By Olivia Davies By the time this review goes out, it will be the 26th of October with only a few days until Halloween! So of course over at Xbox Nation I’ve been getting into the spooky mood with some survival horror goodness. Back at the start of the month we reviewed Silver Pines which set a high bar for the genre, but at the end of the month we have Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy. Swapping the zombies for scary women, I think that’s an upgrade!
A Bloody History
Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy is actually the third instalment of the Remothered trilogy, marking the end of its run since 2018. I haven’t played the first two, but they aren’t subsequent events and this game’s story feels contained, so you’re perfectly fine hopping in here. And maybe that would be for the best because this series has had a rocky trajectory. The first one, Tormented Fathers arrived onto the scene with a good amount of praise, with comments on its tense atmosphere. However it all went a bit gory when Broken Porcelain was slammed in 2020 for being basically unplayable at launch with a hoard of bugs (not the creepy crawly kind) and a mess of a story. It was during this time that the series’ main director, Chris Darril left due to a ‘lack of creative control’. However, the studio still proceeded to make the third and final instalment which is where we are today. For anyone interested, Darril did go on to make Bye Sweet Carole which was a great little horror indie! But goodness me look at the time, let’s stop talking about this series’ history and actually get to the part which has you at the edge of your seats. Is this last effort, one to be celebrated or one to keep in the coffin.
Misogyny, Madness, and Moths
The set up of Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy will be very familiar to Resident Evil fans. The game begins with a reel of information including news broadcasts, locations, and newspaper clippings of the disappearance of young girls in Sicily, with protagonist Susan and her husband Angelo’s daughter being one of them. Using this information, the pair travel to Cristo Morente, an abandoned convent that is overshadowed by Mt Etna. It’s clear that this place hasn’t seen a lick of paint in a while, but that doesn’t stop a desperate mother trying to find her child. What unfolds as she explores the convent is truly a nightmare as she encounters women that twist like mechanical dolls, and the supposed matriarch, the Red Nun who you are told repeatedly to stay away from.
A word of caution about this game’s story is that it contains extremely upsetting topics of child sexual abuse, which I know can be triggering for some players. And my goodness does this game not hold back on its graphic imagery of childbirth and the human body. Most of Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy’s story is told through various notes and papers found in drawers and in newspapers as you start to uncover the past of the Ashmann’s and how entwined it is in this sick convent. As you progress through the game it starts to (again) take a rather Resident Evil turn with the introduction of biogenetic mutations, experimentation and the lark. It’s a really solid story and kept me intrigued with its themes of misogyny throughout. It handles its subject matter with care with most of the past unfolding through voice-acted memories rather than full-on cinematics so all that skin-crawling happens through imagination rather than viscerality.
I saw criticisms that Broken Porcelain’s story could feel rather cluttered and hard to comprehend but that thankfully isn’t the case in Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy. My only gripe is that there is a lot of talking, almost a visual novel amount through the many memories you can uncover in the house. Even the notes you find lying around are bloody massive so if you’re not a reader then this game will probably aggravate you more than intrigue you. The voice acting in the game is mostly well done, a few of the characters can feel a bit amateurish especially in the memories but I will say, Cissy Harper (Susan) and Maggie Robertson (Red Nun) did phenomenal jobs with their characters. Cissy’s work as Susan is so expressive and she really conveys the desperation in her character. You can tell she’s a veteran in the industry.
Jittery Visuals
Speaking of voice acting, let’s now talk a bit about the visuals of the games including the character models. They are okay. If you’re playing up to date Triple AAA titles then they will seem rather outdated but for a game like this I’m not too fussy. Characters are expressive enough, they can look a bit jittery and stiff with faces that look like something out of Until Dawn. They are fine, but a bit uncanny looking. I always found it funny when characters would talk outside of cinematic scenes and the voice acting would be amazing but the faces would be deadpan. Apart from that, the environments can also be a bit jittery with hair shadows bugging out a bit and enemies in scenes where they would jump out of you they would kind of just appear. There was even the case of the missing piss puddle which I won’t get into detail about but was pretty funny.
The game can feel a bit cheap at times because of its models and animations but the environmental design for Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy is fantastic. I adore the location of the convent as its main environment and despite it being where the entire game takes place, I never felt bored exploring it. It’s so detailed and full of odes to the country’s architecture and religion with beautiful tiled floors and murals of Italian art. It’s all so beautiful yet so creepy and chilling. The same can be said for the weird nightmare-scapes that Susan gets transported to. They’re full of more abstract imagery and feel reminiscent of the hell dimensions in Silent Hill.
Classic Exploration
Exploration in this tense atmosphere was a joy because of its aesthetics and felt so classic survival horror, like the mansion from Resi 1. I don’t need to be going into sewers or labs, I just want a good old creepy house. The survival horror aspect of exploration is also quite addictive and fun. You have your classic, here’s a million doors you can’t open, go find the keys! It’s quite linear in that aspect and is pretty straightforward with where you need to go next.
One massive problem I had with exploration is the maps that you use to actually do it. They are kind of rubbish in how useful they are. You pick up blueprints of each floor of the convent when you enter that area, but they are extremely minimal, with rooms only being labelled. This is okay if I wanted to remember where the baths were or where the library is, but if you found that missing piece of a puzzle, like a music box for example, there’s no reminder of where that music box actually was. It was the same with locked doors or doors that were blocked, they weren’t marked. This left me with a lot of confusion about where I had to return to to finish up a puzzle. In the recent Silver Pines, I found exploration manageable because it would update the map with points of interest, but Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy leaves you on your own and when I got to the residential area, I found trying to find where a puzzle was was quite annoying.
