When this remaster was announced, I was groaning if not outright apathetic towards it. I replayed the emulated PS2 version of Defiance on PS5 back a few months ago and playing that was test of endurance. Both in that the game wasn't very good and in that there was seeds of something well made there. The remaster however took a game that strugged to remain consistently mediocre and turned into at the very least a decent game.
The obvious change of course being: the camera. I would've prefered for a better version for what the original game tried to do and have it be more like the older God of War games' camera. The original Defiance felt like a proto GOW but at the same time even if a controllable camera is playing it safe, I still prefer over it the original. The camera in the remaster is more like Batman Arkham's in that it's over the shoulder when exploring and it zooms out when in combat. This is fine since the camera during the exploration sections is what played a big role in what made the original game such a mess.
Thanks to all this, the levels go by much faster and I'm able to enjoy the story a lot more due to it not feeling like an eternity for the next plot point. It's easier to relish the more entertaining moments in the story like Moebius celebrating Kain's "death" or the foreshadowing that would eventually pit Kain and Raziel against each other. The whole aspect of the Hylden is still unexplained but that was supposed to be for later installements.
I also appreciate the level design of Vorador's Mansion more because of this. How you slowly get lead down to different parts of the Mansion solving the various environmental puzzles to eventually get to him. My only big gripe is that there was no quick cinematic of the one of the walls getting damage in fire reaver area of the room to single the player to go visit there.
The idea of the levels being more like adventures where you do environmental puzzles, combat and plaforming really does annoy me on what could've been since God of War would do all of this 2 years after the original game.
Issues like many of the games' levels being the same copy and pasted temple rooms where you have to go through a series of teleporters are still there. It's over much faster due to the controllable camera giving better direction but it's still going through the same temple rooms again and again.
The combat while decent at first with things like different special area of effect attacks for the Reaver for both Kain and Raziel as well as building enough damage to have the Reaver hit harder and telekinesis is ultimately just the same combat encounters. You get new combos but even those are just variations of Dante's million stab from Devil May Cry an overhead slash and kinetic shakles on bigger enemies. The enemy line up remains mostly the same when the gargolyes get introduced and the bizarre devilish enemies are very unpolished and awkward to fight since they give no health drops upon getting downed.
There's also the unpolished nature of combat where enemies just randomly zone in and hit you while constantly dodging and can interrupt your moves out of nowhere.
Overall, while this remaster is a technical marvel and does a solid job at improving a game that wasn't very good even for it's time and I appreciate the hard work done, it's not hard to hide the shortcomings that Defiance already had. Still, I'll give it credit, it did make that an inconsistently mediocre game into a moderately decent one.
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