Hunting Season: My Remnant 2 Mid-Game Build

 As promised, the Remnant 2 (or as I affectionately call it Rem Rem) content is continuing and now I'll provide some thoughts since I've 2/3 through the main campaign. First I get to show off my sexy character which as we all should know, I've called him Apocrypha.

Apocrypha in game right now is a Hunter archetype with a Medic as my secondary. We only recently started levelling up the Medic class too. Previously we were a Hunter/ Handler with a good doggo called 'Lil' J' (named after our homie Mr. J of course). However once the Handler class got to 10 (which is the max level for an Archetype) we moved over to the Medic cause I was interested in this class too. Plus their healing really helps in a intense game like this one. I do miss the doggo's auto heal when I was downed but I can make do. Another reason, other then getting the Handler to level 10 for the change was sadly, whilst the dog was helpful in dungeons and the overworld maps, I feel in boss encounters, he did not help as much and rarely took the enemies agro like I hoped he would. Dogs in Remnant 2 are definitely not Spirit Summons from Elden Ring levels of OP in terms of help.

This is my set-up after beating 2 world bosses and 51 hours of play and I'm enjoying it so far. My main melee weapon was a spear but I seldom used it so I'm switching to a staff now. It is the Red Doe Staff and it has some cool functions to it but I'm not married to it. I might keep it but I might also switch out once I find something cooler. Melee however is not my focus tho, mainly cause as a Hunter you are more concerned with sniping enemies from afar and getting precision shots.

That is where this bad boy comes into play

This bad boy is the first long gun I've fallen in love with outside of my staple long gun I got with my Hunter's kit and it fits the bill even more that a Hunter has a bow as their main weapon. This bow crits like a mofo and has one of the coolest built in mods that heals me and refunds arrows on hit. A lot of rings and other items I have are all focused on critical chance and the Crescent Moon bow make it all fit together. Its funny, in the previous game, one of my favorite builds revolved around a crossbow so its only fitting I upgraded to a long bow for the sequel. There are some other long gun I want to consider but one of the things a lot of fellow Remnant players are saying is you can't spread you upgrade materials out too much and it is impossible to upgrade everything. You need to pick and choose what to upgrade to maximum.

Now as awesome as a one shot shooting bow is, sometimes you need something for the mobs and for crowd control, for that I am sticking with a rather over-used in the current game meta but it has not let me down yet

The Enigma is a lighting based hand gun that deals shock damage and mod actually pinpoints enemies with lighting rods to channel more electricity and in the end is amazing for clearing out trash mobs. This gun used to be so OP, that most people would use it exclusively as a hand gun but it was recently nerfed in a recent patch so now it just amazing instead of overpowered. This gun has hard carried me through a lot of areas and I do not think we will be changing it bar something real game changing drops in our hands. Also as stated before, focusing on upgrading only certain weapons also makes it harder to pivot off it after investing a lot of upgrade material into it.

So now, we have my archetypes, my weapons of choice and what armor set I am running. Speaking of, my armor set is purely for aesthetics right now like I do in most Souls-likes. I actually want other armor sets but they seem to be a bit rarer outside of the archetypes main sets which you can buy from Whispers. Also I just got the standard edition so I did not get any fancy Remnant from the Ashes throwback armors either. I did find the Leto II but that is a ultra heavy armor set and I love my quick rolls too much.

However how about my thoughts on the actual game so far? Well, I hate to say it but so far, I am enjoying it but I'm not loving it. I know it will eventually be a RAVE on this very blog but there are some things I kind of don't like about it.

First and foremost, the bosses.

This boss above was a massive annoyance, it had very obvious weak spot (The Big Red Cross!) but even hitting said weak spot multiple times, he still tanked a lot of damage and you constantly have to dodge his annoying flying ads, his acid puddle pools, that took waaaayyy too much damage (especially if you get hit directly by one and then end up in its follow up pool) and like most bosses in this game for some reason, it has an instant death attack. If you die, you are dead, no doggo resurrections,  no because I have tons of heavy armor I can absorb the hit. No, I've been conserving my Dragon Heart relic so I can use it a couple more times. Nope. 90% of the bosses in this game have an insta-death move and they sometimes even use it multiple times and this is just a regular boss.

The infamous Nightweaver (or as I call her, Bitchweaver) is a World boss that has 2 distinct phases and in phase 2 she attempts multiple times to hit you with her insta-death move. So whilst you are are dealing with this very aggressive boss and her annoying ads, she can also instantly kill you. Their is a very frustrating Labyrinth boss also has an insta-kill and that bosses is a guarantee fight if you wish to progress in the game. The first game did not have this insta-death moments and no other Souls game has a mechanic like this, sure you can be wiped out with one hit if you have not levelled Vigor/ Health in Souls games but nothing as unfair as these mechanics. In all honesty, every boss I've fought in this game from a minor corrupted one in a sewer to a Floating ball of pus have all been experiences in frustration and not fun at all. I definitely recall some bad boss battles in the original Remnant (the final boss comes to mind) but it was no way near as miss and miss as Remnant 2. Also to top this all off, I've heard the final boss in this game is a real piece of work too and also super frustrating to fight.

Boss battles are a hallmark of a good Souls game but I feel every boss so far in Remnant 2 are too much work and uphill battles especially for a solo player like I currently am. Maybe it is because we are playing a ranged game and just shooting one enemy endlessly would get boring very quickly (and I bet it would) so they need to spice it up with ads so you have multiple threats but combine endless ads with the threat of insta-death and its becomes a bit much. Maybe because the game design is more designed for multi-player/ co-op but why have a solo option if multi-player is how they want you to play it.

