Remnant: From the Ashes Review Summary

Fun co-op Soulslike shooter with brutally difficult bosses, but let down by a bland story, repetitive procedural generation, and frequent crashes.

Fun co-op experience: Cooperative play is a standout feature, enhancing enjoyment and making the game memorable when played with friends. It supports up to three players and adds a layer of fun and teamwork.

High replayability from random generation: Random world generation, boss rerolls, and procedural layouts make each playthrough unique, significantly boosting replay value. Players appreciate the freshness and variety across multiple runs.

Enjoyable with friends: Playing with friends significantly increases the fun factor, whether in solo or co-op mode. The game is enjoyable alone but becomes even more entertaining and chaotic with a group.

Varied and unique weapons: Players consistently praise the diverse weapon selection, including exotic models, modifications, and melee options. The arsenal supports multiple builds and playstyles, making each weapon feel distinct and fun to use.

Excellent gameplay and gunplay: The core shooting mechanics are widely praised for being well-balanced, polished, and satisfying. Players highlight the precise movement and fluid combat as major strengths.

Boss fights are excessively difficult: Many reviews highlight boss fights as too hard, frustrating, or poorly balanced, especially for solo players. This includes normal difficulty, final bosses, and DLC content, with complaints about adds and hitboxes.

Story is bland and underwhelming: Multiple clusters indicate the story lacks depth, engagement, and originality, with many reviewers describing it as uninspired, generic, or poorly executed. This is a common criticism across many reviews.

Gameplay becomes repetitive over time: Several clusters point out that the game gets dull and predictable after a few hours or playthroughs, due to repeated enemies, environments, and mechanics. This impacts replay value significantly.

Procedural generation leads to repetition: Reviewers frequently mention that procedurally generated maps and world design become repetitive, confusing, and generic after initial playthroughs. This negatively affects exploration and long-term engagement.

Solo play is not recommended: A strong consensus across multiple clusters is that the game is poorly designed for solo players, with extreme difficulty, lack of support, and co-op-oriented mechanics making solo play frustrating or nearly impossible.

Soulslike shooter hybrid: The game is frequently described as a Souls-like third-person shooter, blending elements from Dark Souls with firearm-based combat. Players mention it combines the atmosphere and difficulty of Souls games with shooting mechanics.

Co-op multiplayer up to three players: Many players highlight the game supports cooperative play for up to three players, including joining random lobbies and playing with friends. Co-op is a core feature, with some noting friendly fire is enabled.

Procedurally generated worlds and bosses: The game features extensive procedural generation, affecting maps, dungeons, bosses, and NPC encounters. This randomness ensures each playthrough is unique, with locations and bosses changing.

Multiple difficulty modes available: The game offers a range of difficulty settings, from easy to hard, nightmare, and apocalypse. Players appreciate the variety, which allows them to tailor the challenge to their preference.

Boss fights with summons: Boss fights are a major element, with bosses often summoning minions or appearing with waves of enemies. Players find these encounters challenging, set in arena-style maps.

Crashes and bugs frequent: Multiple users report crashes during tutorials, boss fights, and cutscenes, with one save corruption and many bug reports. This indicates stability issues affecting gameplay progression.

Optimization praised on mid-range: Reviewers with RTX 2070, 2060 Super, and GTX 1660 report stable 60+ FPS on high settings, calling optimization good on moderate hardware.

High-end PCs stutter: Even on powerful systems, users experience stutters during location loads and frame drops to zero, suggesting optimization problems on high-end hardware.

Netcode generally stable: Multiplayer connections are mostly good, with one user noting good netcode that keeps sessions on brief loss, but others report ping issues and teleporting.

Steam Deck runs well: Users confirm the game runs smoothly on Steam Deck and Legion Go S, making it a positive handheld experience.

Best enjoyed with friends: Many reviewers emphasize that the game shines in co-op, with some stating it is almost mandatory to play with friends for the best experience. Solo play is often described as boring or less enjoyable.

Buy on sale: A significant number of reviewers recommend waiting for a sale or discount before purchasing, as the game is often considered not worth full price. Some suggest specific price points like under 10€.

