REMNANT II®

So I remember enjoying the first one, but given the time between playing that and this my memory had fadded a bit and I didn't mind waiting till there was a deep discount to try it, and you know what? I do regret it. The game got off to a bad start with a kind of annoying NPC comapnion and a slow walking tutorial which was already an early red flag. Then we meet another NPC who's kind of a whinny spoiled brat-esc character and her sad boy compainion. I assumed that this was some set up for us to have a quirky more character driven game, but no our starting NPC basically drops off the face of the planet as soon as you reach the ward and instead our quest becomes to save spoild brat, but nope yet again because she's unexplainedly fine and medatating with a big eyeball that tells us of a different quest which I have to admit I didn't quiet grasp what it wanted; doesn't help that this was after an aggrivating boss and the game has a tendency to use lots of proper nouns for everything. So I was already lost and a bit confused. But hey, as long as gameplay is good and level design is tight we can still get some enjoyement out of this right? Well we got decent gameplay and rather ♥♥♥♥ level design and some of just the worst RPG elements I've seen. I picked up dozens of rings that had something like "5% chance to increase weapon mod crit chance based on how many steps you have equal to your missing health" and I hate that level of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ item that feels like it was designed for some try hard sweaty min/maxer with a spread sheet in front of them on how to make the most optimal character. Not that it mattered. If I ever struggled I'd just go back to base, upgrade my damage output and the issue would sort itself out almost immedietly. What really got me was the amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ deaths I got from being knocked off a platform, either by an enemy or the time I'd forget to hit roll in front of a ledge and fall; which normally I'd take responsibility for but when I already wasn't having fun was just another nail in the games coffin. Ultimetly the two biggest red flags for me were that I started skipping through dialog and that I killed a major boss and couldn't remember why I was doing that