Remnant: From the Ashes

Should this game have been called "Phoenix," or would that have been a bit too on-the-nose? Maybe, maybe not, since it wasn't clear what remnants or ashes had to do with anything in the game.

If Remnant: From the Ashes needed to be condensed down to one phrase, it'd be "procedurally generated shooter Souls-like," which I think does a pretty good job of covering the game's essential and unique features. I see it as a combination of two twists on the traditional Souls-like formula: the first is making it a shooter and the second is making it semi-random. These are neat ideas with decent execution, but also a few issues.

Souls-like combat is typically slow and deliberate, featuring hard-hitting enemies whose attacks need to be dodged, blocked, or parried, as well as stamina that needs to be balanced between offense and defense. So it might not be immediately apparent how to translate that into ranged combat. After all, projectiles are typically linear and, depending on type, too fast to dodge or parry, and your own attacks are usually near-instantaneous. The way Remnant balances shooter and Souls-like combat is by making enemies mostly melee, so that the goal is to take them down before they reach you and you're dragged into more traditional Souls-like combat if they do.

Stamina management is typically a core component of Souls-like combat, but it naturally doesn't cost any stamina to fire your gun, which seems like it would be difficult to reconcile with Souls-like combat... but that's where reloading comes in. Just like how in typical Souls combat you need to stop attacking to recover your stamina, in Remnant you need to stop attacking to reload. And you have stamina that you need to use to run, dodge, and use melee attacks, so managing action economy is still vital. Additionally, since enemies are melee and the goal is to shoot them down from range and then dodge them if they get close, combat is active and engaging, not boring and cover-based.

Since this is a Souls-like, there are RPG elements with stats and builds, and... while Souls-likes are typically cryptic and unforgiving, I think Remnant tends to be relatively lenient in this respect. First, there's only three armor slots. Each piece of armor is part of a set, and each set grants a specific bonus, with the strength of the bonus increased for each piece of the set you're wearing. There's no armor pieces with unique effects, which makes it straightforward to make a build. You just need to decide whether you want a few weaker effects or one strong effect. You can also equip two rings and one amulet, each of which provides an auxiliary effect, further letting you customize your build.

Rather than having stats, Remnant uses traits, which are passive skills. They each start at level 1, and are unlocked through a variety of methods, often related to the effect trait itself (or by beating a certain boss). For instance, you can unlock a trait to increase damage to armored enemies by dealing a lot of damage to armored enemies. Each time you level up you gain one trait point, which can level up one trait one level. Each level provides a static additive bonus, and the maximum level is 20. You automatically level up upon gaining enough experience, and you level up fairly quickly throughout the whole game; you should earn enough experience to max several traits in one playthrough, and it should be relatively easy to identify which traits will be most helpful to you. None of the traits are game-breaking on their own, but there is often a noticeable difference between level 1 and level 20. (And, if you do end up hating the traits you select, there is a way to re-spec.)

You can bring three weapons into combat: a long gun, a short gun, and a melee weapon. "Long gun" and "short gun" refers to the length of the gun itself, not the range; for most of the game I used a pistol and shotgun. Each weapon also has a weapon mod, which is basically a super-attack that you charge up by dealing damage. There are all sorts of weapon mods, and some weapons have unique mods that can't be changed.

So even though there aren't traditional stats to level-up and a straightforward armor system, there's still a bunch of customization to let you develop your own preferred playstyle.

Unfortunately, that capacity for customization is hamstrung by the game's upgrade system, as is often the case in Souls-likes.

It pretty much functions the same as in Dark Souls. Enemies drop upgrade materials, which you use to improve your weapons and armor. As your weapons increase in level, the amount and quality of material necessary to upgrade will increase. As a result, you're strongly encouraged to decide which weapons you want to use early and stick to them. Switching is possible, but you can't do it willy-nilly. And of course, if you're thinking about switching weapons, you're forced between pouring upgrade materials into an untested weapon or trying it out with severely weakened stats (which doesn't typically provide a representative experience).

