Remnant 2 is a Dark Souls shooter sequel that’s better with friends
Gunfire Games’ sequel is a confident co-op shooting experience that is frustrating alone but fun with friends by your side.
Fairly high on the list of things that shouldn’t-work-but-does is a third-person shooter mixed in with (you guessed it) Dark Souls. After all, that game spawned an entire subgenre known for tense, one-on-one enemy encounters, where every move you make could mean victory or death in an instant; it isn’t something players would typically associate with, say, the fast-paced shooting of Gears of War 5 or even Fortnite. However, developer Gunfire Games proved sceptics wrong with its 2019 Soulslike shooter Remnant: From the Ashes, recently returning with a sequel to further solidify the concept.
Full disclosure: the following isn’t a review of Remnant 2. I haven’t played nearly enough to put a score on the thing. But already, after just a couple of short play sessions – both alone and with friends – it’s really hit home just how effective the idea of a somewhat punishing co-op shooter can be, if handled delicately enough. Much like Elden Ring and other Soulslike genre entries before it, Remnant 2 challenges you to think about every encounter instead of heading in gung-ho, particularly when playing solo.
I know this because mere moments after finishing the tutorial, in which the game tried (and mostly failed) to make me care about humanity’s fight back against a monster threat within a post-apocalyptic environment, I was ushered into one of Remnant 2’s procedurally generated levels. It was here where I promptly continued to get my butt kicked, endlessly spawning at the checkpoint crystal to become caught in a cycle of 'live, die, repeat'. It wasn’t that my winged, angel-like foes were damaging me unfairly though. I just had to think smarter about how to approach the situation.
Remnant 2 initially gives you a five different starter character classes or ‘Archetypes’ to take hold of, each with a unique ability that has a cooldown, so you can't endlessly spam it. I elected to play as the Gunslinger – a mid-range DPS class, whose Quick Draw skill proved just as useful as it sounds. Any time my my teammates or I were in a pinch, Quick Draw let me pull out my pistol and instantly target nearby enemies, firing a burst of rounds into them successively. Unleashing Quick Draw is a great feeling, and one that will undoubtedly become more beneficial as my Archetype levels up and grows stronger.
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Other Archetypes have skills that are focussed on survival rather than damage. The Medic, for instance, can shoot out a green gas capable of healing other players, while the hulking Challenger has one instant revive without the need of a teammate. All these skills working in tandem together as part of a full, three-player squad serve to highlight the real joy of a Remnant 2, sanding down the otherwise rough edges I bumped into playing solo. The game’s inherent difficulty felt less harsh and something I felt we could adequately tackle if we worked together and planned accordingly.
Shoot to thrill
I’ve yet to even dip into the multitude of different gun mods, Remnant 2’s skill tree system, or the countless other ways you can build up an Archetype to play according to your preferred playstyle. In this way it makes sense that Remnant 2 is published by Gearbox, a studio which has spent several years perfecting how to make the grind for new weapons and loot within a shooting series moreish and addictive.
One thing that Borderlands doesn’t have are giant set piece bosses more along the lines of what you’d find in Elden Ring or Dark Souls. Remnant 2 does, however, and it was when coming up against the floating, squid-like Mother Mind that my party was faced with a real fight – to the extent that I can’t even picture trying to take it down solo. Not only did the encounter force my squad to watch our feet, moving from platform to platform for fear of falling, but there was a toxic red sludge on the floor to be wary of too.
The Mother Mind encounter leaned into Remnant 2’s strengths of forcing you to think on your feet, but also highlighted what folly (and potentially frustrating) it can be when played alone. I’m convinced it was only due to one of the team keeping the Mother Mind’s focus away from the two others that we were eventually able to take it down. Even with a full party of three it was a tough battle, resulting in a feeling of immense elation once we did diminish its health bar – in that special way only a Soulslike title can provide.
Having only heard good things about the original Remnant: From the Ashes second-hand, I’m glad I took a punt on Remnant 2, despite my reservations about just how well a third-person shooter could work within the rules of a Soulslike game. It truly does have to be played and experienced to be understood fully.
It’s clear that Gunfire Games has honed this one central idea into a sequel that is confident of itself, building upon what was obviously a solid foundation to make punishing combat fun to fight through within the realms of a shooter. Just make sure you play it with friends to avoid all-out frustration.
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