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Remnant: From the Ashes Review – Souls-Inspired Game Done Right

Imagine the worlds of Lordran and Yharnam being dynamically-generated that changed with each playthrough, shuffling the locations of items, enemies, and even pitting you against unexpected bosses. At its core, Remnant: From the Ashes draws inspiration from FromSoftware’s lovechild with its unique flair added to the mix. You’ll still fight your way through mobs in different areas, rest at checkpoints (respawning all the enemies in the area), find better loot, and fight bosses locked behind fog-walls.

Remnant: From the Ashes is set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by an alien species known as the Roots. The opening sees your custom character washed ashore as a result of a massive tsunami and you’re introduced to some basic gameplay mechanics (akin to the opening of the original Dark Souls). As you try to familiarize yourself with the combat and fight your way through, you’ll eventually reach a human settlement known as Ward 13.

This is the area where you’ll spend the majority of your time when not out there exploring. You’ll be able to buy new weapons & armor, upgrade your existing gear, and meet new NPCs. If you’ve played SoulsBorne games, think of Ward 13 as equivalent to the Firelink Shrine or the Hunter’s Dream. To be able to do all this, however, requires you to have Scrap – loads of it. You’ll earn Scrap from basically everything in the game – be it killing monsters, destroying environmental objects, looting chests, and defeating bosses.

Luckily enough, unlike SoulsBorne games, you don’t lose your Scrap upon dying. Once you’ve farmed enough Scrap, travel back to Ward 13 from any of the checkpoints and do whatever you please. Apart from weapons and armor, you should pay close attention to Dragon Heart. You can think of it as Estus Flask from Dark Souls games that you can upgrade for increased healing capabilities.

It’s important that you continue to upgrade whenever you get the chance since Remnant likes to ramp up its difficulty with each area you progress through.

Speaking of progressing through the areas, there are three classes to choose from: Hunter, Scrapper, and Ex-Cultist. All of these classes play differently, have their distinct strengths, and successfully add to already immense replayability value of the game.

The class system, however, doesn’t force you to a limited pool of available weapons. Regardless of your initial class choice, you’re free to use any weapon you prefer. So how do distinct playstyles fit into all of this you may ask. This is where Remnant’s Trait System comes in. As you progress through the game, you continue to earn Trait Points and unlock new Traits. These can be simple ones like increased Vigor, Stamina, etc. to more beneficial such as elemental resistances, debuffs, and increased damage.

Traits in Remnant: From the Ashes play an integral role when it comes to build diversity in the game. Another thing that adds to it is the Weapon Mods. You can find them scattered throughout the world and crafted at Ward 13. There is a Weapon Mod Gauge that fills up as you continue to shoot the weapon the mod is attached to use the said mod. I particularly like the mounted Grenade Launcher that would wipe out waves of smaller mobs with a single shot.

While Remnant’s story isn’t its strongest suit, it’s serviceable and is told through cutscenes and dialogues as opposed to making you sit through reading item descriptions in SoulsBorne games though items in Remnant do have small tooltips attached to them. Each area and enemy looks unique and you’ll hardly find yourself at ease, especially during multiple playthroughs.

Speaking of enemies and bosses, Remnant: From the Ashes encourages exploration and replayability over everything else. It’s impossible for a player to experience everything in a single playthrough which is where the concept of rerolling the world state kicks in. The bosses also have a large variety and are more than colossus creatures trying to put you down. Once again, similar to Souls-esque games, the difficulty curve of the bosses ramps up in a jolly co-op session.

With all that said, Remnant does have a couple of pesky issues that you should know about. There are some reports of lost saved progress and matchmaking issues on Xbox One. A few players on forums have also talked about a game-breaking bug near the final boss so make sure to keep this mind.

All in all, featuring incredible boss design, enemies that push you to your limit, environments that complement all of this, and a narrative that doesn’t force you to sit through reading item descriptions for hours, Remnant: From the Ashes is checks all the right boxes when it comes to Souls-inspired game.

If you are interested in learning more about the game then you can check out our Remnant: From the Ashes Subject 2923 DLC review.

