Remnant II is a third-person shooter and action RPG developed by Gunfire Games and published by Gearbox Publishing. It is the sequel to 2019’s Remnant: From the Ashes and was released on July 26, 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. It takes the best parts of the first game and complements and improves on them in many ways. It’s a fantastic game with great attention to detail, great voice acting, incredible shooting, clever puzzles, and enough of a story to keep you moving forward. It’s become one of my favorite games of 2023 so far.

The story of Remnant II takes place decades after the events of Remnant: From the Ashes. Earth has been rebuilt, but the threat of Root still exists. Players take on the role of a new survivor who must travel across different worlds to find the resources they need to fight Root. Along the way, they’ll face off against new powerful enemies and learn more about Root’s origins and plans for the multiverse.

Character creation is the first step into the game, and while the level of detail in your character is great, it’s not as customizable as recent similar games. There are enough presets available, but I was unable to match any of the voices to the face I selected. I hope this is just my problem. However, once in the game, the level of detail in the environments, monsters/creatures and other people is excellent. I could hear the GPU fan when I entered the game and it crashed a few times, but my brother-in-law Justin, who was playing co-op with me, did not crash at all. The GPU ran pretty hot during the game, but never reached dangerous levels.

I have to give credit to all the voice actors featured in the game. Their performances were all great and perfectly suited the character’s aesthetic. They really helped build the story and situations and I loved the characters’ dialogue during missions, especially in co-op mode. I really liked the intro, as it teaches you how to move, shoot and loot and gives you a quick boss fight to warm you up before you enter Ward 13, the main hub of the game, and prepares you for what comes next.

The four starting archetypes are Medic, Hunter, Challenger, and Handler, with a fifth archetype, Gunslinger, available as a pre-order bonus (Gunslinger and other new archetypes can be unlocked by looting special items throughout the game, for a total of 11 archetypes in the game). Justin chose Gunslinger and I chose Medic, which was an excellent combination in co-op. We both started the first mission alone, but were confused when we tried to team up, as his mission start location was different from mine. This is because the game is procedurally generated, taking users to random worlds outside of Yaesha, Losomen, and N`Erud.

Justin came into my game and we set off, shooting and looting forests, caves, temples, and plenty of interesting places to explore. The world design is phenomenal, although some of the outdoor areas felt a bit empty at times. We eventually came across a dungeon with a trap section that felt like we were playing Indiana Jones and took a few tries to decipher. Then we explored deeper. The revised 3D map was great for seeing where we’d been and where we still hadn’t. We got into the habit of breaking every vase or box we saw to gather scrap and other resources.

We saw red areas on the map, but after ages of walking around, we just couldn’t figure out how to get there. Just as we were about to give up and leave, I broke some vases in the corner of the room, revealing a gap in the stone floor that was about to fall through. So we arrived at the last area, where we found our new armor. We thought this dungeon was awesome, but then we came across the labyrinth. Wow, it’s an amazingly well-designed dungeon with portals that let you change your objectives and access more loot.

After leveling up, defeating a boss and discovering the Book of World Knowledge to gain 10 trait points, you can now use Dual Archetypes. This means that you can choose another archetype to complement or replace your original choice, but you must first buy or find a special item in the world. You can simply use your main archetype, or split the XP you’ve earned between the two archetypes to use a mix of skills and perks. The reason I chose healthcare worker/caregiver is because we both play and our pets have been such a great help especially when we are overworked and busy.

It was great to be able to use the Worldstone to return to a city, upgrade your weapons, then come back and continue without losing your progress. This was extremely helpful when the game crashed a few times. The different worlds have different storylines woven into them, encouraging exploration and multiple revisits, and defeating a boss in each world unlocks Adventure Mode for that world. Once an area is unlocked, Adventure Mode can be accessed by interacting with the Worldstone and clicking “World Settings” at the bottom.

Loading Adventure Mode into a zone will enter the area from the beginning. Due to procedural generation, the layout may differ from what you played in Campaign Mode. Additionally, most zones have two storylines featuring entirely different bosses. This means that if you enter an area you played through in the campaign, you can click “reroll” in adventure mode to get an alternative version of it. This added a lot of replay value to the game in addition to the co-op adventures that I enjoyed the most.

Overall, Remnant II is an excellent sequel that builds on the first game in many ways and is one of my favorite games of 2023 so far. The voice acting was great, the world design was phenomenal, and the gameplay was solid, especially in co-op. Just when I was thrilled to discover something new in the game, the next sequence revealed something I didn’t know yet, making the game even more exciting and fun. Knowing I could unlock more archetypes gave me even more motivation to keep playing, and the ability to reroll zones in Adventure Mode added enough variety to the gameplay that it never felt boring. Looking at the post-release content for Remnant: From the Ashes, I’m excited to see what other content will be added to Remnant II in future updates.

A Steam key from Gearbox was used for this review. Remnant II is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.