Get Under That Sofa Girl!
Thanks to its gorgeous environment, Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy has an overall creepy atmosphere. The convent is dimly lit and full of corridors and rooms so you never know when you’ll encounter one of the stalker enemies. This is helped with the sound design which is best experienced with headphones. I’ll get more into why in the gameplay part of the review, but it’s vital to be able to hear out for any movement that’s around you. The soundtrack is punctuated with these sounds that sound almost like it is an enemy coming around a corner, or a noise that stops you in your tracks, thinking oh my god I’m not alone in here. Every footstep and door that opens and closes are so loud in your ear that every bit of movement sets you on edge. I did absolutely HATE how loud Susan’s breathing is though when she is in a closet or under a sofa. Like girl please shut up I cannot hear the footsteps! That paired with the music and I never really knew when the best time to come out of hiding was. I also would have liked to be able to look at my maps and lore if you’re gonna keep me trapped under there. Overall though, I didn’t find this game very scary. There were one or two parts that stood out, but mostly I just felt tense.
She’s Behind Me, Isn’t She
Red Nun’s Legacy is a stealth game with stalker enemies and if you’ve played Resident Evil 2 or 3 and have encountered the lovely Mr. X then you know that stalker enemies can tip a game into pain in the arse territory or create a really good sense of dread. Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy does its stealth quite solidly with one or two nuns stalking Susan at any given time. That’s why I recommend headphones as you really do need to be listening to their feet slapping on the floor and whether they open a door or not. Because if they do spot you, they will turn into Usain Bolt and absolutely wreck you. This can be quite annoying but because the convent is quite chopped up, with twists and turns and plenty of rooms to dart in and out of, it is easy to escape them. The convent is also full of sofas to slip under and wardrobes to jump into. If a nun is pretty hot on your tail and they approach the object you’ve hidden under or in, this will trigger a minigame where you will need to steady your left joystick inside a circle. Otherwise they will just yank you out. One thing that annoyed me was that there were a bit too many times where I would be walking around and a cutscene would force an enemy on me. So even though i was being careful, because the story dictates it, I had to confront the enemy.
Whilst this is the preferred method to play this game, Susan can also counter her enemies using scissors or a table leg to jam into them or whack over the head. This was a pretty useless method though because it staggers the enemy for around half a millisecond and then they are on top of you so I don’t really know why they even included this. You can also lob ceramics in different directions to lure them away which worked a lot better. You then have your standard heals which take a bit of time to actually use which is always a nice touch. The game is full of items to pick up, almost to the point where it’s kind of over the top? You can only have one of each type of item in your hotbar (there is no inventory here, just that hotbar and a menu for key items that weirdly only shows up when you interact with a puzzle, it’s not in the inventory) which can be interchanged.
Let’s talk about puzzles. A staple of survival horror is its lovely puzzles and there aren’t really many in this game. A lot of the things Susan does is just find an object and combine it with another object. You have the odd safe puzzle and some sequence puzzles where you get a story and have to figure out what order objects go in. standard stuff like that. Overall, there isn’t really anything here and god I really am looking for a survival horror game that has some good ass puzzles, but I’ve been quite disappointed lately.
Womanly Powers
The unique gameplay aspect of Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy is its dreamscape feature where Susan relives the memories of the nuns that used to populate the convent, specifically of Gloria who was the daughter of the Ashmann’s and was sent there against her will. Despite being able to look around a physical environment during these weird hallucinations, all of the past is conveyed through dialogue. These dreamscapes are entered when you find and interact with a metronome, which also acts as the game’s save system and when you enter each one you usually leave with a new power as Susan’s mind and body slowly succumb to a weird hive-mind illness. These powers are mostly there to unblock and find pathways that were once unusable, or to interact with items in the convent that will provide you with a conversation between two characters that may reveal the answer to a puzzle. These powers feel very metroidvania-esque in how it aids you in progression. These dream sequences are fine though I guess it would have been nice to see some scenes act out.
Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy Verdict
Remothered: Red Nun’s legacy is a pretty standard survival horror that is completely inoffensive which in itself is a good and bad thing. I never sat down with my controller and though oh my god I am thoroughly spooked and intrigued. It just felt like ground that had been heavily trodden upon with a story that is just straight up Resident Evil 7 and stealth and puzzles that were never challenging. I loved the environment of the convent and exploring it but it’s in the small parts, like its map and enemy encounters where I needed some fine tuning. It seems from the first two entries that this is at its best, a step up from Broken Porcelain, but at its worst it’s just as okay as Tormented Fathers. If you’re looking for a bit of spook and atmosphere this is worth it, but it’s definitely not the best the market has to offer.
You can play Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy when it comes out on the 27th of October on Xbox Series X|S!
Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy Review – A Tragic Tale Bathed In Red
+ What works
- Tense Atmosphere
- Intriguing and suspenseful story
- Fantastic voice acting from lead
− What holds it back
- Boring Puzzles
- Annoying map design
- Jittery Visuals
- Available on
- Xbox Series X|S · Xbox PC
- Developer
- Stormind Games
- Publisher
- Stormind Games, Soft Source
- Release date
- 27/10/2026
- Age rating
- PEGI 18
- Price
- £30.99
Matt Cabral
Jordan Campbell
Fletcher Wilkinson