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Anthem Review – The World’s First 0/10

At RespawnFirst we aim to publish quality content and do our best to make sure you are well informed. The purpose of any review is to make sure you know if a product is worth your money. And Anthem is clearly not. After playing the game since release I only need a few paragraphs to review this game. And even that paragraph I will summarize in one sentence for your right now: Anthem is a horrible.

Anthem took 6 years to develop but the final product, even after months of its release is no way near what BioWare promised. Anthem has fundamental issues with its loot system, customization, and progression. The lack of a meaningful story mixed with horrible animations, cut content, and server issues make the game unplayable and highly uninteresting.

There are numerous glitches including a persistent teleportation glitch. You are constantly teleported back to where you started. Prolonged loading screens plague the game.

After months in EA’s Anthem, I wanted to prepare a detailed review discussing every issue, problem, visuals, gameplay, etc. However, I came to the conclusion that Anthem isn’t worth writing about. Anthem is a pure scam and it is about time a class action lawsuit is filed against BioWare. The studio showed a fake demo at E3 and so far the game hasn’t been able to live up to any of what was shown at E3 2017 and E3 2018.

One look at Anthem’s Reddit tells the story of how tired and frustrated fans are. And so are we. After discussing it with the team we have decided to give Anthem exactly what it deserves.

RespawnFirst will give Anthem the world’s first 0/10. It is about time we take a stand against horrible practices and lying to consumers. We are also taking into consideration the famous Kotaku report.

The report revealed internal conflict, politics, and lack of leadership during Anthem development. But the worst part is the “BioWare magic” that pushed the developers to their limits in the final months leading up to release.

Anthem is dying and it should for EA to hopefully realize it needs to do better. We will not be covering Anthem until we and the community feels Anthem is drastically changed for the better.

I hope our readers will stand with us in our decision to give Anthem a 0/10 and refusing to cover it for the foreseeable future.

One thing that needs to be clarified is that the reason we are talking about Anthem months after its release is the fact that we started our website only a week ago after leaving our previous company to pursue something of our own and say what we actually want to say without anyone’s approval. This is one of the first topics that we wanted to cover to send a message to anyone at EA/BioWare who thinks such practices can continue. It’s a humble beginning for us and we appreciate your feedback and support. We hope to deliver the best content possible — Team RespawnFirst

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Dauntless Review: Monster Hunting Made Simple

Dauntless is a monster hunting game similar to the Monster Hunter series. It free-to-play and you can team up with three other players in order to take down giant monsters. The game is similar to Monster Hunter and if you have already played those games then Dauntless is going to be very familiar. You will notice that the graphics are a bit different and that is because Dauntless has an art style of its own. Here is our review of Dauntless.

Dauntless Review

Dauntless is a fun game to play with your friends and while the graphics are not super realistic, it has a style of its own. This might seem new at first but you will grow used to it with the passage of time. This also means that Dauntless is not as graphically demanding as similar titles such as Monter Hunter World. I would say that if you shred Monster Hunter down to its core components then what you get is similar to Dauntless.

Monster slaying is pretty much all that you are going to do in the game. You can slay monsters, get crafting materials for them to improve your gear and get back to hunting more monsters. The crafting materials that you get depend on the monsters that you kill. In order to craft fire type gear, you will need to kill fire type monsters. Fire weapons and gear will help you take down ice monsters. The type of gear you have also increases your resistance to a certain element. Ice gear will help you fare better when up against an ice monster.

Using certain weapons and gear will increase your mastery level which will help you get better gear and weapons. This is a great system and will keep you from spending actual money when playing Dauntless. Dauntless has 6 weapon types which are unique in their own way and feel powerful then you use them. The sword is a balanced weapon which I can recommend if you are new to the game. These weapons can be changed and upgraded as you progress through the game. Hammers are the slowest weapons in the game but they do deal a lot of damage.

The monsters in this game are not out of the world like those in God Eater but they are well designed and unique to look at. Dodging is a major aspect of the game and you need to time these right in order to defeat monsters. The game is a bit forgiving in the beginning but as you progress monsters are going to get harder and harder. Taking them down is not going to be as easy as it used when you first loaded the game.

