple paths, but only one of the paths tends to lead to proper progress. Other routes generally lead to optional boss fights at the end of linear dungeons, although the game won't tell you that the boss you just fought was an optional one and it's certainly not clear. There's no fanfare or build-up to the mandatory bosses and you may well fight them at the end of a samey looking dungeon.

As to the boss fights, they don't make a good first impression either, and while they do improve later on a large majority of them seem to be designed with co-op in mind. Story specific bosses tend to summon additional enemies (adds) and this is where a lot of the difficulty arises when fighting them solo. I was often killed by bosses whilst distracted by the regularly spawning adds. If playing in co-op, to balance out the fact that you've got help the bosses are given more heath, becoming bullet spongey. In some ways it makes them even harder to win, especially if your co-op partners aren't up to much.

I can't begin to describe how unfair this all feels and how frustrating it is to play, and I almost gave up on the game at this point. I am glad I persevered though because once you've ground your way through Earth's blandly crumbling vistas and overcome a big ent boss, the game does in fact start to open up to some degree when you gain access to Stargates™. This is also where the game starts to get more creative visually and even trickles out a bit of story as you find out that the Root have attempted to conquer multiple worlds.

The area with the Stargates is essentially a secondary hub and you'll eventually gain access to a few more gates that lead all lead to different worlds, your ultimate goal still being to find the founder. The first gate takes you to a desert planet with which has a nice mixture of futuristic and primative architecture and enemy types. Not only is this more interesting to look at and fight in, but it also manages to do a bit of visual storytelling that was completely lacking on Earth. It's still not up to Dark Soul's standard as the procedural generation limits tightly designed world building, but it's an improvement. The fact that this world underwent some kind of cataclysm to stop the Root invasion certainly comes across and was more engaging than any snatches of the story so far. There are even a few NPCs scattered about, and an undying king to find!

It's also here that I really started to appreciate the game mechanics. Remnant has a really enjoyable gameplay loop, similar in some ways to a looter shooter, but 3rd person and with a dodge roll. It's also pretty fast and enemies are surprisingly fragile, it feels arcadey at times and you can almost zone out while playing. It's certainly at the positive end of that scale though, don't get me wrong.

There are a wide selection of guns to choose across two categories; handguns and rifles. These can be anything from a sniper rifle and a sub machine gun, to an acid pistol and an energy rifle. I found myself experimenting with a lot of weapons throughout and some were more situational than others. You only start off with the two guns but you'll rapidly unlock more by finding them in dungeons or crafting them from boss resources. You can also level up guns although I found this made me use the levelled ones more often, perhaps hampered experimentation. Weapon mods add more depth the the gunplay. These activated abilities are also crafted from bits of defeated bosses and you can slot one into the particular gun you're using. The abilities they give range from summons, to healing, to bonus damage, and again they're situational.

You find and upgrade armour in the same way as you do guns, and getting a set gives specific bonuses. Each set is generally resistant to different types of damage and so will work better or worse in different worlds. Remnant also has rings and amulets but these are a little lackluster and a lot of them were pretty much useless.

Levelling also works differently in Remnant. Rather than putting points into stats like strength and dexterity, Remnant has traits. While these traits do include ones for stamina and health, you can unlock ones that decrease ranged damage, speed up reloading, increase scrap collection and xp earned, resist elemental damage, increase critical damage rates and many more. You unlock more as you play by, in a variety of ways. It's a nice change to the more traditional stats based levelling, allowing you to build a character based on preferred traits.

You won't unlock all these items, mods and traits in one play-through because the bosses and encounters are unique to each run. This adds some replay-ability and goes towards explaining the procedural generation. You can essentially reset each world and hope to get some new bosses and encounters but I'd save this until you've completed the main story.

Ultimately, I'd still recommend Remnant despite the pretty mediocre and frustrating first few hours. It might not be as deep, engaging or atmospheric as Dark Souls, but it's certainly enjoyable with its moreish gameplay and has a decent amount of replay value. I haven't really thought about it much since finishing though, it just didn't get under my skin like the best Soulslike can.

