The game has been rendered into a buggy mess so much you can softlock your game. You can also be punished for having higher FPS, something that the gaming standards of today wouldn't even have had as a bug, this major oversight showcases a lack of polish once again at Gearbox.

And the DLC at that price with the amount of bugs that broke the base game, even if you don't own the DLC? Yea, this is actually so sad, one of the greatest roguelikes of all time ruined by your neighborhood Gearbox developers.

I'll switch the review back whenever this is all fixed, the game is not playable much.

Before reviewing, let it be known that I will put back my original review from Early Access (March 28th 2019, updated June 26th 2020).

I have played 85.2 hours on the Early Access of Risk of rain 2. And 2.5 hours (as of now) on the 1.0 patch with Captain as the new survivor.

Overall, this game is now quite a fully complete rogue of its kind. Risk of Rain 2 shines as it actually takes the fundamentals of its predecessor, clashes it as a 3D-rich environment and bundles it with infinite spawns of monsters, bosses and any of the kinds you could think of.

What truly makes this game fun is the amount of things you can kill and how fast you actually do it. Bundle the chaotic things you can make with some of the items and the artifacts that allows for some true 1FPS lag gameplay at given times; you're up for probably a good 2-3 hours run. Like no kiding, at some point I had my equipment (Q ability) on such a low cooldown that if I unequipped it, it would still act as if I did have it because of the amount of time it spammed it.

If you know how the game works, you can set yourself up with many of its features and use things from the Lunar Shop to create really interesting kits that makes the game quite different each time as it modifies how you do things in the game.

The best of it all, is that you can play up to 4. Crack a beer or something, this game gets really chaotic when you got 4 people in. On a side note, if you wanna have some good fun on a run, put these as your Artifacts on :

• Artifact of Glass (Gives 500% damage for 10% of your maximum health)
  
• Artifact of Sacrifice (Monsters gives loot sometimes and Chests don't spawn)
  
• Artifact of Swarms (Monsters are doubled, but are halved in health)

• Artifact of Command (Let's you pick your equipment)
  
• Artifact of Soul (Wisps emerge from dead monsters)
  
• Artifact of Evolution (Monsters gain equipment between each stages)
  
• Artifact of Death (If one player dies, everyone dies)

This latest patch also brought in one of the most considerable changes : an actual end game type boss. Normally, in most rogues, you're tasked with bunch of stages, couple mini-boss and a big boss to test out your build. This patch did it and it feels like Furi/Dark Souls tier boss nearly, but faster and more cheeze if you prepared for it. The first time i tried it, I literally killed everything before it triggered a single animation for any of its moves, but with my artifacts, I had to face twice each spawn, which was quite hlarious.

Overall, I'd give this game a clear 10/10. It's a rogue that shines for its kind, probably the only of its kind even. Best of it all is that it contains multiplayer functions that many others don't even have.

This game is an absolute banger of a roguelike game. I remember why I loved so much this genre. It came to me as a realisation when I watched PAX East on stream, this is the game, I have to play it. Its mechanics are amazing, it as if I played Overwatch but as a roguelike.

Like literally, thanks Hopoo Games, I can play with classes that are so similar to my beloved heroes in Overwatch :

Commando : Tracer+McCree
Mul-T : Bastion+Widow+Lucio/Brigitte combo
Huntress : Hanzo+Pharah+Moira/Tracer blink/fade
Artificer : Mei+Moira
Engineer : Torbjorn+Junkrat+Winston

And last but not least

Mercenary as Gengu, but a better Gengu than the Gengu we know of!

EDIT: I played recently with the new mechanics, frankly speaking, this game shines a lot more with artifacts.

You see, the artifacts kinda acts as modifiers while it's possible to even play modded versions of the game. This game is one, if not, the best out there for rogues type of games. Trust me, you will love it.

A fantastic Rogue that plays among the shadow of Risk of Rain 2 and FPS mechanics

This game came a long way and it was already very fantastic back then in the early days of Early Access. After about 150 hours worth of gameplay and 100% achievement completion, I can assure you, this game deserves to be placed among my top rogues for sure.

The Gameplay

So first and foremost, the gameplay. It's very simple, you pick a character, you got a skill tree and it costs souls to upgrade. To get souls, you kill enemies, elites, bosses and clear stages. Simple as is.


The twist is as follow, your character is defined by special perks and you can upgrade each of those perks at the end of a level within the stages. It's also a looter, you can get drops from anything (enemy drop, a seller (Peddler) or even a pre-game chest!


So what's with the rogue attribute then? It's all randomised, each run will have it's fair dose of problem and you gotta make up with it to successfully end the run. You will get scrolls to buff stats and all of these are randomised. Each run will also have different levels in each of the sections. And in each levels you may find variables to change you runs like a craftsman, a peddler, a red chest, a vault or a soul peddler even.

The Challenging part of the game

So you ask, what's hard about such a game? It's again very simple. The game did fix itself and make it better and harder. You have 4 difficulties: Normal, Elite, Nightmare and Reincarnation. Normal, Elite and Nightmare used to be the original difficulties (Nightmare wasn't doe early on if I recall) and I believe it wasn't that hard frankly speaking of. What changed is Reincarnation that make good usage of the extra souls for end-game players. In Reincarnation, you can pick lvl1 to lvl8 difficulty and in each they have a special twist to make it REALLY HARD EVEN MORE.


But on top of that, for the completionists out there, this game serves you actually decent achievements to hunt for. Some of these challenges are reminiscing from games like Risk of Rain 2 (e.g. kill 30 crabs with fire). Those challenges required me to play the game from an extensive 40 hours to an upmost of 150 hours (at 149.7 hours I was done with achievements.

IT HAS MULTIPLAYER???????????

Yep, you heard it right, it's got multiplayer and it makes the game even more harder the more players you got, up to 4. This game ranks among my top rogue for this reason, some of the best rogues out are the ones you can play with your friends. It's exactly the same with Risk of Rain 2.

Other stuff

I also constantly find myself coming back to it, simply put as an avid Overwatch player and rogue lover, most of the characters have kits that resembles other games' kits.


All-in-all this game upheld me for 150 hours, it deserves a 10/10 rating, an upgrade from the original review under. It's probably my current top 2 rogue.

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Original Review (Posted November 29th 2021)

This game is really fun in group, you can speedrun it or play extensively without it being a 7 hours run. This is like the middleground of games like Risk of Rain 2 where it can take hours on hours if you just cycle forever. 


I rate 9/10 honestly, it's got a few hiccups at time, but it's among my top 3 favorite rogues.