There are only a few roguelikes that can keep me coming back for more, even after months of not touching them, and Hopoo Games’ Risk of Rain 2 is one of those titles. It’s just such an easy game to pick up and play for an hour or two, and a single good run can last that long if you’re good enough. What exactly is it, though?
FRANTIC SHOOTING
This 3D sequel to Risk of Rain takes all the good things that its predecessor did and dials it up to 11. Simply put, it’s a third-person shooter where you have to activate teleporters and survive endless waves of enemies and bosses until you reach the final level and beat whatever awaits you there.
You have a wide variety of unlockable characters to choose from, ranging from the sniping Railgunner to the brawling Loader whose entire playstyle revolves around punching things in the face.
As simple as it may sound, the game quickly spirals into a frantic and chaotic race to the end, as more and more enemies materialize out of thin air to try and stop you from getting to the next area.
Luckily, there’s gear and other potentially useful secrets scattered all throughout each map that’ll give you that much-needed boost of both firepower and survivability. You also gain EXP every time you kill a monster, and you receive bonus damage and HP every time you level up.
All of the items stack infinitely, which means that, for example, you can find dozens of syringes that increase your attack speed to the point where you can fire whichever weapon you have as if you’re holding a minigun that doesn’t need to be spun up first. One would think that this means you can be hilariously overpowered to the point where the game becomes absolutely trivial, but that just isn’t the case in Risk of Rain 2.
RAMPING DIFFICULTY
Unfortunately for you, everything else ramps up over time as well. Every few minutes, the overall difficulty level goes up, starting from “Easy” all the way to an endless and ominous marquee that only says “HAHAHAHA.”
If you survive long enough to reach that final level, you’ll find that everything takes forever to kill, and a random projectile can easily end your entire run, leaving you thinking “what the hell just killed me?”
Sure, you can go on an insane power trip even later on, but this doesn’t give you the freedom to just lower your guard and delete everything on sight. As much as the game allows you to exploit its mechanics to gain massive amounts of mobility, power, and sustain, it also compensates for this by getting hilariously difficult the longer you last.
Once that bar starts laughing at you, some bosses will spawn as normal enemies, and not even an endless barrage of critical strikes and other bonus projectiles enabled by your extensive collection of trinkets (which, funnily enough, do appear on your actual player model) and repairable drones will be enough to take them out at a comfortable pace.
All of these mechanics combined force you to find a balance between searching every corner of the map for loot and activating the teleporter, which you do need to find first as well, since they spawn in random locations every time.
CONCLUSION
Don’t get fooled by the game’s chill music and vibrant art style, as it’s an insanely intense roguelike that will test your awareness and aim. With that said, it’s an enjoyable romp for those who love feeling like an overpowered entity just blasting through wave after wave of increasingly powerful enemies.
Although a run lasting over an hour may sound like a slog at first, you’ll find that almost every moment is nothing short of an adrenaline-pumping encounter with dozens of moving targets, and dying doesn’t even feel that bad, as you can just hop right back in and try again.