Risk Of Rain 2 Review

Here’s my Risk Of Rain 2 Review, a little late to the party but I thought this review would go down well with the blog readers. Recently I’ve been playing ‘Risk of Rain 2’ (RoR2), an indie game developed by Hopoo Games. The game was released in march of 2019, but flew under my radar until recently. I’m glad I finally got around to playing and subsequently reviewing the game.

The game takes you through over a dozen handcrafted, hand designed locations. Each locale is packed full of challenging monsters and absolutely massive bosses that will do anything to crush you and anything else that remotely resembles your existence into oblivion

You’ll need to fight your way to the final boss and escape. You could do that or you can continue your run indefinitely to see just how long you can survive. Risk Of Rain 2 features a really unique and well worked scaling system which means both you and the enemies you face can limitlessly increase in power over the course of a game, it makes for some really interesting and difficult battles.

Anyway, that’s enough of an intro. So grab a drink and some snacks and read on below for my comprehensive Risk Of Rain 2 review, it’s a good one!

I’m quite gutted that I missed out on it for so long, because it is one of the most freeing experiences I’ve had for a while. You can play this game for hours on end and time would just pass you by. Hours will feel like seconds and that to me at least, is the sign of a great game. Becoming so immersed in a game that you don’t realise how much time has passed is an important measure when reviewing games.

I have to say this game is amazing, after playing it I went to check out ‘A Risk of Rain’ and found out that it was actually a 2D game; a dungeonesque platformer, meaning that the leap to 3D was a big change but the developers pulled it off almost flawlessly.

There is lore in RoR2, but apart from an opening cinematic it’s all hidden in item descriptions or character bios, stuff like that, it gives off a dark souls vibe where you really have to go searching if you want to know more about these worlds and the creatures within.

I’ve spent hours lost in this game’s beautiful colours and cartoony landscapes and what stands out the most is the creatures you’re fighting. These range from what look like floating slimeballs, all the way to colossal jellyfish looking monsters and a wide variety in between. These creatures stick out because they’re things you have seen before but also not quite, each giving off its own sense of uniqueness.

Risk Of Rain 2 Review: I really like the art style.

Now I wouldn’t say this game is without its faults, but they’re few and far between. These faults don’t take anything away from the overall enjoyability of the game at all, which is a fresh feeling from a video game.

The game is a roguelike so no two playthroughs are the same. Each run is dictated by a series of random numbers and sometimes this will mean that the game could feel easier or harder, but no matter how your run is going I can guarantee that there will be chaos along the way.

You start off in one of these procedurally generated worlds with only the sweet soundtrack, which seems to be 80s inspired, and your only instruction, to find the teleporter. Now this threw me a bit at first, I was expecting some sort of tutorial or in game guides to show me the ropes of my character, but there was nothing. Although I was shocked I personally loved this because the game became a survival of the fittest, adapt or die, and that pressure keeps you hooked into RoR2 way into the later levels.

One thing that RoR2 does so well is scaling enemy difficulty as the game progresses. The game has four difficulty modes, drizzle, rainstorm, monsoon, and eclipse, basically easy, medium, hard, extra hard. Now the first three are in the normal part of the game, but eclipse is its own game mode becoming more and more difficult after any successful run on monsoon difficulty. So why did I say that RoR2 does this so well when it just seems generic to most games? Because throughout your run, no matter what difficulty you picked, the enemies gradually get harder and harder meaning you have to level up and gear up to keep up with them if you want to survive. It’s a constant race against the clock.

One thing I love about RoR2 is the characters. No matter your playing style there is guaranteed a character class for you. For me this is the Huntress, Why? Because she is agile and sports long ranged attacks, something a lot of my favourite games share, think the likes of Dishonored. You start off with two characters unlocked, the Huntress and the Commando class and to unlock the other 9 in-game characters you need to complete a load of different challenges that widely range in difficulty.

There are a lot of challenges in RoR2 and most of them are used to unlock new attacks or defensive moves for characters, for example one of Huntress’ challenges is to get a killing blow with every possible hit of her lazer glaive to unlock a new attack. Some of these challenges are ridiculously hard and some are very much based on luck and I wish there was just a more reliable way to do the challenges instead of hoping that everything lines up.