It just feels like a shame to have all these cool weapons and armor and never touch them because I've already spent too many resources on the gear I got in the first hour of the game.

Still, it's overall a pretty neat system that does manage to effectively cross Dark Souls with third-person shooters and provide an experience that is both engaging and distinct from its source genres.

Remnant's other major feature is the fact that it's procedurally generated, which unfortunately is not as much of a boon. One of the most compelling elements of Souls-like games tends to be, and one of the reasons for Dark Souls' success was, the level design. So when a game is procedurally generated, you just kind of... throw that all out. I mean, just look at how much more fun Bloodborne's base campaign is than the chalice dungeons!

There's no exploration, there's no getting lost and circling back to where you started, there's no secrets. Remnant is divided into a bunch of discrete, medium-sized areas, so there's no interconnected game world either. Most areas essentially boil down to a wide corridor, so as I just said, there's not much exploration or getting lost. The corridor sometimes splits, and sometimes it will loop back on itself, and sometimes it will lead to a side path (which will lead to some terminal zone). Remnant has the notorious gates and doors that are locked on one side, as you can go from one zone to a second, and then return to the first in another area... but, since you can immediately tell from your map that you've returned to the first zone (and not new third zone), you know you're shortly going to arrive at the other side of that one-way gate. There's no moment and surprise and discovery like in Dark Souls where you open a door to discover you've looped back to someplace you passed by hours ago.

Of course, it's not like Remnant is just an endless corridor filled with enemies and loot. There are NPCs, side quests, events, and bosses... but these are randomly selected too! To be clear, all these things are pre-set, but where and whether they show up is random. So that means that when you play through the game, you only end up encountering a portion of the possible content.

In fact, bosses have an extra level of content beyond that. Like in Dark Souls, there are "boss weapons" that are created from materials dropped by bosses. But each boss in Remnant has two different materials it can drop, depending on whether you fulfill a certain condition when beating the boss. The condition is usually not something more difficult, just something different. For instance, if a boss alternates between two forms, you might get one material for killing it one form and the other material for killing it in the other. But this means that, if you want to get everything, you not only need to play through multiple times to get the different bosses, but also to be able to beat the same boss multiple times.

(Another annoying aspect about bosses is that basically every single one summons endless hordes of minions to the fight. These are necessary because otherwise you could run out of ammo for the boss, as the minions drop ammo. The issue is that this causes boss fights to rely more on minion management than actually engaging with the boss and its particular moveset. While some fights do find a way to uniquely incorporate minions and/or ammo drops, many fall into the general category of "one big guy who summons a bunch of small guys," which in turn makes them feel generic and unmemorable.)

I really don't see what the procedural generation does for the game. The genre that relies most heavily on randomization is roguelikes. They typically focus on getting as deep into a challenge as possible, using a randomized set of resources against a randomized set of challenges each time you play the game, with engagement coming from an effective core gameplay mechanic that is iterated through all the randomized components. These are games where the goal is to survive what the game throws at you without knowing what it'll be, not to master or overcome a predetermined challenge.

But Remnant is not a roguelike. Each campaign "run" is the size of a full game. While your available equipment is randomized to a certain extent (you can't get unique rewards from bosses and side events if they don't spawn), many weapons and armor will be available every run, and regardless of your build the core gameplay is going to be point and shoot. The world doesn't reset or anything when you die. You do need to beat a predetermined level. So what benefit is there to the fact that the level was procedurally rather than manually generated?

Don't get me wrong, the level generation in Remnant is completely functional, but it's just that and nothing more. I don't think it adds anything, and while there are some cool levels, most are just series of corridors. The developers had to go through the time and effort to create all the assets and designs that serve as the templates for the procedural worlds, create hand-designed unique encounters, and build the engine that would perform the procedural generation... and that doesn't sound any easier than taking all those unique assets and events and manually linking them together. You'd get a more interesting and engaging world design, more content for the player, and less wasted content (since I assume most players will not be running through the game multiple times to see all the possible content). So why bother with the randomization? The main benefit, I suppose, would be replayability, but if your game is good enough that problem will solve itself. Just look at how popular Dark Souls' NG+ modes are.

