The game comes out today, but if you were a sucker like me and paid for the deluxe version, it's been playable for a few days now. I have to say, I really love this game!
The elevator pitch is "dark souls with guns" but after playing it for a few days, I feel like that undersells the game a bit.
Now my experience with souls games has been generally that I really don't like them, up until Elden Ring. That game was great and made me realize that my biggest problem with souls games isn't the challenge, but rather the punishing death penalty. Remnant 2 has no death penalty (other than the enemies all respawning) so it's best-case scenario for me.
Beyond that, Remnant 2 is a perfect mix of procedural and hand-crafted content. You can freely "reroll" levels because they're procedurally generated but they somehow still manage to pack those levels with puzzles to solve and secrets to discover. There are even secret classes you can unlock! You can watch Youtube videos about where to find some great weapon or whatever and realize you never got that zone in your playthrough. The story in each zone can be different in different playthroughs! Even character upgrades ("traits") are locked behind this RNG.
This aspect of it is fun to me because it limits my ability to hit up wikis and min/max my play. It makes it so I can organically just play through and see what I get and make the most of it. Yes, I do check out videos so I know to recognize key ares when I see them, but otherwise, I feel free to just experience the game more organically. I know this is a me thing and not everyone feels the need to compulsively min/max but I'm sure others will appreciate this aspect design.
There's more I'm sure I'm forgetting, but yeah I really like this game a lot. It's a AA title with no jank and almost no bugs in my play on the XSX. For only $50, it's an easy recommendation.
Anyone else playing? Thoughts on the game?
Curious to hear what your thoughts are of the "punishing death penalty". For Demon's Souls, sure, if you're not great at the game it can be rather intimidating. Dark Souls has an equivalent system to Elden Ring where you can become human to enable multi-player, where dying just means you can't co-op (or even be invaded). For all the others, it's just a bit of health that you lose if at all(you can avoid it with items for tough spots).
But if it's souls being on the ground that's the issue, that's also in Elden Ring so I'm confused.
I consider losing all the money and XP you've accumulated since the last save to be extremely punishing. Maybe it's just me, but I can't begin to express how much I hate losing progress. Everything I just did for the last X minutes since the last save was completely undone. Nothing to show for it, no XP, no money, no progress toward my next goal. Just a complete fucking waste of time and X minutes of stress I'll have to repeat. It's like I lost power and corrupted my save file. It's the worst feeling in gaming for me.
Yes, I realize you can get that XP/money back but it adds a level of stress that makes my stomach roil even thinking about it right now. No amount of suggestions on how to think of it differently has changed my perception of it significantly. I dealt with it in Elden Ring for a while but it's probably the main reason I stopped playing that game.
Playing a game with similar mechanics but without the death penalty makes me realize how much more fun Elden Ring would have been without it. IMHO of course. YMMV
Your mistake is thinking dying is failure in those games when it's literally just learning. It's why Dark Souls is called "Prepare to Die", it'sjust part of the game and it's why there are checkpoints every 15m. When you die to some enemy hiding in a corner, you then know exactly where that enemy is next time.
It's hard for me to grasp how new players approach the game at this point because it's just ingrained, but it seems like you had the wrong idea about the mechanics and kinda entrenched yourself in that belief. Hope you come around.