Bought Remnant From The Ashes while it was on sale.
I get why people call this a Souls-like.
It's about the same polish level as Absolver though. A game very inspired by Dark Souls but that's also quite clearly indie, that fumbles and gropes its way through the themes, execution and gameplay. It's clear in the first 10 seconds after the publisher and developer splash screens that it's an indie title just from how it present itself.
Remnant isn't bad, it's just thin in most places. The story is really trying to be vague like Dark Souls but it has none of the artistic refinement of that series. It thinks by being vague it's being mysterious, but it's really just a bunch of themes smooshed together. Post apocalypse, the Bioshock intro, creepy tree growths, demons, people going crazy. They even went the route of putting 99% of the world lore in their item descriptions, but only about half of them are even relevant and the other half are basically "OMG, aren't things ccrrraaaazzzzzzyyyyy?!?!"
I started it on Hard and have played solo through the first boss.
The three reasons I think this game has a Dark Souls level of challenge is:
-There is no shooting from the hip. You're either staring down a reticule or you're not shooting a gun. This slows down gameplay SO MUCH, and leaves you vulnerable to the mass amounts of enemy projectiles so you're constantly aiming down sights, dodging, aiming down sights, dodging.....ad infinitum. There is no running and dealing damage short of ONE melee attack move. If you can't "stand and deliver" you're not hurting stuff. You could argue Dark Souls has a same philosophy but there's options for moving and attacking in that game that are absent here, and most importantly, average enemies give you the time and space to breathe. Remnant's enemies do not. They get up on you and in your grill and shoot stuff at you and swoop around so there's no hiding and making space to fight is the real challenge, which you solve in most cases by just repeatedly backing up.
-Your class choice is very important to how you play, or at least it feels so to me. Close, mid or long range classes, and what they don't tell you is your damage fall off directly relates to your choice. And then they design enemies so that no one class has it the easiest. If you're a close range brawler, they will throw enemies at you that attack from range and teleport away as soon as you get close. If you're a long range guy, they will swamp you with hordes of little melee shits that never give you a chance to get some range and attack. And if you're mid, you have to maintain that medium range for best damage (although IMO it's closer to a short range class in terms of the overall engagement ranges of the game.)
-And lastly adds. OMG adds. This entire game's difficulty comes down to "give you a reasonable challenge, then throw adds at you every 30 seconds so you can never actually focus on the biggest enemy threat." Playing solo right now, this design choice really stands out. A boss I could probably kill in under two minutes alone now takes 10 minutes as you get your couple shots off, then immediately have to evade your ass off and kill off adds, just in time to get a couple more shots in on the main guy before another wave of adds spawns.
Other than that, the game is minimal both from a design standpoint and a content standpoint.
1. The UI is slate grey, functional and boring. It does just enough to be functional and take up all the screen real estate and not a whit more.
2. Your options for things to do are: upgrade your guns' power level, upgrade your armor's defense level, slot different mods (i.e. abilities) in to either of your guns, sink some skill points in to health, stamina and for me, class resource regeneration traits. That's pretty much it. There's a very small list of gear options per class, and some new traits become available to put points in to as you progress through the game, but by and large that's it.
3. Remnant makes the most out of the levels you get offered that it can, and the difficulty of the opponents makes the levels feel much larger than they actually are. But there's a drab sameiness to everything in the game, that is only broken up by the fights and the occasional consumable item tucked away here and there, and the occasional chest filled with cash (scrap.) Once you've slain all the enemies in a particular "pack" or spot in the level, it feels barren and empty and bland to get through. Navigating in this game kind of sucks because everything looks the same and the levels have that randomly generated feel to them. Very few landmarks, no real sight lines, just a lot of densely packed buildings and rooms and corridors. It's the one thing multiple people who have just picked up the game or seen it played have commented on, is how as soon as the combat is over the game is enveloped in blandness. Where Dark Souls used its emptiness to evoke a sense of isolation and desolation, in Remnant all it evokes is a feeling that there's not enough content and soul to it.
I do give props for some of the ideas though. Randomly selecting minibosses to sprinkle throughout the level really makes the level layout matter when combat happens, especially against the nastier ranged opponents. Plunging ahead is dangerous as fuck as you'll quickly get overwhelmed by all the stuff that spawns and the various mechanics they bring to the table. So slow and meticulous it is, and that works for the game.
What it really misses from the Dark Souls formula is that, at least so far, most fights take place in wide open spaces OR you have the option of backpedaling through the whole level if need be. Level design matters in some instances but unlike Dark Souls it doesn't seem to try to challenge you by putting you in a shoebox with some enemies and asking you to survive. Or if it does, it's a very large and square shoebox. By the way they've designed the game, with so many adds, I guess they can't really do that anyways. Everything takes place on a flat plane, there's almost no verticality to the game I've seen. So while there's the visual window dressing that is average I'd say, the actual level geometry is nothing more than walls, some stuff to vault over and vast stretches of flatness. Whereas in Dark Souls it might take a specific enemy type and then use the environment to leverage that enemy's design in to something interesting (say a room with archers all on the top floors that refuse to come down and fight you), here it's just a spew of enemies in big open spaces and the response to most of them is all the same: dodge and shoot. I guess that's a consequence of random generation, is you can't hand craft challenges around your enemies.
The enemy design I'd say is also not very strong. They have that "Devil May Cry" look where they're weird and inscrutable but nothing really stands out about them. I've met one enemy I can see the details of clearly in my mind, but the rest are mostly organic looking messes of red and black.
All in all I'm not unhappy for what I paid and I'm glad to understand this newest thing to get labeled a soulslike. And I do find the combat somewhat engaging, if very frenetic because the game refuses to give you any breathing room or the tools you're used to having. I'm sure it's a lot more fun with friends than solo. I am still interested to see how the game opens up and changes once you get further in.
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Topic: What are you currently playing? (Read 188283 times)