There's also a handful of puzzles, but they're either incredibly obscure or mere trial-and-error.

The story and aesthetic are also a bit disappointing. Soulsborne games have notoriously opaque plots, but make up for that with engaging lore and atmosphere. Remnant seems to fall in the worst position between a traditional explicit plot and a Soulsborne-styled implied plot.

In Soulsborne games we wake up in a place where bad stuff is going down and set about murdering our way through the land, without any sort of explicit guidance on who we are or what exactly we're trying to do. In Remnant we start off in a nice little fantasy-styled boat with a sword, which gets marooned in a storm, and we end up in a post-apocalyptic cityscape being assaulted by a horde of plant monsters known as the Root. We soon find Ward 13, the main hub and one of the last holdouts of humanity against the Root invasion. It turns out that the Root are invaders from another dimension, and the founder of Ward 13 left to travel to another world many years ago to discover how to stop the Root. So once we get Ward 13's dimensional portal capabilities up and running again, we go off to look for Ward 13's founder... even though, y'know, there's nothing to suggest he actually succeeded in finding a way to look for the Root. But hey, how hard can it be to find one guy across all of spacetime with no leads, right?

So we have a clear opposing force and a clear goal, but... there's still a lot of questions. What are the Root? Are they trying to do anything beyond mindlessly attack everything? Who are we? We clearly have some sort of backstory, but the game never touches on it at all. If the game gave me nothing, like Soulsborne, I would just have to accept it, but getting a few (and only a few) plot beats makes it feel like Remnant is just scrimping on the story. You can find documents that suggest towards the Root's origin, but they're pretty inscrutable.

On top of that, the graphic design and worldbuilding is split among the different worlds you visit, making it feel shallow even though the actual amount of lore is substantive. Each world looks different from the others—but every area within the same world basically looks the same, leading to a feeling of monotony. Each world has its own background and lore, but none of it feels like it's developed, since we're "told" the history through the paltry dialogue provided by the few NPCs in each world. For instance, one world discovered an elixir that provided immortality for as long as it was drank and developed a system of nobility based around it. But the wells were tapped dry and the reserves began to run low, causing friction that eventually led to a rebellion (which is ongoing when we arrive). This is a cool idea, but we get one quick conversation about it, and it has absolutely no impact on our experience in this world compared to any other. There's a lot of lore, and I think it's pretty cool, but most of it feels like it's either withheld from the player or has no impact or meaning.

I didn't find the music particularly memorable, but I thought the sound design was great. Monsters have horrific cries, weapons have satisfying audio feedback, and attacks are distinctive and visceral. While not the flashiest component of the game, the sounds do help immerse yourself into the various worlds you visit.

The co-op is also implemented well. Sometimes Souls-like games tend to make their co-op a pain to access for some reason, but that's not an issue here. In Remnant you just directly connect to the other person and show up in their game. Easy as that! Additionally, as far as gameplay is concerned, the players are equals, not a "host" and "guest." If one player dies, another can use a charge of their healing item to revive the fallen player, and it's game over if all players die. (Whereas in the genre is common for the game to end as soon as the host dies.)

I think as a game, Remnant is pretty good. The incorporation of third person shooter mechanics brings a unique twist to the Souls-like formula, while the Souls-like core prevents the shooter gameplay from devolving into passive cover-based shooting. And you'd better enjoy the gameplay, because the story is straightforward, the lore is spread thin over the various game words, and the procedural level generation means exploration is lackluster,. But at the end of the day, the solid and unique gameplay does make Remnant: From the Ashes worth a shot for fans of the genre.