Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
Usually I’d be making this post from my main account, cod, but for some reason I’ve tried posting multiple times today and it hasn’t let me, it keeps giving me an error. So here we go! Weekly post from a different account this week. Hopefully next week I can go back to my main again.
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Been playing Remnant 2 and its so bad I genuinely wish I never bought it. Archetypes locked behind world triggers that just don't want to trigger, level design that is the same in each world, bosses that just spam the arena with summons and AOE attacks or have shitty gimmicks, enemies with shitty hitboxes, boringly repetitive enemy placement.
Some of those things were there from the start but were put in the "it'll get better column" (it didn't) and others weren't apparent until later in the game.
I'm at the point where it's shitty enemy swarm after shitty enemy swarm followed by shitty boss fights and I'm just done with it.
The Remnant games are a completionist's nightmare. Want a specific weapon or bit of kit for your build? You need to hope the right world shows up early (three of the worlds switch their order around each playthrough, so based on luck a specific world could be the first you go to after the tutorial, or it could only show up right before endgame), hope the right main quest for that world is picked (each world has two mutually exclusive storylines), hope the side quest and/or dungeon that drops that item is generated, hope the tile it spawns in is placed on the map (usually but not always guaranteed), hope you don't miss it entirely due to 90% of the world looking identical... and if it's dropped by an optional boss, you even have to hope that boss is picked from the pool of choices. It's insane how random it all is.
And it's not just gear. As you noted, the archetypes (your character classes) are also gated this way, plus have absolutely ridiculous unlock criteria to boot. Have fun finding the archetype that requires a leap of faith off a random border of a specific map into an opaque cloud of poison, then a second blind drop immediately after to grab another item before you choke to death! Don't worry if you didn't know about it, it's only the best archetype for fighting bosses as a solo player. Better hope that world showed up early in your playthrough and you are the type of player who's okay dying repeatedly while exploring - which, as this is a Souls-like, revives the dozens of enemies between the last checkpoint and the spot you died.
One of the archetypes was only found through data mining, the unlock criteria was so obscure. I shouldn't need out-of-game knowledge and to pass several dice rolls in a row just to have a chance at getting to content I enjoy.
It's telling that the class dedicated to exploration and level grinding is unlocked by beating the game. You're expected to play through the campaign several times to see everything, but since it's all random you're just as likely to roll stuff you've already done. Which the developers clearly realized since you can roll individual worlds as side adventures.
Though at least one thing that sets it apart from other Souls-likes is that you don't drop or lose anything on death. However, they compensated for that by making currency drops a miniscule fraction of what they are in other games in the genre, necessitating even more grinding.
Edit: and I actually like Remnant 1 and 2. The gameplay and story are good, the worlds are gorgeous, and the voice acting is phenomenal, but it's all dragged down by the random generation mechanics. At least 2 is a solid upgrade on that front - the first game felt far more empty and lifeless.
Wow, I knew a decent chunk of the game relied on RNG but I didn't know it was that extensive.
I got pretty lucky by getting the Nebula gun in my first world. It makes getting through trash mobs a lot easier. Its good even up to boss enemies since I can squirt them and duck under cover while the acid kills them.
I'm on Root Earth which I assume is near endgame and I've only unlocked one other archetype and found like three new traits. I was starting to wonder what I was doing wrong but it seems being a pain in the ass is just how the game is designed. I haven't even found new armor yet! (I know there are two sets you can buy in Ward 13)
I'm in the middle of a playthrough right now, and while I'm enjoying it (I originally came to this thread to post about Remnant 2, then read your comment and realized I agreed with every single thing you said), it's frustrating how they chose to design things. The games had great intentions held back by poor implementation.
They wanted to make the game replayable, but they did so by artificially limiting what you could encounter in a single playthrough. For completionists this is torture. For one-and-done players it could be a deal breaker.
They wanted endless exploration, but the random maps make exploring unrewarding. I lost count of the number of interesting map features that ended up being completely empty aside from common enemies and some smashable pots (which are empty 90% of the time and drop a paltry amount of basic currency when they aren't). Remnant 2 is at least way better about this than the first, where the maps were a chore to get through.
They knew one of people's favorite things about Souls games is piecing things together from obscure clues, so designed the game in a way that the entire playerbase would work together to learn how to unlock everything. The downside is that obtaining many basic things like classes and gear requires ARG-level shenanigans (plus a hefty dose of luck), and if you don't use a wiki you'll miss some of the game's best content.
And the constant hordes you mentioned are a result of the game needing to drip-feed ammo drops to the player since most guns can burn through your entire reserve in under a minute of fighting, especially against the bullet sponge bosses. That Engineer archetype I linked to in my first comment has a mechanic where it regenerates ammo for its special weapons over time when they're not in use - something like that (or the first Mass Effect's heat mechanics) would have been preferable if they wanted to force players to swap weapons from time to time rather than get complacent. They clearly played with these ideas during development since there are a few weapon mods and archetype powers that work like that.
I love the gameplay, the lore, the characters, the visual and sound design, hell nearly everything save the parts I complained about, but I'm left with the unpleasant suspicion that these games would have been significantly better if they dropped half of what made them unique in the first place.