Remnant II

The pitch

Remnant II is Gunfire Games' sequel to 2019's sleeper hit Remnant: From the Ashes — a souls-like built around guns rather than melee, with worlds procedurally reassembled from hand-crafted pieces so each run through a realm plays out differently. It supports three-player co-op throughout the full campaign.

The gameplay isn't the argument

Reviewers on both sides of this game's mixed launch agree on the core loop. "Literally just remnant 1 with Nothing but upgrades, improvements, and great additions, It is phenomenal," reads the most-upvoted positive review, from a 143-hour player. Another: "Remnant: From the Ashes was one of the most slept on games and seeing that Remnant 2 has gotten the spotlight it deserves makes me happy. Think dark souls but with guns." The addictive, replayable structure — different worlds, classes and builds each run — draws consistent praise even from reviewers frustrated by other parts of the game.

The specific controversy: "built with DLSS in mind"

What actually dominates the negative-review corpus is performance, and specifically the framing Gunfire Games used to explain it. "Having upscaling is great. But requiring upscaling for playable performance on high end GPUs is a joke," reads one of the most-upvoted negative reviews, from launch day. Reviewers repeatedly quote and mock the same marketing line: "'Built with DLSS in mind.' Translation, we didn't even bother to optimize the game," reads a 517-vote review. Another, even blunter: "'Developed with upscaling in mind' is a crutch and lazy excuse for ba[d performance]." Combined mentions of DLSS, FSR, upscaling, performance and optimisation appear across a large share of the negative corpus — this wasn't a minor complaint among many, it was the dominant one at launch, treating a marketing phrase as an admission that the game shipped unfinished on the optimisation side.

Secondary frustrations: balance changes and secret-hunting design

A smaller but repeated complaint concerns post-launch balance patches applied to what's meant to be a cooperative, PvE-focused game. "I love this game, and I want to recommend it to everyone, but I cannot tell you how tiring it is to be so excited for a game only to have Devs treat a PVE game like a PVP [balance target]," reads a 247-vote review from over a year after launch. A separate thread criticises the game's hidden-content design: "Too much 'secret' stuff you google anyway, so secret is 'secret'. The game doesn't respect your time," reflecting frustration that genuinely obscure puzzle-gated content mostly gets solved via community wikis rather than in-game discovery.

Where sentiment sits now

Recent English review sentiment — the 100 most recent reviews, spanning late July to August 2026 — runs 82% positive, close to the 84.6% lifetime score. The performance controversy was most acute at launch in mid-2023; three years and several patches later, sentiment has stabilised rather than continued declining. Achievement data shows healthy, sustained engagement: the median across 65 achievements is 32.8%, with even a demanding world-boss achievement sitting at 70.6%, suggesting most buyers who start the game make real progress through it.

Value

At its current 75%-off price of NZ$17.87, this is an easy value proposition — a large, replayable co-op RPG with three DLC expansions available, for a fraction of its NZ$71.49 launch price. Monetisation itself draws no complaints in this corpus; the frustration is entirely technical and balance-related, not about predatory design.

Verdict

Remnant II earns real, sustained affection for its core loop — procedurally varied worlds, tight co-op and a genuinely distinctive "souls but with guns" identity that reviewers who loved the first game say this one built on rather than repeated. Its real, well-documented failing was a launch performance profile that required upscaling technology just to run acceptably, treated by its own audience as an admission of unfinished optimisation rather than a genuine feature. On sale, and years past that rocky start, this is a strong pick for co-op souls-like fans.