Swamps Of Corsus is a DLC expansion for Remnant: From the Ashes. It is available on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Joseph Pugh conducted this review on a Standard Xbox One console.
Overview
Remnant: From The Ashes came out last year and shocked pretty much everyone with its excellent quality, even making my top 5 games of 2019 list. Remnant is a third-person shooter with deep souls-like inspiration and great replay value due to its procedural nature.
Corsus was one of the game’s four worlds. An eerie swamp planet filled with a borg like insectoid race called the Iskal. It was the smallest and least fleshed out of the four worlds. Swamps Of Corsus seeks to change that by adding new enemies, dungeons, bosses, and events to Corsus.
Surprisingly, the Corsus specific content is only half the package, a new roguelike-inspired survival mode really takes the spotlight. Some, but not all of the content can be experienced in the base game without the DLC. You can fight a couple of the bosses, but you won’t be able to use the goodies you gain from beating them without the DLC.
Swamps Of Corsus
As the name suggests, the DLC adds new content to Corsus as well as adding it as an option to adventure mode. Some events and bosses can only be encountered via the adventure mode and the whole shebang fleshes out Corsus to feel more in line with the games other worlds.
Like the base game, the new content hides many secrets that you need to uncover, if you want to access all of the new traits and weapons. RNG plays no small part, you won’t encounter everything on your first run through Corsus. The procedural generation dictates what dungeons, NPCs, Bosses, and events will appear, and some specific combinations are required for certain unlocks.
That’s just the nature of the beast and luckily Swamps of Corsus has an excellent foundation to build upon. The core gameplay loop is satisfying, replayable and the combat is weighty and fun. The Corsus extension is simply additional content to explore with Remnants’ solid gameplay. It gives you more to do in a world that was somewhat bare compared to its siblings in the base game.
The new regular enemies aren’t super interesting. Remnants enemy variety has always been a high point but a few of the new baddies feel like reskins. The new boss fights follow a new design method though and are as interesting to fight as they are challenging. Be prepared to die a lot. Remnant is a challenging game even on the lowest difficulty and Swamps Of Corsus pulls no punches in this regard.
The Corsus content isn’t spotless though. In my original review of Remnant I noted performance issues. Corsus was always the absolute worst world for it and while it performs much better now there were still many instances where the framerate chugged. That’s disappointing considering half the DLCs focus is on Corsus.
There is also the matter about how the Corsus content really feels like it’s bringing an unfinished world up to speed with the others rather than an expansion. I’d never say that Remnant felt incomplete, the amount of content it offered for the price was plentiful. But Corsus definitely stood out as being far more shallow than the other worlds. The good news is you get much of the expanded world even without the DLC, the bad news is you get teased with items you can’t use unless you purchase it.
Survival Mode
The Second half of Swamps Of Corsus pretty much sells the DLC on its own. Survival mode takes Remnants hardcore gameplay and spins roguelike elements into it. You spawn in your underpants with a pistol and a small pile of scrap to buy some starting gear with.
Most of the stores offer a random selection of armor, weapons, and accessories. So you don’t always know what kind of build you are going to roll with. From there you take on a random area, dungeon, and boss. If you survive, you get the boss specific items and return to spend your hard-earned scrap before taking on the next random level.
If you die, that’s it. You start survival mode over in your underpants again. It’s a refreshing and fun way to play Remnant. Playing it has no impact on your campaign and it forces you to adapt to playstyles and weapons you may not have tried before.
You have no idea what you’re taking on prior to teleporting from the labyrinth. It could be the main games’ first boss, last boss or anything in-between. Instead of leveling up the normal way, you pick up traits as loot drops during your run. You’re also battling a timer. Every six minutes the enemies grow in power and that timer jumps a minute and a half every time you take down a boss.
It adds a sense of urgency to the mode. You may get stronger by searching the world for more traits, scrap, and loot, but the clock is always ticking. It’s a nice risk versus reward dynamic often seen in true roguelikes.
Additionally, you can also earn a new type of currency in survival mode to be spent purely on cosmetic armor skins for the main game and there are a lot of them you can buy. My only hang-up is there no way to save progress on a run, and some items can be unlocked for your main character by defeating several bosses in a row. This is problematic in multiplayer if someone gets disconnected, they cant rejoin you on the same run.
Verdict
While the Corsus content can be iffy on its implementation, the expanded world is still a fine addition to the game if you can get passed the occasional performance niggle.
You could consider that icing on the cake however as the new Survival Mode is worth the ten bucks on its own. It adds even more replay value to a game that had no shortage of it and offers a new and fun way to experience the game.
Remnant is an incredibly solid souls-like shooter and Swamps Of Corsus is simply more of it. It isn’t perfect but the asking price isn’t steep and it can add a significant amount more playtime to the game. The new survival mode is incredibly fun to play and there is a lot to enjoy if you already were a fan of Remnant.
A copy of Swamps Of Corsus was provided for Gideon’s Gaming by Perfect World Entertainment for the purpose of review.
Pros
- A fleshed-out Corsus is great
- More secrets to discover
- New weapons, mods, and bosses are dope
- Survival mode is a great addition and a new way to play
- Plenty of new cosmetic skins
Cons
- Performance issues on Corsus
- Getting disconnected from a friend’s survival run can ruin it
- Some of the new standard enemies feel like reskins