The game supports cross-play so you can play with Xbox One, PS4 or PC users. Character creation is not the most detailed in the world but it does get the job done. Gear customization is impressive and you will hardly ever see two characters that look the same. A monster encounter lasts less than 10 minutes and you can head back and customize your gear and check out the rewards that you got.

Verdict

Dauntless is a fun game to play with friends and it is free-to-play right now. The mechanics are similar to Monster Hunter but it is a much simpler game which removes most of the friction and makes things a lot faster and smoother. If you do not like the complexity of Monster Hunter then Dauntless is worth checking out.

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Rage 2 Review: The Insanity Is Real

Rage 2 is an exciting new shooter and let me tell you that you never really rage even though it is the name of the game. You do feel the adrenaline pumping through your veins when you have to kill hordes of enemies and I for one did get excited when I unlocked a new ability or got a new weapon that I really liked. This might be a single-player game but the gameplay is so good that I would say that if you like how Doom plays then you will find Rage 2 satisfying too.

Rage 2 picks up where the last one ended but you really do not need to play the 2012 title in order to enjoy the new one. While the characters are not memorable and you do not make any decisions in the game, the gunplay and action are what Rage 2 is really all about. The enemy AI might not be too smart but it is aggressive and keep moving in most cases.

Rage 2 Review

The campaign is around 10 hours long and Rage 2 will keep you hooked by giving you new abilities from time to time. These abilities can change how you play the game and also affect exploration. Combining all these abilities together can result in satisfying combos especially when you pair them with the secondary function of your favorite weapons.

Rage 2 encourages players to leave a safe spot and dive deep into combat. You need to be near the enemy in order to collect rewards and these rewards can also heal you. This allows the player to get away with combat that might not be possible in other shooters.

What We Like About Rage 2

The action and shooting is the major highlight here. We see elements of Doom in the gameplay and that is great. If you play Doom then you will be familiar with the mechanics of Rage 2 and getting deep into the enemy hordes is not going to be something new. The progress is not guided so you can unlock the abilities that you want and need first skip the rest. The nano toys are scattered across the map and you can go find them from the start without anyone or anything stopping you.

There is an entire city that you can explore that is not part of the main story. This is one of the reasons why you would want to ignore all the markets that you see and go on exploring the world as you see fit. The combat is the major highlight of the game. It is fun to try out different abilities and then chain them together with your weapons in order to kill hordes of enemies quickly. Chaining combos and killing enemies will fill the overdrive meter that gives you an alternative firing mode for your weapons and also increases the damage that you deal and your healing.

There is a roadmap and the developers are going to introduce more content for the game in the future but then again, some would argue that this content should have been included as part of the game at launch.

What We Did Not Like About Rage 2

The story is not great and some people might even call it shallow. If you are into shooting enemies all the time then that might not be an issue for you. The characters in the game are not particularly memorable and I would not be surprised if you do not remember their names by the time you have finished the campaign. Shooting bad guys is fun and all but having a purpose for all that insanity would have been a great addition.

Once you have cleared an area you can find different loot boxes. These are very well hidden and you might get frustrated trying to find them if you have not unlocked the ability that pinpoints their locations. While the weapons and abilities are great, managing them can be an issue.

Each gun has an upgrade menu and the same is the case for each ability. Your allies have a separate upgrade tree of their own. Craftable items and vehicles have their own menus and upgrades as well. All this can be a bit overwhelming if you are not used to playing games with similar mechanics.

The map is expansive and there is plenty to do in the form of side quests but the open world does seem empty and you will not have any random encounters as you explore the world. The Pheonix is a great vehicle. It has armor, is fast and can fire weapons but there aren’t many activities that you can use the vehicle in. That was a major bummer for me.

Upgrading different skill trees requires different currencies. If you are interested in upgrading your abilities then you might need a specific currency but upgrading a weapon might require a different currency. Farming all these different currencies can be an issue if you have not already done so.

Verdict

Rage 2 has a large open world and loads of upgrades that you can use to your advantage. This is a great game to play if you are sick of Fallout or Far Cry and need a different setting for your next RPG shooter game. The shooting and gunplay are great and is similar to Doom in some ways but the open world is lifeless and the game does not take full advantage of the vehicles that it has.

This concludes our review of Rage 2