RoR2 is one of those games where you can feel like a God but then, be humbled so fast it’s almost unbelievable. I was doing a run on single player and I had gathered quite a lot of the game’s items and with each one giving me more and more power ups I became incredibly strong. It was around 35 minutes into this run however that things went south fast. I activated one of the teleporters and as usual the boss creature spawned when all of a sudden I was surrounded, creatures coming at me left and right and no amount of items could save me; that was the end of that run and i was left feeling gutted but also relieved, because there’s nothing I hate more in a game than when it becomes too easy and RoR2 never lets this happen.

Finally, let’s talk about the items. There are over 110 items in the game and these come in many shapes and sizes. There’s 5 levels of items, common, uncommon, legendary, boss, and lunar, however on top of these there is also equipment, but unlike the items you can only hold one piece of equipment at a time. Each item has its own unique effect with some being similar to others, but you soon learn which ones complement your play style. For me I liked to make sure I had the back-up magazine and the Hopoo feather which gave me an extra shot of my huntress glaive and an extra jump respectively and from there I work my way through ones that will increase my speed and damage.

Risk Of Rain 2: Impact! — Risk Of Rain 2: A powerful impact.

An Epic Soundtrack

The composer, Chris Christodoulou ranks among the top indie game composers. And the proof of that is in the Risk of Rain 2 soundtrack. It’s wildly different to the first game. But that’s not a bad thing. The 2nd installments soundtrack is an absolute delight from the very first song all the way to the last.

How Much And Where To Buy

Games are easily accessible these days. There’s plenty of choice from Steam to the Official Nintendo Store or Amazon. You’ll find your chosen game in plenty of places. Risk Of Rain is no different.

The cheapest price we managed to find was on Amazon for £17. Interestingly, it’s cheaper if your buying it over in the states at $14. Whichever side of the pond you’re on, hit the link here to Head on over to Amazon to buy it and check the latest price.

Buying Risk Of Rain 2 from Steam will set you back about £19.99 / $27.00 which is still a fair price when all things are considered. It’s starting to gain quite a fair bit of traction among several gaming communities I’m a part of. I imagine given a bit more time it’ll get more of a main stream following.

Risk Of Rain 2 Review Summary And Verdict

Before I give my final score, let’s have a quick recap, here’s a summary of the things I liked and the things I didn’t like:

Pros:

Great soundtrack
Tonnes of replayability
Different classes for different playstyles
Single and multi player
Enemy difficulty scaling
Relaxing

Cons:

Difficult challenges to unlock some characters and items
You have to really search for a story
Some stages unavailable until you complete a certain sequence, needing a guide or pure luck to stumble upon, same for the final boss

I didn’t know much about the game before I reviewed it and I have to say its one of the best games I have played in recent times. You will get addicted to it very quickly and enjoy every minute playing it. One of the best parts about the game is that the whole risk of rain 2 community is very active and supremely helpful.

The game itself has good gameplay and replayability. The developers are also very responsive to questions asked in their Discord server. If you want to check that our, hit the link here.

Score: 9/10

Overall I would give Risk of Rain 2 a 9/10 and would highly recommend you go and buy it if you haven’t already. It’s available on a wide variety of consoles and systems including; PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo switch.

Still not convinced? Check out the gameplay trailer below, that’ll definatley make you want to play it.

Risk Of Rain 2 Trailer

System Requirements

If I’ve managed to convince you to play the game, here’s the system requirements for PC gaming. The recommended is obviously better and will get you running at or close to a buttery smooth and super high quality 4k60fps at max settings.

MINIMUM:	RECOMMENDED:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system	Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 7 or newer, 64-bit	OS: Windows 7 or newer, 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i3-6100 / AMD FX-8350	Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
Memory: 4 GB RAM	Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: GTX 580 / AMD HD 7870	Graphics: GTX 680 / AMD HD 7970
DirectX: Version 11	DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection	Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 4 GB available space	Storage: 4 GB available space