Risk of Rain 2: Rushing, Risk, and Reward

Rouge-like games are great games to have since their replay value is built into their design. The simple premise of starting from scratch and try to skill your way through randomly generated levels with random loot/levels make each attempt feel different and allow for much variety in the design of the game’s mechanics. Risk of Rain 2 came out of early access close to two years ago and when it did I played a lot of it. The inclusion of a 4 player co-op makes this game very appealing to me because its always more fun to play with friends and since there are not a lot of roguelikes out there with multiplayer this might just be one of the bests. There are 11 unique playable characters from the mercenary with a katana, a huntress with a bow, or a space wizard frozen in time you can save. They all are very different to play and have a variety of strengths and weaknesses and even require different items to become the late game god every roguelike player dreams of. Risk of Rain 2 is a race through levels, the goal being to get some items, find the teleporter, charge it up while fighting the boss and waves of enemies, then moving on to the next level. Rinse, repeat, or even loop until the final boss.

Another thing I’m a fan of in Risk of Rain 2 is the secrets you can find within the game. Some characters are unlocked through these secrets and its always cool to have in-game content unlocked rather than paid for. But the manner of unlocking these characters and items is a lot of fun to figure out. I spent a lot of time talking with my co-worker who played the game before I had it, rather than doing work because there are so many little secrets and easter eggs for the player to find in each level that we just got carried away talking about it.

Gameplay

Time is a huge factor in Risk of Rain 2 with the difficulty and just about everything else scaling upwards as more and more time passes. A lot of the games difficulty depends on the time you’ve spent on a run. Everything from the cost of item chests, enemy health, damage, and spawn rates, and what spawns is linked to the timer of your run. This creates a risk vs. reward gameplay loop where you must choose to invest time in exploring to find more items, or moving on as fast as you can and sacrificing power and investing in the future items from different levels. Factors like stages, item printers, and chests all could influence ones decision to stick around, and the games many secrets to find is also incentive to explore but the ever present clock at the top will make it a thoughtful choice that could make your run a lot harder if you don’t budget your time well enough.

An interesting way this game allows you to further the risk is the 3D printers. These are like free chests that allow you to randomly swap out items of the same rarity items for whichever item the printer makes. This adds yet another risk to the risk vs. reward since it will randomly choose an item you have of the same rarity to trade for the item you’re printing. You could lose an item you want to keep just as easily as you could lose a useless item, you know what you’re getting but not what you’re losing. This risk is mitigated by finding item scrappers which allow you to turn items into scrap of the same rarity color. 3D printers prioritize scrap but the risk is still there as you need to not only find a scrapper, but to gamble an item into a resource that gives no stats while you hope you find a printer with something you want. Weaken yourself now and invest in the future, or the what if.

Can I break it?

One thing I keep in mind when reviewing a roguelike is how fun it is when you’re playing the average run, as well as how good it feels to be broken. Risk of Rain 2 is a proc-coefficient game and this is the reason the item pool isn’t as big as other games like The Binding of Isaac with giant item pools and a huge degree of variety and combinations. Risk of Rain 2 has a smaller item pool but the game is built around getting items multiple times turning the small buff they provide into greater and greater stat gains. This highlights the importance of 3d printing, but also that you need to be fast and not get too greedy. Increased attack speed, increased bleed chance, critical hit chance, more damage up close, more damage to full health enemies, critical hits give attack speed, critical hits heal, heal while standing still, heal outside of combat, enemies explode when killed, run faster, ect. The items are compliments to one another so there aren’t exactly a ton of super good items that make your run an instant win. There are red items which is the highest rarity and those can add a lot of power to a run, but won’t make it an easy win. Something fun about the items are that they appear on your character model also similarly to The Binding of Isaac. So in short, yes you can break it.

Worth the risk?

Risk of Rain 2 can be a lot of fun alone, or with friends. The playable characters are varied and fun to play and the chaos of the late game is unmatched by any other rouge-like I’ve played. It’s fun to play a rouge-like 3rd person shooter and the art design is simple yet charming and chaotic at times with certain items. Running, jumping, and teleporting around killing wave after wave of goofy looking aliens is a unique and satisfying experience but its also just plain satisfying sometimes. The levels are interesting and varied enough that you know which one you’re in by a glance, but also contain secrets that are fun to look for and learn the more you play the game. There is definably a learning curve to the game and understanding the mechanics, items, characters, risks, and levels is all a part of that learning process. I remember starting my first run and just being so obsessed with finding new stuff, and exploring the levels which is rare in a genre where everything is random so it’s usually not given much attention. The items are fun to use and the builds you can create turn what is already fun into insanity that you just have to experience to really understand. It is also worth mentioning that there are some crazy mods for the game, I haven’t tried them myself but that might be something worth knowing to some of you.