Developer: Gunfire Games
Publisher: Gearbox Publishing
Platform: PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
Remnant II – The Dark Horizon DLC – Review
Remnant II has entertained us quite a bit over the course of the last year, and we had quite a bit of fun with the two recent DLCs. We were treated to a treasure trove of content and even now, we still haven’t uncovered all the secrets the game and its DLCs have to offer. Now, the final DLC, The Dark Horizon, has been released, and we’re quite sad that our journey is slowly coming to an end. We were hoping we’d get a grand finale, but we were perhaps a bit disappointed due to some technical issues and the overall short length of this DLC.
This final DLC of Remnant II takes us back to N’Erud, where a new entity is wreaking havoc. A strange being has taken over the minds of the few remaining inhabitants of the desolate world and now that you’re there, you’re not spared either. It’s a bit like the storyline where you ended up cursed, so it doesn’t feel all that new. There’s a new zone to explore and a new gliding mechanic where you can traverse the new area vertically as well. It’s a fairly interesting new map to explore, but the main story content is extremely short. It took us roughly an hour to beat the main story, and we even cleared a bit of the side content in that timespan as well. We felt, for the final DLC, things could have been a bit more fleshed out.
The Warden is the new Archetype in this final DLC, and it’s a fairly fun new class to mess around with. The Warden has a drone they can summon, and this drone has three different settings. You can either opt for a shield drone, a healing drone, or an attack drone. These unlock in sequence, starting with the shield drone. This makes the Warden a bit more of a support class, as you can command your drone to follow your team members to provide them with a shield or improved healing. Compared to the Ritualist and the Invoker, which were introduced in the last two DLCs, the Warden is a more passive Archetype.
Outside of the content of the paid DLC, Remnant II also received a free Boss Rush mode. In this mode, you can choose if you want to take on three, seven, or nineteen consecutive bosses. You can choose between the regular difficulty options, and the higher the difficulty, the higher the experience reward. The latter did feel a bit underwhelming, as we were able to farm experience a lot quicker on the easiest difficulty setting. That being said, in the Boss Rush mode, you’ll always have to take on an Abberation before fighting one of the game’s (optional) bosses. It’s a simple format that works, but we did notice a few flaws. As the game is still not extremely stable, disconnects from party members occur. When this happens, they cannot reconnect to the ongoing session, and will not be rewarded with experience. We experienced this several times, to the point we felt it was useless to try the Boss Rush mode together with friends. It’s a shame, as the mode itself is entertaining, and you get rewarded with a nice sum of experience and new items as well.
The Fragment system is also basically a new passive upgrade system that works like a roulette. You’ll be able to equip Prisms, which when leveled up, can gain (random) passive bonuses. You can further level the Prism(s) to strengthen those passive bonuses. Furthermore, you can acquire multiple Prisms, and this will allow you to swap out interesting passive upgrades. Sadly, as many players will have already gone through most of what the game has to offer, it feels like this overhaul comes a bit too late. You’ll have to do a lot of grinding to max out your Prism(s). Those who have achieved most of what they wanted to achieve with Remnant II will probably not be motivated enough to keep grinding.
Conclusion
While we still enjoyed The Dark Horizon, as we were simply glad to plow through more Remnant II content, we still expected more from this final DLC. It’s clear that the game still has quite a few technical difficulties, and the free additional content is still not as polished as it could be. Even so, the new Archetype is a lot of fun to mess around with, there are new bosses for you to kill, and it’s great that N’Erud also gets a bit more lore and content. If you enjoyed the previous DLCs, you’ll probably still enjoy this one.
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