Battling Trough Stages in Risk of Rain 2

Risk of Rain 2 is a game developed by the small game studio Hopoo Games. It’s a sequel to the 2013-released Risk of Rain. Both share some similarities, such as the main idea of progressing levels while killing enemies, but the sequel updates the gameplay to 3D graphics.

In the game, the player, as a survivor, lands on a mysterious planet, Petrichor V, in an escape pod, and that’s where the game starts. The survivor arrives at Petrichor V with a spacefaring vessel, the UES ‘Safe Travels’, which has been sent to locate and rescue what became of the UES ‘Contact Light’, which has seemingly crashed on the planet. Not much backstory is given, but this makes the environment in the game feel mysterious and makes you want to explore it.

UES ‘Safe Travels’ and the planet Petrichor V.

You get to choose a survivor as your playable character. To start with, you have only two characters available: the Commando and the Huntress, but you can unlock more characters by progressing in the game and performing certain challenges. Overall, when counting the DLC’s (Survivors of the Void) survivors, there are fourteen playable characters with their own unique abilities. Unlocking the survivors is tied to the lore, feels actually fun, doesn’t feel by any means forced, and brings a lot of content to the game.

The Survivor Commando in Risk of Rain 2.

Commando is one of the starting survivors you get to play as.

After landing on Petrichor V, your aim is to find the teleporter that transfers you to the next level. By killing enemies, you get money, which you can spend to open chests and shrines to get items. Risk of Rain 2 has an interesting gameplay aspect where the difficulty gets progressively harder with time passing, so you shouldn’t stay and loot stages forever. Item drops are random, and while all items are useful, some are arguably much better. The item drops are the biggest RNG (random number generation) side of the game, and bad or good luck is going to affect your game greatly.

The teleporter looks a bit ominous. I wonder what happens if I activate it?

The fun (and the struggle) of Risk of Rain 2 is that if you die, the game is over. You lose all your items, and you have to start from scratch. At times, it can feel brutal, especially if your run is going well, but ultimately, in the end, the death is always your own fault. I wouldn’t say that Risk of Rain has a steep learning curve, but you have to prepare to die and start from the beginning multiple times. Your run can become essentially endless as you can loop stages, but this brings some game mechanical problems later on, and the run becomes futile.

What makes the game even more fun is sharing the struggle of dying with your friends. The game supports four-player online co-op. I argue that the co-op makes the game even harder when you are sharing and fighting for the items with your friends. This also highlights the need for good RNG, and you start to pray and curse the gods when you encounter some of the items in your runs.

So all in all, I find Risk of Rain 2 to be a great game to play alone or with friends. There is surprisingly a lot to explore, and the difficulty scaling hinders you from completing the game in one sitting. If you are not prepared to die multiple times or have a tendency for a short temper, then this game might not be your cup of tea, but I still encourage you to give it a go.

Basic information:
Publisher: Gearbox Publishing
Developer: Hopoo Games
Platforms:
Google Stadia, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
Release Dates:
August 11, 2020, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
September 29, 2020, for Google Stadia.
Genre: Rogue-like, third-person shooter
PEGI:16