I had a negative opinion on Remnant, but could’ve been from bias.
In the tutorial fight, I got a phone call. I couldn’t pause, so I just let my character die - and came back to some conversation where a character was congratulating me on holding my own before being beaten. Sorta just funny/weird.
Then, first boss fight I reached basically ran away and spawned infinite enemies. At first it felt like a challenge, but sort of didn’t appeal to me; I gave up on it, as I couldn’t even beat it with a coop teammate. It sounds like the boss sequencing you get is random, so maybe I just had a poor run.
The tutorial segment is very weird for Remnant. My partner died before the 'final stand' segment of it (and before she had even seen all the control prompts) and she was shown the cutscene and dropped off at the Ward!
The game is definitely Souls-lite, and some of the bosses can be brutal (I have not finished my first run of the game, for reference), but I found it to be a fun time with friends. And it appears number 2 dials things up and addresses some of my issues with the game.
Not able to pause is a problem with souls-like, though this is more of a souls-lite.
The game is fun, but it had it's issues, and it's possible you ran into some bugs. I have heard second one improves upon the first one in pretty much all aspects, so if you don't want to give the first one another try, you can always check out the second one.
Oh, I very much expected to die after not pausing. The annoying thing was that I didn’t even get a combat tutorial as a result. I basically missed content where it just skipped ahead to more story.
Additionally; it’s not just a Souls design issue - it’s a coding issue. Watchdogs 2 had many sudden invasions, but it still let you pause when not actively playing with/against another player.