*Incidentally the games tutorial section deals with melee combat; the last resort combat in a game primarily geared towards being a 3rd person shooter. It's not ideal.

7/10

Remnant: From the Ashes is a competent and well-made game. The gameplay is very Souls-borne like but with guns. Melee is kind of clunky but useful in certain situations. You will be more focused on shooting and dodging in most cases but you can time stun locks and get out of deadly situations if you use it correctly.

The game isn't the most graphically intensive but the environments look decent and vary from the different worlds you'll end up visiting. The game shows its lack of budget so a lot of the areas are copy and paste but it works and you'll be more focused on combat and finding items along the way.

Gameplay is pretty standard. Normal third person controls minus the chest high wall GoW cover system (you can still get behind cover while crouched and aim to shoot over it). Melee exists but you will only use it in certain situations. There are various weapons from pistols to sniper rifles. Bosses are hit and miss. Some are well designed and others make you wonder if they were just tacked on to pad game time.

Replay value is definitely a thing for this game. You will not find every single item in one run. You won't fight every boss in one run. There are a lot of secrets to find and solve but you can only do so if you do multiple runs or co-op a lot. It keeps everything fresh and you always have something new to find for at least 2-3 runs. There are 3 difficulties as of writing and they each bring their own challenges to your play style.

Overall, the game is fun. The game has its faults and I think it's mainly due to budget. The devs worked with what they had and they have promised to support the game regardless of review scores or sales. I believe we'll have more content in the future and for now, I'm thankful we don't have a micro transaction riddled mess that only wants you to pony up for season passes, expansion passes, cosmetics and convenience crap.

Intro

Take Borderlands and strip it from all the things that make it entertaining; Loot, skills, classes, banter, weird enemies, colourful environments, humour, open environments - basically everything that gives it life. The end result would be something very similar to this "game".

The Good

• The gunplay is solid.

The Bad

• Boring ass passive skills. Seriously, who gets excited over using a precious skill point to increase the "teamwork" range from 15 to 16 meters? Christ.
• Same with weapons. Grind stuff, upgrade items, die a bit less, grind more stuff.
• Only 3 classes and they're not all that different.
• Loads of tiny corridors.
• Most enemies are red/black and hard to tell apart.
• The game looks like shit. The drabbest of colours combined with absolutely embarassing visuals. It looks like something that came out a decade ago, not last year.
• Unresponsive controls. If i got a cent for every time my character refused to aim...
• Status effects that last forever so you have use healing items constantly (which you have to buy).
• You gather scrap and iron. Seriously.
• Writing so bad it actually stands out. "If our last hope dies we'll choose another". What?
• You die constantly. There's no point in even trying this solo.
• If you can't get past a certain part you will have to replay the same section over and over again.

Conclusion

Play this if you hate yourself. Play Borderlands 2 if you don't. Or any Borderlands really, even TPS is better than this turd.

Finished it on the PS4 after 16 hours. I beat the game and reached a gear score of 13.

For most of my runs I used the Beam-weapon and the magnum pistol. The mod that allowed me to create a healing field was invaluable in my playthrough.

I started playing this game because it was highly recommended by Kirk Hamilton on his Triple Click podcast. I have to say, it was a fun experience, especially at first. And the bosses themselves were varied. I actually bought PS+ just for this game, and it was worth it – I had some good experiences with other players.

It does feel like a Dark Souls with guns, but only a little. It doesn’t have the same gravitas or perfected gameplay loop found in Dark Souls. In fact, the biggest flaws are the repetitive environments, and the somewhat repetitive enemies. That is why, after beating the last boss, I didn’t feel like playing the DLC – even though I’ve bought it.

Highly recommended in multiplayer. Yet be aware that some bosses are considerably easier in singleplayer if your human teammates can't pull their weight. You can easily switch from multiplayer to singleplayer and viceversa in this game - so make the best use out of both modes.