Remnant: From The Ashes demands a lot from you while offering very little in return. Its excellent combat and high-stakes, randomized progression system gives it moments of pure blissful excitement, especially in co-op. But its frequent difficulty spikes and underwhelming gear system rob it of the consistently “tough but fair” feeling that gives Souls games their infamous appeal.
The elevator pitch for Remnant is basically Dark Souls with a heavy focus on ranged, gun-based combat, and it sticks closely to that format. Your team of three fights across randomly generated maps and slays boss monsters in the hopes of earning extremely rare loot. Gunfire Games did a good job of building out a world that feels unique with lots of fine details that are fun to uncover, but the actual post-apocalyptic story about a battle against an evil called The Root lacks personality and a driving purpose to keep things interesting on that front. I found myself being told where to go and what to do a lot by sparse voice acting, but I was never given much of a reason to care about anything but the basics.