Positive co-op shooter: The game is praised as a satisfying co-op shooter and adventure, with reviewers recommending it for fans of the genre. It is often described as a fun and engaging experience when played with others.

Highly recommended overall: Many reviewers give a strong, unconditional recommendation, stating the game is worth every penny and a must-play. These positive endorsements come without caveats about difficulty or co-op.

Great for Souls-like fans: Fans of Souls-like games, especially those who enjoy challenging gameplay and boss fights, are frequently recommended to try this game. It is often praised for its hybrid of shooter and Souls elements.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $20.00.

Game completion: 28.0h.

Story completion: 14.0h.

Remnant: From the Ashes has a slow start with confusing mechanics and unappealing early areas, but becomes highly engaging after the first 2-3 hours once players understand the systems and progress past the initial stages.

Reported time to anchor: 2h 30m.

Friction: confusing mechanics; unappealing early environments; steep learning curve.

Unlock drivers: learning game mechanics; progression past early areas.

Co-op Social Gamer: Cooperative, strategic with friends, relying on communication and shared roles. Motivation: Social bonding and chaotic fun with friends. Stance: buy.

Solo Hardcore Challenger: Methodical, analytical, optimizing builds and mastering boss patterns through solo play. Motivation: Personal mastery and overcoming challenge. Stance: buy.

Achievement Completionist: Grindy, RNG-dependent, often rerolling worlds or using external tools to obtain achievements. Motivation: Completionism and achievement hunting. Stance: no buy.

Performance is inconsistent: lower VRAM and even top-tier hardware often suffer from frame drops and crashes, while mid-range VRAM (12-15GB) can achieve stable high settings.

Windows <8GB VRAM / <16GB RAM: negative. Frequent frame drops, stutters, and crashes, especially during boss fights, make the game nearly unplayable on lower-end systems.

Windows <8GB VRAM / 16-31GB RAM: positive. Most users report smooth 60+ fps on high settings with stable performance, though one noted significant input lag.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: negative. Players experience freezes, bugs, fps drops to 0, and alt-tab glitches, making performance poor despite some positive notes.

Steam Deck: The game generally runs well on Steam Deck with smooth performance and good optimization, but stability is marred by occasional crashes and a critical anti-cheat restriction that blocks online multiplayer on Linux. Controls can be difficult for the fast-paced gameplay, though this is subjective.

Linux and Proton: The game exhibits excellent Proton compatibility for single-player offline mode, as evidenced by multiple positive Steam Deck reports of smooth performance. However, there is a clear and significant Linux-specific blocker preventing multiplayer access, limiting Linux users to solo play only.

Monetization: User reviews focus on the base game's quality and the value of paid DLCs. No evidence of real-money microtransactions, pay-to-win mechanics, gacha, loot boxes, or other predatory monetization. Complaints about DLC-locked content are typical for expansion-based pricing and do not indicate greed.

External guides: The user feedback indicates a strong dependency on the wiki and external guides for discovering hidden items, navigating maps, understanding quest objectives, and learning boss mechanics. While some users appreciate the depth, many express frustration with the lack of in-game guidance, leading to a significant 'wiki tax' for full game enjoyment.

Dark Souls with guns: Many reviews describe the game as 'Dark Souls with guns', but some note it has its own identity. The comparison highlights challenging combat and similar tension.

DLCs expand content: The game has multiple DLCs that add new worlds, bosses, items, and game modes. Some DLCs, like Subject 2923, continue the story and provide resolution.

Remnant 2 comparison mixed: Reviewers frequently compare the game to Remnant 2, with some preferring this game while others find Remnant 2 superior. Differences in polish and charm influence these opinions.

Difficulty similar to Dark Souls: The game's high difficulty is often compared to Dark Souls, but many reviewers note it is manageable for fans of the genre. The challenge is a core aspect of the experience.

Frequent discount availability: The game is often sold at a significant discount, making it more accessible. Many reviewers purchased it during sales or acquired it for free.