If you’ve done everything Remnant II has to offer, or if you’re just looking for an in-game adventure with a bit more of a spooky twist, then The Awakened King DLC was made for you. Remnant II’s debut DLC, The Awakened King, adds a new zone to the game, filled with new bosses, enemies, weapons, and even a new bewitching archetype to unlock. While I certainly hit a few road bumps along the way, I found the overall experience interesting, to say the very least.
The Awakened King DLC sees the return of The One True King, a character that Remnant players should be fairly familiar with by now. Corrupted during his long sleep, the king and his castle find their way to Losomn, where the vengeful king corrupts the local Dran and wages a revenge campaign against the Fae who attempted to take the King’s life—also you.
You come into The Awakened King storyline via the new area in Losomn, a sunken coastal city with an ominous castle looming overhead. My understanding is that, fresh out of the game’s tutorial, you could end up here as one of your starting locations. You can also access the DLC immediately after finishing the tutorial by selecting it in “Adventure Mode” at a world crystal, letting you access the DLC right away, no matter how much of Remnant II you’ve played.
This is how I accessed the DLC on a brand-new character with the Challenger archetype. Entering the city, however, I immediately found out that I was the one being challenged.
The whole of The Awakened King DLC is full of what are, in my opinion, some of the most brutal souls-like enemies I’ve ever faced. That might not be saying much; I love soul-like games, but I hardly get far into them. Even after time grinding to a comfortable level, I still found the new area a severe challenge.
Two particularly difficult enemy types I frequently encountered during The Awakened King were green, multi-armed, pox-ridden fiends and anchor-wielding witches. The fiends are fast, more formidable than most other basic enemies, and have this really obnoxious ability to fill the screen with hazards during their movement and on death. If I could remove one enemy from the game, it would be these guys and the boss variants you must face multiple times.
The witches, while challenging, weren’t particularly frustrating. However, I did spend way more time than I would have liked on the boss version of these elite enemies.
Quickly feeling overwhelmed trying to progress through the DLC, I decided to dip into the first of the zone’s dungeons, just off to the side of the entrance to the map. I spent plenty of time grinding and dying here until I felt familiar enough with the zone’s enemy types to continue. Continue, I did, and confidently too, for about 15 minutes before I entered the next dungeon.
To my surprise, The Awakened King throws an absolute ton of enemy variety at you as you progress, requiring some serious adaptability on your part. While filled with some annoyingly difficult encounters, this second dungeon is also where I found my favorite enemy type of the DLC. These guys, while challenging, didn’t bother me like some other encounters did. The longest amount of time spent in this dungeon was just by the exit, trying to beat the boss who blocked progression.
Your reward after clearing this dungeon and fighting through some seriously stacked encounters (you will be near the end of the DLC at this point) is the new Ritualist class. If you were tired of being bullied by witches, now is your chance to get back at them by becoming one. This class is all about using what is straight-up magic and cursing enemies while buffing your status effect output. You can even chain your status effects to other enemies when you kill them.
While I needed the revive passive from Challenger to continue through this DLC, it’s easy to say that Ritualist is now my favorite archetype in Remnant II. Luckily, once you collect it in the DLC, you can access it immediately from new characters, so you don’t need to grind this zone on each new character you make.
Going into the final half of The Awakened King was more of the same: Unique enemies, great set design, and frustration.
What I haven’t yet said is that I greatly adore the way parts of The Awakened King look. The main zone itself is somewhat disappointing. I can see the merit in the design, and it certainly looks good, but the drabness and lack of color really didn’t make this wet, tired city jump out to me. Other areas, such as the burning inner town, did a far better job of wooing me. The castle steals the show; I was hyped as soon as I stepped foot on the bridge leading up to it.
The Awakened King is a great, good-sized DLC with some interesting themes, thanks to its Fae and witchcraft-steeped setting. It’s hard, to the point where I was getting supremely frustrated on normal difficulty. While many will tell me to get good, I feel like some of the enemy types the developers chose to base their encounters around were unnecessarily fast and had abilities that seemed to be designed to annoy more than challenge the player. I feel like many encounters of these enemy types could and should have been trimmed down. Though again, maybe I just need to get good…
The Final Word
Remnant II: The Awakened King brings a fae-touched and spooky new story and zone to a game packed with content. Though I personally found the experience almost frustratingly hard, more skilled players are likely to breeze through and enjoy what is undoubtedly the best new zone and archetype in the game.
9
Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Remnant II: The Awakened King DLC is available on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Epic Games.