TL;DR - A roguelike shooter that has a ton of content to enjoy. The core gameplay loop is addicting, and each run can be stretched infinitely if the player desires to. It's all about getting insanely overpowered and building broken builds in Risk of Rain 2. All the heroes have a distinct playstyle which keeps the game fresh. And there are a ton of quality mods that significantly increase this game's replayability.

ROGUELIKE THIRD-PERSON SHOOTER - Players are stranded survivors on the hostile alien planet Petrichor V, battling hordes of monsters while collecting powerful items to survive. Their ultimate goal is to reach and defeat the final boss, Mithrix.

PROS:

++ Addicting gameplay. The main gameplay loop is incredibly addicting. Each run lasts for about 45-60+ minutes, and throughout that entire time, I am glued to the screen. The game progressively gets more difficult as time passes which encourages the player to constantly make micro-decisions: stay and loot, or move on and risk being underprepared for the next stage. I thought that this was a pretty great mechanic! On another note, it is so satisfying to start off so weak and 40 minutes later become this OP survivor that can clear waves of enemies without breaking a sweat. It's all thanks to the fact that you can have an unlimited amount of items, all of which can be stacked to produce some broken builds. And I think this is what I appreciate the most about the game. You can play it blindly and just have fun, not necessarily trying to craft a specific build, and still come out incredibly powerful. I also appreciated that there were so many hidden secrets within the stages, and it really made those first handful of runs feel so special. All in all, Risk of Rain 2 will be a game I will often come back to for another run.

++ Variety of survivors. Each of the base game's survivors play uniquely and require a certain playstyle in order to maximize their strengths. And playing with different survivors really did feel fresh and felt like a different experience since you end up prioritizing certain items in your run to bring out the strengths of your survivor. My personal favorites were the Bandit, Huntress, and Loader. If you somehow get bored of the base game's survivors, there are literally dozens more custom mods that add new survivors. They vary in quality, but even the bad and meme survivor mods prove to be an entertaining time.

++ Content & unlockables. There is a wealth of content on offer here. You start the game with just two survivors. There are a handful of survivors to unlock by completing certain challenges. And for each survivor, there are alternative skills, skins, and abilities to be unlocked. On top of this, there are tons of other challenges that all unlock and give you some sort of reward like new items that can drop in a run, or artifacts that acts as run modifiers. So for every run, there's always something that you can be chasing after and it feels like you're constantly being rewarded. All of this, along with three difficulties, Eclipse mode, Prismatic Trials, and a wealth of mods, add up to an infinitely replayable game.

++ Excellent mod support. Risk of Rain 2 has dozens of incredible mods. A few that act as entire expansions adding a wealth of content. There are tons of quality custom survivors that have similar quality and playability as the base game's survivors. And there are also some nice QoL mods that made my experience more fun.

++ Presentation. I like the art style of the survivors and the nice colors of the stages. The music and soundtrack was also noticeably great!

CONS:

-- Repetitive maps. There are a variety of levels/stages, but the layout is never procedurally generated. So it starts to get a bit repetitive seeing the same stages again and again. Mods help alleviate this, but it still isn't enough for me to ignore the lack in variety in the maps.

-- No mini-map. This is a core aspect of the game's design, but I was just not a fan of it. I felt like I was wasting so much time looking for a tiny little teleporter in this big, open map, and also because the starting speed of all survivors is painfully slow. And this is made even more frustrating since time is of the essence. I ended up modding a mini-map into the game, and I enjoyed my experience way more this way. Straight action, and no more wandering around.

-- Lack of tutorial. There is a great amount of depth in this game, but it does a pathetic job of introducing and teaching all these things to the player. I had to resort to YouTube videos and Reddit threads to learn everything I needed to know.

-- Slow enemy spawn rate. The beginning of a run always feels so slow because enemies spawn so infrequently in Stage 1 & 2.

-- Boss stage. I'm really not a fan of how they handled the stage right before you face off against Mithrix. Mithrix himself is a great boss, but the steps needed to fight him felt so repetitive. Essentially, you would spawn in this large level and would have to run far and activate four pillars before you can fight Mithrix. I just felt like this always ruined the pacing of my runs.

