Recent reviews by Matt

Best Metroidvania I've played since Hollow Knight.
Incredible combat, a gripping story, gorgeous art design, and some of the most unforgettable boss fights I've ever faced.

Split Fiction is hands down one of the best co-op games I’ve ever played.

Incredibly creative and fun, with amazing level design, clever puzzles, and engaging game-play.

An absolute must-play.

An Okay Game with Frustrations

Having played the first Remnant, this sequel feels like more of the same, with quite a few new features and fresh annoyances added to the mix.

The main draw of the game remains the gameplay, which can be enjoyable, especially in co-op with friends. The customizability through weapons, rings, and classes is a strong point, offering interesting options (if you're lucky enough to find them).

However, the core content still struggles to deliver:

Story: It's lackluster and feels like an afterthought. Honestly, I don’t know why they bother.
Exploration: Often tedious rather than rewarding. Many areas feel repetitive, and some, like N’Erud, are vast but empty.
Falling to Your Death: A genuinely frustrating mechanic, particularly in co-op where fallen players can’t be revived. To make things worse, there are enemies specifically designed to carry you away and drop you which will often lead to your death.
Hidden Items and Puzzles: The game leans too heavily on obscure puzzles and hard-to-find items, making you feel compelled to consult guides to avoid missing rare loot.
Final Boss: God, this fight is awful—especially in co-op where you can’t revive your teammates due to you both getting constantly warped around, making it hard to even reach them.

Overall, while the game has its fun moments, the frustrations can overshadow the experience. If you’re considering picking it up, I’d recommend waiting for a sale.

I love democracy

- Removed Abilities.
- No level ups.
- Combat is trash.
- Amadeus does 90% of the "puzzles", so Zoya and Pontius are useless most the time.
- Levels locked behind Triangles.
- So many bugs.
- Certain levels are broken.
- Challenge battles sucks.
- Incomplete story.

Just pretend this didn't happen.

I can't stand this game anymore.
I waited 7 years for this and I wish I could forget it existed.

To put it simply (since lots of other negative reviews have already made these points:

Everything feels so forced, most the characters are annoying and cringe, gameplay is better but I stopped caring about loot after being flooded with legendaries all the time (so gameplay is pointless grind), hardly innovated on borderlands 2, lack of respect for borderlands 2 protagonist, borderlands 3 protagonist not recognized in the story, Ava exists.

I honestly don’t know how to feel about Remnant. The game is addicting and has parts I enjoy and parts that I hate. I wish I could give this game a positive recommendation however, I feel like the bad overwhelms the good.

First of all, I do like having randomly generated worlds with a different set of boss, characters and loot. It caused some confusion when asking my friends about their experience and it generally increased my interest in the game. However, there should be a way to generate the next playthrough world to have everything I haven’t encountered since you can just be given the same stuff in previous runs. I have had Ent five times and have not seen Singe once (Bug or just unlucky?).

I couldn’t get invested into the story as it felt very bland. The maps themselves are not too bad. Some areas are too similar which made it feel like I was going through the same area twice, but I don’t hold that much hate against the design of the levels since it’s not something I care about too much. In some areas, there were puzzles (like the plate pattern in Rhom or getting the item behind the fan in ward 13 which took me far longer than it should of). I wish they added more puzzles to the game that made you think or explore to try and find a solution.

The weapons/mods do feel good to use and I did try most of the weapons/mods I obtained. Some guns are given with upgrades already, so they compared well to the guns I was using but boss weapons are always not upgraded and are harder to upgrade meaning I didn’t want to invest into them. My only complains would be that ammo should really be shared on multiplayer (literally everything else is) and that armour variety is very weak.

My main criticism are the mechanics behind the mobs, bosses and hordes. Every basic mob is the same, slow basic attack and can throw something at range. As for the stronger mobs, they feel more like health sponges that a challenge. The only way the mobs in this game can pose a threat is when it decides to throw 20 of them at you all at once. I honestly didn’t find the game challenging after the first world since the entire game is gank fights. Most of the bosses are enemy you have previously encountered with 1 extra attack + lots of trash mobs. Some of the remaining other bosses were different with their own mechanics but relied on trash mobs to be difficult which made the fight’s difficulty artificial (When I died, it was because I was overwhelmed by trash rather than losing to the boss itself). Except for Ixillis, I would say the bosses don’t really give you a good fight since the trash mobs are more threating than the boss itself. Also, the modifiers for bosses can heavily change the difficulty. Enchanted Mangler (random rot explosions) is probably the hardest boss in the game yet if you get any other modifier, the boss is a joke and so are the trash mobs.

In its current state, I would not recommend this game. I feel like the bosses and enemies need to have more mechanics that give different challenges and to not rely on gank fights for difficulty. Not to say the entire game should remove all trash mobs, just be more creative in how they are used. There is a good example in the game which is the Ravager where mobs are riding the boss. The game also needs to have a larger variety of equipment (primarily armour) that allows different builds to shine and needs a new game + where the world has everything that your last world didn’t.


Edit with Sep 13 update:
Armour variety is better and new adventure mode makes it easier to explore events that can appear in each world without having to start a new game. However, I have done the adventure twice on earth already and I still haven't seen Singe (I have fought Ent seven times now). The adventures do not bring anything new, they just make replaying areas easier.

Still has the same problems as stated before.

A game that will push you to plan your turns carefully. If you don't, you die.
A game where you draft strategically to create powerful synergies. If you don't, you die.
A game which will test you, to see if you know the risks of taking on the most brutal enemies. If you don't, you die.

Every card is a double edged sword. Every relic in the right deck can push your build to new limits. Every Boss can beat you to a pulp yet it's possible to kill them before they can do anything.

At the end of the day, this game will constantly break you until you get good enough to break it.

10/10 Absolutely Brilliant.

2019 Update: It still is!!!

Masterpiece.

It's very rare these days for a game to give you a good story, good gameplay and so much content which is worth a replay.

How does Divinity: Original Sin 2 do this? Well, it gives the player so much freedom to just mess around. I've lost count how many times I have gone through Fort Joy (Act 1) alone, but every time I go through it, I learn something new whether it be abusing the npcs, new interaction between characters or fights which I completely missed due to choices I made prior.

There is always room for improvement (More skills, more talents, make Sir Lora an origin character). Luckily, the Modding Community is amazing and have created some great content.

£30 is honestly a steal, this game is worth at least £50 in my eyes.

I don't want to see another egg or cylinder after playing this game.
I also keep losing because my friends have plot armour and topdeck Hole in 1's. Turns out collision actually baits you into throwing the game.