izigame.me

Much as I enjoy Remnant 2, I cannot recommend it to new players in its current state, entirely due to the recently-added Prism system.
Will I, as a veteran player, continue to play and enjoy Remnant 2 and aim to achieve and acquire everything in the game? Yes. But the Prism system made the game something other than what I initially purchased this product for, and I think it detracts very heavily from the game's core identity of an RPG-style third-person shooter.
Remnant 2 is a third person adventure shooter filled to the brim with difficult encounters and hidden secrets. Its core gameplay is a joy to engage with - whether you're stumbling across secrets on your own or finding help from friends/online guides, or just trying to tackle the game's hardest bosses on Apocalypse difficulty, the means of acquiring a powerful new weapon or trinket or thwarting a challenging boss battle has always been the Remnant series's greatest strength. Remnant has always felt, in every way, like a wonderful game that respected players' time; a rarity in the modern shooter genre!
Alas, the Prism system spits in the face of all of that and doesn't respect players' time in the slightest.
Introduced with the release of The Dark Horizon DLC, the Prism system is an RNG-powered Experience Point grind that sees players chasing experience farms over physical loot, and the RNG can disappointingly and dishearteningly brick countless hours of investment at a moment's notice. Were it that Prisms were locked to The Dark Horizon and not a base game system, I would happily recommend Remnant 2 itself and discuss the problems of Prisms on the DLC's page; alas, that is not the case, and Prisms are a new base-game system inflicted upon everyone.
Veteran players will allege, "But you can control the RNG of the Prism system by injecting some Fragments (another game system, also backed by RNG) into your Prism to influence your Prism's rolls!" And they are correct about that, but it isn't a guaranteed influence, and does nothing but introduce a secondary grind - that of Relic Dust - on top of the Experience Point grind. Remnant 2 was never a grindy game, not to so severe an extent as this. But this argument is also meaningless for new players that have no Fragments but will be met with the same bricky disappointment that the Prism system provides.
The developers at Gunfire Games have taken measures to allow players to restart bricked Prisms sooner, and have promised a means to reroll the end-tier make-or-break reward (a Legendary Perk) at the end of one's Prism investment (albeit at an escalating cost with each reroll...why though?), but have not addressed the grind or the fact that Prisms can brick in the first place. Until they address both of those issues, this will remain a negative review, as these facets of the system are punishingly disrespectful of a veteran's time and entirely unfun for new players to engage with. (Once they are cursed with the knowledge of how the system works, that is, as the game does little to explain the intricacies of the system either.) And this review isn't for the veterans, it's for those new players.
I'd be remiss if I complained so much about this system and didn't offer a suggestion on how to fix it, so here we go:
Gunfire, if you've read this far, please a) reduce Experience Point requirements to level up a Prism, and b) provide the opportunity to "skip" a level's provided choices, resulting in no change to the Prism's perks and having players re-grind that level for new perk choices instead. I think this provides greater player-facing control over the system that would make players knowingly and willingly opt for further grinding, as that seems to be the goal. (For some reason)
And if you have read this far, Gunfire Games employee or not, thank you for doing so.