It's been a while since I have written a review for a game. Recently I have found myself immersed in games where the point is just the fun of the gameplay, even if I am not accomplishing some grand task. This has found me playing "a lot" of roguelike games (by my standards).

I love the aesthetics of this game, the graphic style is distinct and looks good without being taxing or hyper demanding on my PC. The vivid colors help everything in the chaotic battles be easy enough to keep track of even though the screen can become quite full. The music is like techno-prog-metal and is wonderful.

The gameplay varies enough between the characters I unlocked that I think I will revisit a decent amount, especially if I can convince a few friends to play. It's nice to have characters where you don't really have to aim in a third-person shooter. (I guess it's more third-person combat than shooter).

My only complaint is how a lot of the mechanics are not readily apparent, even with the tutorial enabled. It seems with a lore system similar to the soulsborne games that maybe this was intentional? Either way, when I have to look up how to progress in specific scenarios multiple times, especially when some of those scenarios have a tight time constraint, I would call it a failure in intuitive game design.

All in all, this is great fun, and I am glad I did not leave it sitting in my backlog any longer.

Risk of Rain 2 is a punishing game with a steep learning curve, but its compelling gameplay loop and variety keep me coming back for more. Beyond the exciting gameplay, its atmosphere really drew me in too, particularly its excellent soundtrack. It has its flaws, but by and large this is the action roguelike genre done right, at least in my book.

Even forgetting the overarching game design, the moment-to-moment third-person shooting and movement here feels great. It's very precise and easy to get a grip on, but the game's enemies make it very demanding as well. Different characters, abilities, and items can heavily transform the feel of combat and keep things fresh. The game's levels have a nice pace and flow between relatively laid-back exploration, normal enemy waves, and all-out hectic action. Never overwhelming for too long, never quiet long enough to get dull. I can play for hours.

Difficulty in this game is pretty interesting. To start, you can select from three base difficulties (all hard, but the easier mode is helpful). The difficulty in each run then slowly increases as time passes and you complete individual stages. It's always interesting deciding whether to move on or to keep exploring the stage in hopes that the upgrades you find keep you ahead of the curve. It's a game full of decisions small and large, with short- or long-term impact. I really feel both the positive and negative impacts of my decisions, and love the constant mental engagement that it creates.

I wish though with the difficulty that there weren't so many "gotcha!" moments that can more or less kill you instantly. It's one of many things about the game that can be disheartening for a new player. There's an overwhelming amount of stuff to learn and keep track of in general. It's especially hard to learn and practice since you're not even seeing the same levels, bosses, and items on consecutive runs. Honestly the variance is a bit high for new players, and I wish they had found a way to let the game reveal its scope more gradually.

I do like the game's general approach though to throwing you in the deep end and letting you figure stuff out. I think they cross the line with the items, though. The game doesn't even tell you what they do before you buy them, and there are almost 150 of them to learn. It's a very brute force, artificial approach to add depth to a system that already has enough. I'm fine with them letting the player learn from wrong decisions, but it's not a decision if you don't even know what you're picking.

Eventually, though, it comes together and you can start dealing with whatever the game throws at you. In the moment, some runs may have felt like a waste due to not understanding an item or a single gameplay mistake at the end, but I can't say I didn't have fun up until those points. It's almost always fun and fresh, with something driving the player to do another run—another run at the final boss, unlockables, secrets, different paths, different characters, higher difficulty, fun gameplay modifiers, multiplayer, and more.

I don't feel that drive to keep going and experiment in most roguelikes out there, especially the brutal action ones that tend to feel repetitive and tedious for me. This one is worth powering through the struggle, largely because it was even fun when I barely knew what was going on. I struggled with it blindly for quite a while, and I say don't be afraid to check out a wiki, a YouTube tutorial, even some simple mods to improve the experience. Whether you do that or just blindly jump right into the hard mode, it's very likely to take over your free time for a while...