What's everybody playing?

[Frag Maniac]

Just started playing Remnant II. It's a very interesting game with sub worlds that are procedurally generated at random. More than that, each sub world can have a different layout, with routes to secrets being varied as well. The checkpoints, which are crystals that pop out of the ground as you approach them, will completely replenish health, health packs, and ammo. They are best used only at the start of a new region, or area within a region, as backtracking to use them will reset all enemies again in that area.

The nickname "Souls With Guns", which this franchise picked up after the first installment released, is apropos, as it can be tough to play solo even on the lowest difficulty mode. It's story is not deep or well told, and your character only speaks in cutscenes, while remaining silent with chosen dialog options. You are encouraged to be aggressive and explore, as enemies drop ammo (not always), and crates, chests, coffins, and corpses have useable items, but corpses don't drop weapons.

I'm playing as a Handler, since it's the only Archetype that offers a companion, a dog. He becomes more capable as you gain more XP, but his featured skill Kinship, which drastically minimizes the effect of friendly fire, does no good if you play solo. He is certainly useful for distracting and killing lesser enemies as you engage with tougher ones though, and can even nip away at and distract tougher ones when you need to take cover and reload or medicate.

The dog will also revive you once he becomes stronger, but if you go down at or near an AOE, there's a good chance he'll get stuck in it and die. You can also always revive the dog when he goes down. The game looks to have a lot of replay value considering there are several Archetypes to try, as well as amulets, rings, and relic fragments that can be used on gear and health packs. There are also mods and upgrades for the weapons.

 

[Ikawaru]

I am very disappointed with 'Remnant II', it takes away all of the simplistic charm of the first game and tries to make it more "Bloodborne" or "Dark Souls" which doesn't work for a fast paced gunplay game. What's more, all of the randomly generated content and maps actually make the game feel more artificial, not less. Playing the first game and (foolishly) expecting the second to be like it but better was a mistake on my part.

I mean, on paper the game does have a lot going for it, there is tons of equipment, rings, amulets, more diverse weapons and skills to unlock and not to mention two different classes you can choose. Unfortunately though it all becomes largely irrelevant when you feel the gameplay doesn't work very well because it tries to be 'Dark Souls' when it shouldn't. I mean, playing as hunter who sneaks around the map and takes out baddies covertly is quite fun, but dying because you are climbing down a ladder and getting wrecked by that one enemy you didn't see and dying very easily and having to redo it all at a checkpoint just doesn't work for this kind of gameplay.

I am really shocked and appalled and I feel like I was lied to when I read stuff saying that this game is better than the first one in all respects, this an outright falsehood and it's too bad that mainstream reviewers seem to get it all wrong when more thorough analysis is needed. What sounds good on paper doesn't always translate to better review scores and I can't for the life of me figure out why "professional" reviewers keep perpetuating this nonsense. Just like 'Resident Evil 7', which sounded great on paper but turned out to be little more than a huge full price tag gimmick for the series in practice, also was overlooked by reviewers and they hammered forward the lie that it brought the series back to its roots.

Close but no cigar for 'Remnant II', I should have skipped it and waited for 'Starfield' but now I will have to wait until 'Starfield' goes on sale and is patched up adequately. Oh well, serves me right for buying into hype when these kinds of things happen in the industry all the time.

 

[pa-pappys8675309]

I don't know those two games ^ but the gameplay vids look pretty cool, might check into them as time permits

I'm on RE2 remake lately. The thing I don't like about RE2 remake is all the backtracking. Just starting out on it I want to explore everywhere and collect everything because I'm not using a walkthrough guide and don't know what I'll need. I forgot how tired I was of all the backtracking to storage boxes all those yrs ago, but they have done a great job of reminding me lol. That said it looks great, but I've also gotten used to games where I can dodge pretty much at will and I'm bothered that I can't in RE2 remake. I'm still going try to buy into it though.

RE3 remake had decent mechanics but it was a bit too short and Nemesis wasn't nearly the unstoppable juggernaut he once was. I didn't miss the clocktower though and liked the Umbrella facility, just too short.