Remnant: From the Ashes Complete Edition

I've burned more hours than I care to admit dodging Root tendrils and agonising over weapon mod loadouts in Remnant: From the Ashes, and the Complete Edition is the only sensible way to play it in 2024. It packages the base game alongside both DLC expansions, Swamps of Corsus and Subject 2923, meaning you get the full arc from Earth's collapse to the conclusion of the Root war without a single mid-campaign upsell. The mechanical pitch is genuinely interesting: Gunfire Games grafted Souls-style checkpoint design, stamina management, and dodge-or-die combat onto a third-person shooter, and it works better than it has any right to. Checkpoints restore your Dragon Hearts (the Estus Flask equivalent here) but respawn every enemy in the area, so you are constantly weighing aggression against resource economy. Where the game earns its own identity is in the guns themselves. Each weapon has distinct weight, reload timing, and feel, and the secondary-fire mod system lets you stack elemental and utility effects that meaningfully change your playstyle. A corrosion-stacking sniper build plays completely differently from a shotgun-plus-healing-mod brawler setup. Rings, amulets, and passive traits layer on top of that, and the build combinations hold up well past the first campaign run. The six status effects, ranging from Bleeding and Burning through to Irradiation and Corrosion, keep enemy encounters tactical rather than just a damage-sponge slog. The procedural generation is where Remnant gets interesting and divisive in equal measure. World chunks are randomised each time you load in, which means boss encounters, secret areas, and quest lines are not guaranteed in any single run. Some bosses drop different loot depending on how you kill them, and certain hidden NPCs only surface in specific seeds. This is brilliant for co-op and replay value, but it means a solo first run can feel oddly sparse if your seed rolls badly. The Swamps of Corsus DLC adds a full roguelike Survival Mode on top of this, dropping you into a run with nothing but a pistol and scrap, enemies scaling harder every five minutes. It is the kind of mode that strips the build complexity down to pure improvisation, and it is quietly one of the best things in the package. Subject 2923 continues the main story into new zones and wraps up the narrative threads left hanging, which matters if you actually care about where The Root came from and what Ward Prime has to do with any of it. The honest caveats: the story is atmosphere and lore fragments more than it is character writing. The NPCs back at Ward 13 are functional rather than memorable, and if you come from Disco Elysium expecting authored dialogue, you will find the writing is thin. Boss quality is also uneven. Some fights are tight, mechanical puzzles that reward pattern reading; others are bullet-sponge rooms that drag. The campaign's sense of wonder also flattens after two or three full runs once the procedural novelty wears off. Friendly fire is live in co-op, which is either a feature or a relationship stress test depending on your squad. For players who want a co-op action RPG with real build depth and enough replayability to justify the asking price, this is a strong package. Souls veterans comfortable with failure loops will find the shooter translation satisfying. Pure narrative RPG players looking for branching choices and weighty dialogue should look elsewhere. With the sequel already out, this Complete Edition now sits as a tightly finished game with no loose ends and a clear identity. That is a rarer thing than it sounds.

Monika · Scout Team

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