The beauty of this game is the challenge that it offers and the unique features it has. Whenever I rage I always know it was my fault and know exactly how I messed up. It’s also super unique with so many different combinations of characters, artifacts, and difficulties for different runs, as well as its best feature, increasing difficulty with time instead of levels.

it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ good game, not perfect, but a lot of fun!

Now this is what i call a great Remake ! An already great n fun game but with more n better QoL, achievmeents, logs, interesting lore, new items, new enemies, new challenges, new characters, better controls, even better co-op mode !

This game, i will tell you, worth EVERY PENNY , Every Investment ! One of the Best Remake !
10/10

I platinumed Risk of Rain 2, and as a fan I couldn't pass up the reboot of the first part, so I decided to find out where the franchise started.

First of all, they improved the graphics. The locations, characters and enemies were redrawn, and very well done. The work of the artists is noticeable immediately, it's nice to look at the character animation, the logbooks are a separate story. The pictures with the enemies are fascinating in their elaboration and beauty, sometimes you just want to go into the logbooks one more time and look at the well-made drawing, so to speak, to admire it. Also, all the sprites were redrawn, which is also undoubtedly a plus for the game.

The music deserves special thanks, because of the remixes. Chris's soundtracks from the first part definitely please the ears, you walk around the locations and enjoy the masterpiece. I would like to note the epic sound that plays during the battle with the Providence, namely its last stage. This track has notes of the theme from the battle with Mithrix, and this makes the track even cooler.

A couple of QoL features were also added to the game, such as shooting in the direction of the cursor and settings for customizing the interface, for example, so that the interface is displayed above the enemy's head. According to others, active items now drop from special capsules, which is also cool. For which a separate like - when playing with a team, when you die, you don't die completely, but become a weak drone that can peck at enemies a little, and most importantly - pick up items, which allows you not to fall behind your teammates in case of death. Also, as far as I remember, as a drone you can throw yourself into a recycler, and your partner will get junk in return, but I personally didn't check, the information is inaccurate.

Plus, you don't have to stand next to the teleporter to charge it, you can run around the whole map.

They scattered a bunch of cool secrets around the game that are nice to find. The secret has a visualization, for example, an unusual tree, a too long liana, or a small dead end in the wall that looks like the beginning of a passage. In the secret, you can get both artifacts and cool character skins that you can only pick up when you get close enough to the prism (the secret with the skin), which encourages you to study the location more carefully.

The Providence Trials became a cool new addition to the reboot. In it, you often face a rather unusual goal, for passing which they give either a new item or a new skill. Also, the test almost always does not end with the fulfillment of the goal, and it can be passed on gold, that is, to fulfill the goal beyond the norm, which is also cool.

So why is the review negative?

1) The balance of mob spawns is very broken. On the 3-4th location, a shadow elite clay man or a crab spawns, which will almost ALWAYS BE IN INVISIBILITY until it attacks, and the damage this miracle deals is at least 90% of your health bar. The local spawn director often doesn't have enough points to spawn a teleport boss, so he spawns a horde of many, and this horde of many can be shadow or overloaded, because of which approaching it is suicide. Not all characters have invulnerability or the ability to survive this nightmare. When the map allows you to knock an enemy off the map, you will do it, because it is almost impossible to fight in close combat, about the fact that they can teleport to you and occasionally blink black, you understand when a poke goes through you or it will already be too late.

Why not make enemies more visible, and what spawned on later locations? This mob is too strong for the beginning of the run.

In the Lizard Temple and, it seems, on the 4th location, swifts also spawn (such birds that fly around you and then dive) in an elite shadow form, the most dishonest mob. It can start diving right after teleportation, so there is almost no time to react. The same story with the spirit, which has an instant attack, and its indication does not save the situation, because there is also little time, in the case of the elder spirit, everything is much worse, because its attack is faster and further, which makes you a helpless victim.

