This game looked very promising on the store page. It reminded me of Dark Souls' weird, nasty enemy designs and I loved it. Although this game's visuals are fairly good, its combat and level design are lacking.

Most noticeably, everywhere you go just feels like an exact copy of everywhere else. So far I've only been on Earth, and I'm assuming you would travel to other planets/dimensions, but there seems to just be two distinct areas on Earth: the streets and the sewers. There are some other short, unique areas, but those make up a minority of the areas you'll be playing through.

The sewers feel similar to the chalice dungeons from Bloodborne, with preset rooms that fit together like puzzle pieces, and preset enemy placements that can sometimes change, but usually not. The sewers have two enemy types that make up 99% of the foes you'll face down there, with robed, Mike-Wazowski-looking creatures that swarm you for far too long and are far too easy to kill, and charging mushroom spore things that explode on death. The other enemies making up the 1% are much stronger and are usually fairly fun to fight. If only they were the main enemies.

The streets are a bit less repetitive when compared to the sewers, being made up of cracked roads, overgrown and crumbled buildings, and abandoned vehicles. And although it's really cool to see when you first enter the streets, it gets old very fast. Most buildings are exact copies of other buildings that you've already seen. The reused abandoned cars wouldn't be as bad if they didn't show up so often with items in the same spots almost every time. It just further points out how they're exact copies of one another. The enemies in the streets are alright. They get a bit old, like most of the enemies, but at this point it's to be expected.

Then, you have the bosses. Oh my god the bosses. As if they themselves weren't annoying already, literally every boss is accompanied by infinitely respawning trash mobs to distract you from the actual boss. The instant you kill one of the 5-or-so trash mobs, another takes its place to continue cluttering the arena. You already have so much to focus on while fighting the boss itself, you don't need to add swarms of more enemies on top of it all. If they added the trash mobs in because the bosses felt too easy, then they needed to rework the bosses' fighting patterns. If they added them to provide you with a source of ammo to continue fighting the boss, then they should have simply created some other way of replenishing ammo mid-fight. There just isn't an excuse for how lazy this design flaw is.

The music is also not that exciting either. Some games like Hyper Light Drifter will entrance you with their music. You can get so lost in the music that it actually gets you killed. With this game though, none of the music was very appealing. Sure it wasn't terrible, but it just was.... forgettable.

On the topic of audio, the sounds that enemies made weren't very distinct. Just from hearing something around the corner, the player should be able to determine exactly what they're about to face. But every time I heard an enemy growling or making some sort of snarling noise, there weren't any distinctive noises that relayed what was actually making the sound. The only information I got was that there was definitely something making a noise somewhere, which is pretty unhelpful.

The voice acting was pretty well done. The characters were, for the most part, very expressive and the actors were very in-character. Pauses in dialogue are much more natural and indicate the character actually thinking about what they're saying. Sometimes voice actors seem to read lines word after word, never giving their character any time to realistically think about their words or process emotions, but you don't see that very much with this game.

The animations are also fairly well done. Actions feel smooth and lifelike. The lipsyncing could use some work, though. It's very stiff.

Overall, Remnant: From the Ashes is pretty promising. It has a lot of potential, but there are just too many annoying flaws with the game's design, that I don't think I even want to keep playing it

This game looked very promising on the store page. It reminded me of Dark Souls' weird, nasty enemy designs and I loved it. Although this game's visuals are fairly good, its combat and level design are lacking. Most noticeably, everywhere you go just feels like an exact copy of everywhere else. So far I've only been on Earth, and I'm assuming you would travel to other planets/dimensions, but there seems to just be two distinct areas on Earth: the streets and the sewers. There are some other short, unique areas, but those make up a minority of the areas you'll be playing through. The sewers feel similar to the chalice dungeons from Bloodborne, with preset rooms that fit together like puzzle pieces, and preset enemy placements that can [i]sometimes[/i] change, but usually not. The sewers have two enemy types that make up 99% of the foes you'll face down there, with robed, Mike-Wazowski-looking creatures that swarm you for far too long and are far too easy to kill, and charging mushroom spore things that explode on death. The other enemies making up the 1% are much stronger and are usually fairly fun to fight. If only [i]they[/i] were the main enemies. The streets are a bit less repetitive when compared to the sewers, being made up of cracked roads, overgrown and crumbled buildings, and abandoned vehicles. And although it's really cool to see when you first enter the streets, it gets old very fast. Most buildings are exact copies of other buildings that you've already seen. The reused abandoned cars wouldn't be as bad if they didn't show up so often with items in the same spots almost every time. It just further points out how they're exact copies of one another. The enemies in the streets are alright. They get a bit old, like most of the enemies, but at this point it's to be expected. Then, you have the bosses. Oh my god the bosses. As if they themselves weren't annoying already, literally every boss is accompanied by infinitely respawning trash mobs to distract you from the actual boss. The instant you kill one of the 5-or-so trash mobs, another takes its place to continue cluttering the arena. You already have so much to focus on while fighting the boss itself, you don't need to add swarms of more enemies on top of it all. If they added the trash mobs in because the bosses felt too easy, then they needed to rework the bosses' fighting patterns. If they added them to provide you with a source of ammo to continue fighting the boss, then they should have simply created some other way of replenishing ammo mid-fight. There just isn't an excuse for how lazy this design flaw is. The music is also not that exciting either. Some games like Hyper Light Drifter will entrance you with their music. You can get so lost in the music that it actually gets you killed. With this game though, none of the music was very appealing. Sure it wasn't [i]terrible[/i], but it just was.... forgettable. On the topic of audio, the sounds that enemies made weren't very distinct. Just from hearing something around the corner, the player should be able to determine exactly what they're about to face. But every time I heard an enemy growling or making some sort of snarling noise, there weren't any distinctive noises that relayed what was actually making the sound. The only information I got was that there was definitely something making a noise somewhere, which is pretty unhelpful. The voice acting was pretty well done. The characters were, for the most part, very expressive and the actors were very in-character. Pauses in dialogue are much more natural and indicate the character actually thinking about what they're saying. Sometimes voice actors seem to read lines word after word, never giving their character any time to realistically think about their words or process emotions, but you don't see that very much with this game. The animations are also fairly well done. Actions feel smooth and lifelike. The lipsyncing could use some work, though. It's very stiff. Overall, Remnant: From the Ashes is pretty promising. It has a lot of potential, but there are just too many annoying flaws with the game's design, that I don't think I even want to keep playing it