Remnant 2 - The How and Why of 100+ Hours
What is the most amount of time you spent on a game AFTER you beat said game?
There are any number of reasons to keep playing after the credits roll including trophy/achievement hunting and/or alternate endings. Perhaps there is end-game content that only becomes available after finishing up the main questline like the raid bosses in the Borderlands series or the post-story missions in Nioh. Last, but not least, games with multiple playable characters can increase replayability tenfold. MMOs aside, most games have a definitive end but the user’s own experience dictates when they are truly done.
Remnant 2 has none of the above features. At the time of this writing, the only updates have been quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes. 3 different DLCs are planned but there has been no information as to the what or the when. There are no post-game raid bosses to fight, there are no alternate endings to uncover, and there is no need to reroll a class as your character can play all the class archetypes. When that last boss dies, it is curtain call time. Technically, you could beat the game on other difficulties but for the average player, one playthrough was enough.
Quick Note: Remnant 2’s easiest difficulty is no cakewalk. It’s not break your controller punishing but it provides enough of a challenge. This might be enough for many players and beating the game on the other 3 difficulties plus hardcore may be too much. That said, if you stick with me here and continue reading, you will see that difficulty is but a fraction of what can be done if you choose to keep playing plus everything outside of the difficulty rewards can be done on whatever difficulty you choose.
Watch the credits and turn off the game, right?
Right?
At around the 40-hour mark, I killed the final boss and concluded the story. So why would I keep going? To quote Marcus from Borderlands, “So, you want to hear another story, eh?”
In Remnant 2, if you were to count up all the bosses in-game (there are aberrations - randomly spawning mini-bosses, dungeon bosses, and world bosses), the total is 41. My playthrough encountered 15 of them. That is only approximately 36%. Remnant bosses drop items that can be used to forge new weapons or modify your existing gear. I did not get to see 64% of the game’s weapon/item offerings the first time around so of course I wanted to play more. This is like using all the skips in Super Mario Bros. to go from World 1 to World 4 to World 8. Are you not in the least bit curious as to what else the game has to offer? I forgot to mention that some of those 41 bosses have alternate kill methods for additional items so those percentages I threw at you are not completely accurate.
Many games boast procedural generation of their levels and it is such a fantastic feature. Usually, you get some combination of enemy types, enemy placement, and map layouts. Returnal did a fantastic job of this as you never started a run the same way and Diablo has employed this for years so the dungeons did not grow stale. Well, Remnant 2 cranks that up to 11 by also randomizing loot drops. If your first thought was the MMO style of chance to drop, I can alleviate those fears and tell you it is not. If you get the encounter you are looking for, you will get the drop you wanted. The keyword in that last sentence is “If.” Remnant 2 features 6 distinct worlds, all of which you will visit starting in Ward 13 and ending in Root Earth. To avoid spoilers, there is a 3rd location that appears between your other stops but the 3 remaining worlds can appear in any order in each playthrough. Breaking all of this down further, 35 possible dungeons/locations can appear across those 3 randomized worlds. Even if you were super thorough and uncovered every last section of every map, the game has made it so that you would not see it all. Confused yet?
Every new run, whether it be in the campaign or adventure mode (more on that shortly), begins on either Yaesha, N’Erud, or Losomn. The aforementioned Ward 13 is your hub and just a jumping-off point. The starting location in those worlds can be one of two areas. This will determine the world boss you will face (there are 2 possibilities for each world) and is one of the few fixed things in Remnant 2. I feel like I am explaining time travel and the multiverse now…In your best Xzhibit voice (IYKYK), “Yo dawg, we heard you like procedurally generated so we put procedurally generated worlds inside of your procedurally generated worlds.” For a straight-up bonkers (and extremely well done) breakdown, check out this Reddit post that outlines the possible events/dungeons/encounters that can be found based on the starting point.
Say you start your game off in Yaesha and kill World Boss X to move on to the next world. Perhaps you have friends who play or you saw a YouTube video, “5 best weapons to get first,” and now you realize you need to kill World Boss Y. What do you do? You have two options now. You can either reroll your campaign or start adventure mode. Rerolling the campaign does not guarantee a Yaesha starting point (you can just reroll again and again to get it) but starting up adventure mode allows you to pick the world. Of course, you have to hope to get the other starting point but that can easily be fixed by rerolling until you do. World Boss kills are easy to come by via your own game or even using multiplayer and finding someone at that specific location. Also, the campaign and adventure modes are completely separate and will not affect the progress in the other mode.
Now say you want a specific item that appears in Losomn. Load up Losomn in Adventure Mode and get started. I said that World Boss kills are easy (I was mainly referring to gaining access to them and not the ease of dispatching them). Well, specific item farming can be an absolute pain in the ass. Most dungeons/locations will appear in the world they spawn in regardless of the world boss. This means that location Z can appear regardless if you have the starting point for Boss X or Boss Y. There are a few exceptions and/or tips/tricks to finding specific locations. Your first task is to find that specific dungeon. Once found, I would suggest praying to whatever deity you pray to that it is the right dungeon variation. What do I mean? Some dungeons always have static loot. Find the dungeon, clear it, and get the loot. Other dungeons can contain up to 3 random encounters and many times, there is no way to know without clearing it. Although I said it was a pain in the ass, in the early stages of farming, your only concern when rerolling is that you just get a new location. Hell, I found new loot at the 125th-hour mark of playing. Honestly, the only time I was annoyed was when trying to get the final trophy for the platinum and I could not get this one location to spawn.
Remnant: From the Ashes had 3 starting classes but all that dictated was the armor you wore and what set bonus came with said armor. Remnant 2 changed it up by having class archetypes with 4 available right out of the gates. These archetypes each have their special abilities. As you progress through the game, you can discover up to 7 more class archetypes. A primary and a secondary archetype can be equipped which means…more math (sorry!). If you feel so inclined, there are 110 possible archetype combinations that you can play. Who needs multiple characters when your character can do it all? There are no “meta” builds in Remnant 2. At the time of launch, a popular combination was Hunter and Gunslinger due to the synergy of the class abilities. As the community gained access to the 81 weapons, 59 weapon mods, 62 amulets, 144 rings, and 21 relics hidden throughout, more and more builds were created. The Fextralife wiki for Remnant 2 has several builds with full breakdowns and one can easily search YouTube for a variety of builds revolving around different archetypes and different weapons.
Secrets play a huge part in Remnant 2. Some are obvious like falling through a section of the floor while others are completely off the wall. For example, one of the class archetypes was hidden by the developers behind data mining. It took the entire community a few weeks to determine where and how to unlock it. Even the alternate boss kills I mentioned are secret and not something you just stumble upon. I mean, one boss can be killed in 4 different ways for 4 different pieces of loot. One weapon required you to unblock a drain in the sewer and then return after 90 real-world minutes for some light platforming and a shiny grenade launcher that also shoots rockets. It amazes me how people even discover these things. My favorite secret though was one I discovered at around 140 hours into the game and I was speechless.
It was just so dumb and so simple but so extremely useful.
I completely understand the camp of people who beat Remnant 2 after putting in 35-40 hours and just moved on to their next game. It provides a decent challenge while still being fun and it seemingly just ends at the credits. Now, I put in 100+ hours in the first game so I knew there was more than meets the eye but Remnant 2 wildly exceeded expectations when it came to replayability. I would bet money that the 3 DLC planned are not just a new level with a new boss to kill based on everything the game already offers. Find yourself a co-op partner or two and just explore. Gunfire Games put a lot of effort in for you to just stop at the credits.