Starting from the 4th location, the game begins to bury you with an impenetrable crowd of enemies that comes at you in a solid wall, and all you can do is pray that while you are going from one edge of the location to the other, a random blow will not fly at you, because the player's temporary invulnerability is so insignificant that you won't even have time to understand how you'll be dead. It's impossible to dodge such a crowd, all your dodging comes down to spamming the space bar, which makes the character's dodge skills meaningless, because we already have a "solution". For example, the Bandit has a skill that if it kills an enemy, it resets all skills, so how do you pick out a weak enemy from the crowd? No way, the skill becomes just useless. In RoR2, this was solved by an additional dimension, and you always had somewhere to retreat, here you can drive yourself into a dead end. But how to solve the problem of the crowd?

Let the enemies' aggression grow, not their number. Then characters that deal a lot of damage to a single target would play much better, and the game as a whole would too.

2) Delays in rotation. To make a dash, you have to go in the direction you need, then use the skill. But the game still a quarter of a second thinks that you are still going in the same direction, because of which you can make a dash right into a chasm or a crowd.

3) Camera distance. In the settings, you can change the distance of the camera from the player, because of which you will see more of the map, but at the same time your character and enemies will be very small. You have to sacrifice the ability to microcontrol the character in favor of a larger field of view, the meaning of redrawing all enemies is also lost if you can't even make them out.

4) The size of the location. A character without movement will, in case of bad luck, look for a teleport for half a year, the locations (especially the mushroom caves) are incredibly huge, because of which you spend a lot of time getting to the teleport and clearing it. The particles from the portal are not visible at a great distance, because of which it is not always possible to find it. And I remind you that on the difficulty "Rainstorm" the timer does not forgive, and hits much harder than in the second part of the franchise. In case of lower difficulties, the game ceases to resist the player in any way, so you can look for the portal as much as you like.

5) Difficulty modification. The ability to reduce the received damage and increase the inflicted damage is just a shame, Risk of Rain has always been a game about difficulty, where you have to quickly charge the teleporter, collect suitable items and move on to the next location, but why bother when you can change the damage parameters, set the difficulty to "Drizzle", and then the main feature of difficulty - the timer, the choice of priority items depending on the situation is reduced to zero. I'm not even talking about the "Commando" artifact.

6) Some unlockable skills. Skills for the artificer, such as the platform and the fireball, are impossible to use in battle, they are just uncomfortable, the fireball is controlled by wasd at all. The poison bubble on the acrid is also an example of this. What's the point of these skills, other than in trials, I don't know.

It's sad to realize that the balance won't improve. At the moment, I don't recommend buying the game.

My complaints are the following, unbalanced characters and some elites being way more powerful/game-changing than they should be, some unlockable items are straight up necessary to win , spelling mistakes in items and weapons descriptions, the in-game chat is the bare minimum and locks you in place while typing, the items selection with the artefact of command also locks you in place which is bad in a game where constantly moving is the key to survival. Maps are way too big for their own good. Later on, enemies become bullet sponge and you can survive reliably only thanks to leeching items. In conclusion, this is not polished game but a quick cash grab aimed at RoR fans, i come here after having played RoR 2 and i can assure you , Risk of Rain returns is far less enjoyable than RoR 2. The positives? it runs well , no lag , or game breaking glitches , at least not to my knowledge. I got it on discount, but i still feel robbed because better games with lower prices exists.

The only Risk of Rain game to have a good final boss

I love the gamplay, but the fact that you have basically no saying in what is going to happen in a run ruins this potentially great game. You're enslaved to the items you drop and they are totally random. Some combinations turn you into a killing machine moving swiflty through the levels. Other times you'll drop only healing items and having a lot of healing without attack power is totally useless.

Edit: censoring morons just here to claim "Lol its a rogulike lmao". At no point is the genre tightly coupled with having 90% of your run tied to randomness. Play Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, Vampire Survivor, Hades and many other: you're constantly given choice to chose a direction for your build. You guys just have no video game culture.

Another one bites the dust. Go back to Risk of Rain 2 that's actually fun.

a shockingly large disappointment.

I've never played the original Risk of Rain but i have played Risk of Rain 2, so this is an unique experience from the Risk of Rain series for me. It's very easy to get into and the new content they've added fits seamlessly within the game. The Providence Trials are also well made, innovative, and different in a fun way from the games' main game mode. Overall, i recommend it to anyone who haven't or have played previous Risk of Rain titles before, it's well worth the price on sale or not.