TLDR: This is my personal Game of the Year. I can't recommend it enough.

The original Remnant game slipped by my radar completely, so I basically went blind into Remnant 2. This is some of the most fun I've ever had in both single player and co-op gaming. The story is not the reason to play this game in my opinion. It's fine, mildly interesting, and the acting is okay but not great. The reason to play this game is for the incredible sense of discovery above all else. Beyond that, the excellent visuals and optimization (it runs great for me and my friends with varied levels of PC specs), the fantastic combat, extremely deep build/gameplay customization, phenomenal secrets and hidden rewards, and smooth co-op multiplayer experience is what's kept me coming back.

Initially I played for about 40 hours over the summer, beating it a couple times mostly in co-op and I had a great time, then put it down for a while. In preparation for the DLC, I booted the game back up and immediately got hooked again. I ended up grinding out nearly every weapon, maxing out every class, experimenting with a ton of different builds and beating the game several times on different difficulty levels. I can't get enough of this game, and the DLC was excellent as well.

Many people refer to Remnant as "Dark Souls with Guns," and that's sort of accurate - you can definitely see the influences, but it's not as punishing and in my opinion respects your time more. If you die, you don't lose anything, you just have to try again. The difficulty doesn't come from not being able to level up because you keep dying and losing progress, but rather from challenging combat encounters and some fantastic boss design that's among the best I've ever seen.

I typically don't love hard games - I'm too old for the stress. This game has 4 difficulty levels - Survivor, Veteran, Nightmare and Apocalypse. There are some unique unlocks you can get by playing the game on the harder difficulty levels. Over the summer, I assumed I would never get those and wouldn't play past Survivor, because even Veteran was extremely hard at the time. But when I got back into the game this fall, I decided to challenge myself and go for it. I actually ended up surprising myself and beating the game on the hardest difficulty, Apocalypse - completely solo. It was an incredibly rewarding experience and I loved every second of it. This is a game where you really do get out of it what you put into it. If you want to just play through the story, kill some monsters and bosses, you'll have fun. If you want to do that in co-op with friends, you'll probably have even more fun. If you want to uncover all of the insane secrets the game has to offer, you'll have fun for dozens if not hundreds of hours. At 134 hours of gameplay at the time of review, I still have not found and seen all the game has to offer. It's crazy, and I can't wait to play it more.

Lastly I'll say the developers have been fantastic in supporting the community, listening to constructive criticism and making smart changes to improve their game. I'm really excited to see what's in store for the next run of DLC. Bring it on!