izigame.me

I'll be blunt. If this game is on a big sale, then get it. But if not, it's just not worth it.

Why it succeeds
This game nailed its core small gameplay loop (which is combat). It is visceral. I would dare even say that the sole reason it worked and got popular in the first place, is because it got that (which is essential) right. Think of this combat gameplay loop as an efficient love child of Destiny and Dark Souls.
Player expression through gameplay is present, and so your build choices consistently change the way you're playing during combat, which makes things interesting for longer and allow theorycrafting to an extent.
Why it fails
However, what is essential is not enough, because there are a lot of other games that provide the same core gameplay experience as Remnant: From the Ashes, but also manage to be better in secondary areas: overall amount of content and replayability, artistic direction (story and worldbuilding, visuals, audio), narrative exposition (the way the story is delivered), player expression (customization), and overall quality of life and polish (optimization, user interface, bug fixing).
There is also a massive issue regarding gameplay design that cannot be overlooked: in multiplayer, non‑host players have the same level of authority regarding story progression than you do, meaning that they can destroy your campaign and/or adventure session if they want to by triggering whatever progression event they want to. There is pretty much nothing you can do to prevent it besides becoming paranoïd and not playing with strangers, which kills the social emphasis of the game.

In fine details
Coincidentally, Remnant: From the Ashes either is mixed and/or straight up sucks in the delivery of those secondary elements:
→ Mixed:

Artistic direction
What is present is good, but a little bland, lacking complexity, engagement, emotional and/or philosophical and/or ideological weight, depth and diversity. It just works, but it's not moving your guts in any way.
Player expression
Whilst gameplay expression is there, visual expression is very scarce; which for a game that motivates players to build their character for multiplayer interactions, is pretty sad. The communication wheel is also not great, requiring cumbersome control combinations to be used. And so, nobody uses it; it's a shame because there are cool emotes available.

→ Straight up bad:

Content and replayability
The game's replayability factor comes solely from a gimmick that is praised much to my surprise: pretty much half of the available content is rolled randomly to be available in a playthrough. It does not add anything to your experience at all, it just forces you through re‑rolls to endure the same loops again in the hopes of experiencing what you previously didn't, and to acquire specific items that aren't even necessarily going to change much about your gameplay experience anyways (because they might not fit your desired playstyle, so unless you do it for completionism and curiosity, it's mostly pointless). What makes this an absolute pain is that all non‑boss fights encounters in the combat gameplay loop are extremely repetitive, making subsequent re‑rolls very painfully boring (you can check how much players complain about re‑rolling campaigns or adventures when they have to on the Web to see for yourself). The overall quantity of itemization options is also relatively low for a dungeon crawling game, all things considered.
Narrative exposition
The game consistently manages to present worldbuilding ideas and narratives to you each time you start exploring a world, including Earth. But everytime (and by that I really, really mean EVERY. SINGLE. TIME) things ought be interesting and excite you for consequences, they drop the ball by never reaching for any significant development following initial exposition.
Quality of life and polish
On this game DESIGNED FOR CONTROLLERS IN MIND, YOU CANNOT REMAP ANYTHING and what makes this an issue is that the default layout is honestly not great; it wouldn't be a major issue if the game's built‑in controller detection didn't constantly come into conflict with keyboard and mouse inputs (and thus does for Steam Input controller to KB/M remapping), but it does, and when it does it resets your selected position in the UI, among other things; it's absolutely horrible and I've spent entire hours in Steam Input to offset most of these conflicts just for simple control remapping. The game is also littered with small but annoying bugs, mostly pertaining to collision, unresponsive inputs, hitboxes, combat frame data and movement mechanics (mostly vaulting) and that is unacceptable because it affects the main gameplay loop greatly. Enemy spawning mechanics during combat is often too permissive, resulting in absurd situations where you feel like having schizophrenic episodes and constant panoptical insecurity due to enemies spawning all around you all of the time. It is also one of the most terribly unoptimized game I've played in the last few years, mainly and seemingly due to poor technique in mapping and shader management. UI design is good generally, but it does not allow you to scroll in lists if you're not using the mouse wheel, which gets old really quick when you have a lot of items.


Also, on a last note: do not trust the store page screenshots at all. They hardly represent real gameplay. NPCs are hardly relevant, combat is not as dynamic as the images make it to be, stealth is not an option, and the game doesn't nearly look as good as that.