Speaking of ads, I am also not a big fan of how all the enemies in some areas blend in very well to the background and don't stand out at all. Losomn (the Bloodborne inspired area) for example has tons of enemies almost blending into the background and you have to use the Hunter's active skill to actual see them. It not a big flaw but nether less, I can not say I've ever had an issue spotting enemies before in any other Souls game. Not in Bloodborne, not in The Surge 2 heck not even in Mortal Shell and that game had a very limited color palette. However in Remnant 2 I find myself constantly aiming and seeing if my reticle turns red to let me know an enemy is in front of me instead of instinctly knowing someone was in front of my face.

2 Dark Clothed people fighting on a dark street at Night. Genius!!

However at its core, I do enjoy Remnant 2. A lot of people hate on the storytelling but I feel it does its job, it gives you a goal and points you in the right direction. The actual lore is actually pretty unique and a good read especially if you have read up on the previous entry in the series (including its prequel game Chronos: Before the Ashes). I enjoy the variety the sequel has given me in archetypes and what each one is capable of. I enjoy the puzzles and how some cooler items are locked behind unique conditions (for example, letting a room flood in real time and coming back and a new path is open for you). Most of the NPCs are kind of endearing, especially if you have remember them from Remnant 2 and seeing how they have all progressed with the exception of McCabe who is as grumpy as ever (Remnant fans know what I'm talking about).

I still have a bit more to go before my final review but for now, I am enjoying the hunt despite its flaws to me. Also I have to say Gunfire Games has been on it with patches and making sure any game breaking flaws are addressed so kudos to them. It is nice to know they are not resting on their laurels and making sure we get the best game possible.

Till next time

AV

Fire On High: Remnant 2 Initial Impressions

As promised, we are now beginning our Remnant 2 coverage. When this game was initial annouced I was super hyped for it. It was probably the game I've been looking forward to the most this year and also a rare game when I actually bought it for full price instead of waiting for a 'Complete' edition or when it was on sale. Nope, I wanted to play Remnant 2 as soon as it was released. A lot of this stems from the fact I got the original (Remnant: From the Ashes) for free thanks to Playstation Plus but I had such a fun time playing with my fellow 7B homies Mr. J and Blythe that we all brought the DLC and played that together as well. It is rare for a game to capture all of our attention that is not a fighting game. After multiple playthroughs, we all moved on but the memory remained and when Remnant 2 was announced I announced this was going to be a day one title and Mr. J was down as well. Blythe said he'll play catch-up but he will eventually join us too. 

So the wanting game begun and I watched all the content Gunfire Games produced for the game. From trailers showing off the worlds we would be exploring to the classes aka Archetypes that were available. Ironically I think I changed which Archetype would be starting one a couple times but it was the last one revealed that sealed the deal for me. I was going to be a 'Hunter'.

The Hunter is a sharpshooter/ sniper class which caught my eye (mainly because I played too much Railgunner in Risk of Rain 2 and wanted that playstyle again). The Handler with their dog also appealed to me but when I found out you could use dual archetypes I knew I would pair the two. Now after 45 hrs so far, I've become comfortable with my choice but the fun in Remnant 2 is you are not locked into your initial Archetype and you can change it anytime. In all honesty, I feel I might switch out the Handler class for the Gunslinger as soon as I unlocked it because A) gunslingers are cool and always have a big appeal to me and B) I kind of not like watching my doggo get hurt and C) and He seems to not help as much as I hope against bosses. 

 However to get to the fun, we had to do some stuff so I need to talk about my initial problems. First, this game really pushes my Steam Deck to the limit and it sometimes struggle to stay at 30 fps even on low settings. Graphic fidelity suffers a bit too, when I initially started with no changing of settings the game looked very rough and ran worse, however after change some settings it became much better. Now it is nothing that's going to stop me from playing it but yeah, it can be rough sometimes even with optimized settings. I, however heard the game has trouble running smoothly even on the best computer rigs so it might not even by Steam Deck related and might be down to optimization. 'Lies of P' can run at very high frame rates (sometimes above 40) and feels much smoother on the Steam Deck for example. It is heartening to hear through that Gunfire Games will be working on the performance for all rigs through so this experience might improve as time goes on. 

 My second moment of doubt of my day one purchase was a rather strange input bug that seemed to disable my healing and turned it into another melee attack. This was super strange and was very frustrating because I was now playing a Souls-like game without a healing function. This input bug strangely seemed to only affect me so I eventually had to find a solution so I could play the game with the controller instead of being forced to use the built-in Steam Deck controls, mind you, the SD does have good controls it just rather awkward to hold for long play sessions. Honestly I've never used my built-in SD controls for any action game so I did not want to start with this one, especially one I had been really looking forward to playing. I however figured out that if I switched the heal for a similar button it would work as intended so now I heal with Right Bumper instead of Left Bumper and I've gotten used to it. 

 However after conquering fuzzy graphics, less then optimum frames and weird input bugs on my controller I've really got into Remnant 2 and now I'm playing it non-stop. Me and Mr. J even revisited our From the Ashes days and did some co-op as well which was very fun. The game itself is amazing and running around and shooting and rolling past dangerous attacks and the wealth of weapons, items and secrets (THE SECRETS!!) are a hard pull and I no longer regret getting in on ground floor. Some of these bosses tho, that is another story, which we may talk about in a subsequent blog.

For now, I'm enjoying the ride and ready for some more Remnant 2! 

 AV