Just a fantastic Souls-Like overall! Recommended to anyone that loves a challenge and a cool array of classes/load-outs

I wanted to like this. But the gameplay just kind of... boring. Even in Co-Op. Some of the boss fights are somewhat creative, but even so, I just never felt invested or motivated to carry on.

The story doesn't redeem the lackluster gameplay either; it's just endless technobabble and references to various gods and macguffins.

Remnant 2 is a souls-like third person RPG shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world. It's the successor of the well liked Remnant: from the ashes and improves existing mechanics in addition to introducing a ton of new features to improve build variety while staying true to it's core.

• Story:
  After a short tutorial you'll arrive in your hideout where merchants are supplying you. Each campaign consists of 5 different worlds. 2 of them are static with fixed loot while the other 3 will always be randomly generated. Each of these 3 worlds have 2 Story Scenarios (3 if u own the DLCs) with sidedungeons and it's loot beeing different every run. The Story is good enough to keep you invested. Pay attention to the dialogue as it sometimes changes events and rewards loot
  
  
• Souls-like:
  There are 26 Dungeon Bosses and 11 World Bosses. Even normal/elite enemies can kill you if you don't pay attention. The hitboxes are great and most enemies have weakspots that increase the damage. They did a great job making each boss unique and challenging without actually overtuning them. The game has 4 difficulties, and even the lowest difficulty can be quite tough in the beginning. The best part is, unlike most of the other souls-like games, you don't lose anything upon death.
  
  
• Unique Loot:
  They really stepped up their game with the plethora of equip available, each with their own effect and purpos. Chose one of the 27 Handguns, 39 Long guns, 47 Melee Weapons, 28 armor sets, 106 necklaces and 225 rings in order to customize your loadout. They introduced 27 different new relics (your "heal"/potion). All items are dropped by bosses, purchasable/craftable by vendors or hidden in the world. They also introduced the class system (4 base classes + 10 unlockable classes later, each you can level to 10 to unlock everything). Later you unlock the second classslot for Duospec.
  
  
• Play what you want, how you want it:
  There are 37 weapon modifications (active skills) most of which you can freely equip onto your weapons. Leveling affects your passive abilities (traits) and class level. There are 40 passive traits which you can max out at 10. in total you can allocate 85 traitpoints. You can buy an item (once) to reset them. It's pointless friction and it's would be a great QoL improvement to just leftclick to add points and rightclick to remove points. If you switch loadouts it happens automatically. Armors have also changed: Weight still plays a role (the heavier the armor, the bigger the stamina penalty) but no more setbonuses. To compensate they added 66 "mutators" that you add to your weapon to further customize. There are dozens of viable endgame builds, play as a summoner, a caster, a stealthy Sniper, nuke the sh*t out of bosses or go a full tank/sustain build, the possibilities are endless.
  
  
• Enourmous replayability:
  Every area is randomly generated, that means that no playthrough is the same. Each map has their encounters and Questitems, some of which have up to 4 different uses for different loot. This encourages replaying the campaign in order to collect all items and face different enemies. The other gamemodes add to that:
  
  - Adventure Mode:
  Compact, arcade-like campaign mode. You chose a world and difficulty and the game randomly generates a map. Great to get the alternative kill on the world bosses or finding new items. An adventure run takes between 45min-3h depending on how much you explore.
  
  - Bossrush:
  This mode replaced the Survivor mode from Remnant 1. After filling the bar by killing enough trashmobs you'll face an abberation (bossform of a trashmob) and upon defeating the bossroom will unlock. There are 3 modes: 3 bosses (2 dungeonbosses + 1 worldboss), 7 bosses (4DB + 2WB + Campaign Endboss) or 19 bosses (12DB + 6WB + CB). It's the main Endgame activity as it rewards lots of XP for your prism aswell as missing loot and corrupted shards.
  
  - Hardcore Mode
  It's the same campaign with a permadeath feature. You unlock several account wide items after killing world bosses in hardcore mode and a HC Veteran Difficulty clear rewards you a weapon. Scripted deaths like in Losomn will end your run
  
  
• Everything can be played COOP:
  The winning formula which already made the first game so good is that all content can be played coop with up to 2 friends. After finishing the short tutorial you can basically directly invite your friends or join a friends game. Your character is the main focus, so every item you unlock is granted to your character, regardless if you are playing your campaign, or joining a friends lobby. And if noone is available or you are tired of playing solo, simply join a random lobby online.
  
  
• Hidden stuff
  This time they really outdid themselves with hiding stuff. Some items are near impossible to get unless you do some research in the wiki. (Archon class, Polygun, Dranception/Anguish, Cremated Soul Ash, Genesis). Some items also have insane rng requirements where specific scenarios have to be rolled in the same campaign (Override Pin/Kolkets Razor for the Nightweaver Web). For Completionists, the Wiki is mandatory
  
  
• Loadouts
  Finally, they introduced Loadouts in Remnant 2. The Endgame pretty much consists of testing new builds or adapting to bosses you are facing. Tho 8 Slots is still way too less for the amount of possibilities you have.
  
  
• Performance & Bugs
  The game runs pretty smooth while still good looking. With my alrdy dated rig (RTX2070, i5 9.6k) i only experienced a handful of crashes in my 300+ hours which is more than decent. Most of the bugs i encountered are minor annoyances. The most annoying one tho was an audiobug when using Bulletstorm where the audio sometimes persisted even after the skill was over and only dying or relogging solved it. Apart from that i had some mobs spawning inside of walls or beeing stuck outside in bossrush
  
  
• Prisms
  Oh boy where do i start, you get your first prism after killing your first worldboss (you can obtain 6 more later) but it's obvious that this system got added later on since absolutely nothing ingame explains in the slightest how it works or what it is supposed to do. I can only strongly suggest watching a youtube video for a little prism guide. The system is pretty neat with adding permanent statbuffs to your prism which you can level to +10. After that you get offered 3 options out of the 42 legendary perks available and pick one. They added the option to only reset that perk, so you just have to level up your last level until you get the legendary perk you want. But man it's a tedious grind, It took me 500 NM/APO Bosses to finish 2 Prisms, thats like 25+ hours/prism. Some legendary perks are straight up bonkers so i dont want to play an inferior version of the build because of an obviously not fleshed out system. Grinding 15+ hours for the 3/42 chance to get the right legendary perk is neither fun, nor rewarding.

Remnant 2 is a worthy successor of Remnant: From the Ashes. It took the best parts from R1, improved them and added tons of nice new systems to further increase the build variety. It plays very well and the time/reward ratio is great 99% of the game. The best part is that you are able to play it coop which makes for great evenings with friends. Grab the 3 DLC as they each add a complete new scenario aswell as tons of new equip and secrets. It would be a straight 10/10 game if not for the prism grind at the end.

My suggestion is to play the first campaign raw to experience the game without interruption. Afterwards, if you are a completionist like me, hug the wiki and be astonished how creative the studio is in hiding stuff and adding secrets :)