Remnant II Review

Remnant II is the sequel to the 2019 third-person coop shooter Remnant: From the Ashes. After humanity dealt a major blow to The Root in the first game, it’s time for the final push in an attempt to eliminate this threat once and for all.

That’s about as far as we’ll get into the lore, though. For those who enjoy piecing together a story, there’s plenty to uncover through conversations with NPCs and item descriptions. However, if you’re like me and just need a solid reason to set out and start shooting, “fighting The Root” is enough motivation.
While I usually appreciate a game’s lore, the characters in Remnant II are, well, cringe. The “tough and funny” vibe of your character comes across as awkward, making it difficult to take them seriously or feel any real attachment. Cutscenes don’t help either – they’re sparse (and that’s probably for the best) and plagued by visual bugs, with unimpressive visuals overall.

But here’s the good news: you don’t need to care about the story to enjoy the game. The bad news? There’s not as much to enjoy as I had hoped. I’ll explain, but let me first give some context.

I played the game from start to finish with a three-player group. Like the first game, Remnant II supports online coop for up to three players. Over our roughly 35 hours with the game for the full 100% – including completing all three DLCs – we didn’t encounter any performance or server issues, which was great. Coop is fun and definitely makes for a better experience, though I still don’t understand why the limit is three players instead of four. One frustrating caveat, though: only the host makes progress toward the campaign.

As for the game’s structure, it closely follows that of its predecessor, Remnant: From the Ashes. In the campaign, you first play through three realms before reaching Root Earth, where Annihilation, the final story boss, awaits. Once the campaign has been completed, adventure mode is unlocked, where each realm can be played in isolation.

Root Earth’s layout is fixed, but the preceding three realms – which are massive, especially N’Erud – use a mix of fixed map layouts and RNG. How that works is that each realm is randomly generated whenever a new campaign or adventure mode run is started, where areas, side dungeons and world events are pulled from a predetermined pool. This may sound promising at first, but the underlying structure soon becomes very predictable.

Let’s illustrate this on Yaesha, the second realm. This is the map for the Ravager Storyline, from the Remnant II wiki.

In each realm, there are two possible storylines that can be generated. Which one has been rolled can be recognized by the starting location – in this example, Forbidden Grove. Now, the path through the main area is always as shown in the map above. The run starts in Forbidden Grove and continues to the second part of the main area through “Boss Dungeon 1”. The side dungeons, boss dungeon and world events are always in the same spot, but which specific dungeon is available can change between runs. In this particular example there is a pool of three possible world events, and two of them are present in any given run (one before, one after the boss dungeon). One world event will always be missing in a run. And any specific side or boss dungeon, if present, has a fixed layout.

This RNG aspect doesn’t make the game less repetitive, and makes rerolling worlds feel more tedious than exciting – specially if you’re hunting for that one specific dungeon or event you haven’t encountered yet.

Unfortunately, the gameplay loop doesn’t do much to alleviate this repetition. Dungeons, for the most part, feel lackluster. Many don’t even feature minibosses, and are instead packed with regular enemies. When minibosses do appear, they’re little more than glorified grunts with larger health pools, largely unimaginative in their design.

Story bosses fare better – they’re more creative and sometimes come with a bit of lore – which would probably be great if I hadn’t stopped caring about the narrative altogether by the time I reached them. Overall, with a few exceptions, bosses didn’t provide the epic or spectacular moments I was hoping for.

Loot, a cornerstone of this genre, also disappoints. Within a few hours, my inventory was overflowing with amulets and, above all, rings. Rings from dungeon rewards. Rings from events. Rings from NPCs and vendors. You get the idea. More rings than you would ever need. This led to rewards for clearing dungeons or exploring feel unrewarding, instead of incentivizing careful exploration. It got to the point where I had to weigh whether exploring a dungeon was even worth the time, knowing the reward would likely be another ring I didn’t need.

But despite these flaws, not all is bad. The game’s build customization system is deep and satisfying. There’s a huge variety of weapons to find, craft, or purchase, each with special attacks enabled by equipping Weapon Mods. Your character’s combat style is determined by the Archetype you choose, with unique perks and abilities that unlock as you level the Archetype. This opens the door to countless builds – whether you prefer melee combat; status effects, or summoning minions to do your dirty work. Amulets and rings further enhance – and often enable – these builds, offering tons of flexibility. However, unlocking some Archetypes and weapons requires solving obscure puzzles for which consulting a guide is almost mandatory.

Character progression is tied to Traits, which are perks you upgrade with trait points acquired by leveling up. You start with four standard Traits (like Vigor, which boosts you max health), but additional ones can be unlocked through events or specific bosses. While the system looks good on paper, the effect of the incremental upgrades can be difficult to gauge. How noticeable is a +0.15/s health regen boost really?

Now let’s briefly talk about the 100%. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as painful as it could’ve been. The trophy list is a huge RNG fest, requiring you to find and beat all story bosses, collecting tons of gear and Traits, and level up a few Archetypes to max level.  Thankfully, DLC weapons and Traits count toward these totals, which makes the grind much more manageable. My group was also lucky during our adventure mode rerolls, where we would often split up to search for specific dungeons or events faster. The grindiest trophy came from the third DLC, but starting the DLC quest right after finishing our initial campaign playthrough paid off, as we could then farm the required items while cleaning up other tasks in adventure mode, which saved us from additional rerolling later.

In the end, Remnant II feels like a game of missed potential. While its build diversity and coop gameplay stand out, the repetitive structure, underwhelming rewards, and lackluster enemies drag the experience down. Add in awkward writing and visual bugs, and it’s hard to recommend the game to anyone but the most dedicated fans of the original.