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Game Information

Game Title: Risk of Rain 2

Platforms:

  • PlayStation 4 (Aug 30, 2019)
  • Xbox One (Aug 30, 2019)
  • PC (Aug 11, 2020)
  • Nintendo Switch (Nov 15, 2019)

 

Developer: Hopoo Games

 

Publisher: Gearbox Publishing
    
Review Aggregator

OpenCritic - 87 average - 100% recommended

Critic Reviews


Game Revolution - 5 / 5 stars

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As far as I’m concerned, Risk of Rain 2 is as good as gaming gets.


But Why Tho? - 9.5 / 10

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With its procedurally generated levels, infinite leveling system, a plethora of items and characters to unlock, and some beautiful and intelligent world designs, Risk of Rain 2 is a co-op experience you won’t forget anytime soon.


PC Invasion - 9.5 / 10

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With hardly any flaws or shortcomings, Risk of Rain 2 more than delivers. Its pulse-pounding, off-the-wall, challenging rogue-lite action, combined with countless secrets and unlockables, are sure to entertain and excite you. Play in short bursts or an hour until you scream, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" -- you're bound to enjoy every minute of it.


Nintendo Wire - 9 / 10

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Risk of Rain 2 is a perfect 3D translation of the 2D side-scroller it's based on.


Shacknews - 9 / 10

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Risk of Rain 2 is a top-of-the-line roguelike.


Destructoid - 8.5 / 10

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Despite my qualms with certain challenges and the last boss, I cannot get enough of Risk of Rain 2. I love the characters and discovering secrets while setting new goals for myself. As someone who mostly bounced off the first game, the sequel sucked me in like a Primordial Cube (an in-joke, hah!).


PC Gamer - 84 / 100

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The quest for outrageous items makes Risk of Rain 2 a strong action roguelike, but its unlockable secrets give it that little something extra.


COGconnected - 81 / 100

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It’s clear that just like the original, Risk of Rain 2 is a labor of love and if you’re a gamer who likes supporting independent titles, this is a great one to pick up.


GameSpot - 8 / 10

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Risk of Rain 2 is an exciting roguelike with an adrenaline-pumping pace, fantastically varied perks, and intriguing secrets to spare.


Nintendo Life - 8 / 10

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Even in its relatively unfinished state, Risk of Rain 2 proves to be an exceptionally well-designed take on the gameplay that made its predecessor popular.


NintendoWorldReport - Unscored

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The content that’s in the game right now shows a lot of promise, but it is unquestionably missing some content that will make it feel fleshed out.

 

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Pony Island dev's "deeply disturbing" card-based horror Inscryption gets first trailer

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Daniel Mullins - the developer behind such genre-defying delights as Pony Island and The Hex - has offered up the first trailer for his "inky black" card-based horror oddity Inscryption.

 

Mullins intially shared word of Inscryption, apparently an expansion of an idea first visited in his Ludum Dare game jam effort Sacrifices Must Be Made, back in February. However, its rather wide-reaching description - as a "narrative focused, card-based odyssey that blends the deck-building rogue-like, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie" - made it somewhat tricky to get proper handle on.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I remembered we had this thread awhile back. Wanted to throw out a recommendation for Virgo vs The Zodiac.

 

Kind of a retro RPG game, play as Virgo who is tasked with going out and defeating the other Zodiac signs (I don't really understand a lot of whats going on right now in the game). The combat reminds me a lot of Super Mario RPG, but instead of it being like an extra bit of damage or damage reduction for hitting a button at the correct time its more of a requirement. Any time you have a shield up you get a counter move, every move takes time to recover depending on how strong it is. I'm fairly early in the game and I already have plenty of attacks to choose from that give a wide variety of buffs. Some give me health back, other give me shields, some break their shields or remove any bonus from enemies. It also has a combat triangle I think its Green > Red > Purple > Green. They have names, but I can't remember what they are, I just remember by color coding. Anyways, its fun, the first boss gave me a run for my money and I had to retry 4-5 times just to beat her. It got some bullet hell areas mixed in just to mix it up when you are traveling through space.

 

The soundtrack is bangin' too.

The Holy Queen

The Long Way Home

The Time Keeper

The Sacred Forest

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

@crispy4000 turned me on to this in another thread:

 

Supraland (PC/Steam)

 

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"A mix between Portal, Zelda and Metroid. Explore, solve puzzles, beat up monsters, find secret upgrades and new abilities that help you reach new places. Playtime 12-25h."

 

I've been really impressed with this game and having a lot of fun. I'd describe it as a first-person Metroidvania with consistently creative, fun and smart environmental puzzles. I'm only at 30% of map cleared at like 8 hours of play time and even within the uncovered areas, I still have a ton of secrets to track back to, something I love. There's a heavy nod to Nintendo games in general and somehow this dev pulled it off beautifully and it never feels like hollow pastiche or anything but rather fun homage. There are Mario green pipes and coins to collect, super memorable jingles when finding secrets and upgrades and so on. I don't know, they just really nailed what they were going for here. It feels tight, responsive and just fun to play. The combat feels like dog shit at first but it lasts about 10 minutes until you get your first few upgrades right away and that's about the only real issue I can think of right now. 

 

Reviews are very good as well, not surprisingly, and there's a free demo. I ended up deleting it and buying the full game within literally minutes, can't remember when I did that the last time. 

 

Also, you get an achievement for knocking the wig off a Donald Trump-like character who claims the ladies love him in a locker room.  

 

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Supraland looks awesome, I've been waiting for it to come to consoles.

 

I don't quite get the warm reception for Risk of Rain 2.  I bought it for Switch a while back and I find it to be a pretty garish looking and repetitive game. 

 

Spelunky 2 comes out today and I'm interested in that, but it also doesn't look that fun?  The highly systemic and procedural world seem appealing, but I don't really enjoy rogue-likes too much, so maybe I should pass.

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14 minutes ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

Spelunky 2 comes out today and I'm interested in that, but it also doesn't look that fun?  The highly systemic and procedural world seem appealing, but I don't really enjoy rogue-likes too much, so maybe I should pass.

 

I've been wanting to try Spelunky, and now Spelunky 2, for many years just based on the rave reviews and reception in general but every time I watch gameplay videos I just...don't get it. I dislike the art style big time, I don't like the concept of rogue-likes, it looks balls-breaking difficult and irritating, I'd love to know what it is about this series that gets people so psyched. I might bite at some point on some deep sale on Steam just to finally actually try it. 

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1 minute ago, Bloodporne said:

 

I've been wanting to try Spelunky, and now Spelunky 2, for many years just based on the rave reviews and reception in general but every time I watch gameplay videos I just...don't get it. I dislike the art style big time, I don't like the concept of rogue-likes, it looks balls-breaking difficult and irritating, I'd love to know what it is about this series that gets people so psyched. I might bite at some point on some deep sale on Steam just to finally actually try it. 

 

I'm in the exact same boat.  I'm interested just because of how revered the first one is, but completely agree on the art style and the videos of gameplay.  If doesn't really look like too much fun, but hopefully I'm just missing something and I end up loving it, since platform games are generally my favorite.

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1 minute ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

 

I'm in the exact same boat.  I'm interested just because of how revered the first one is, but completely agree on the art style and the videos of gameplay.  If doesn't really look like too much fun, but hopefully I'm just missing something and I end up loving it, since platform games are generally my favorite.

I have this weird thing...I really hate bulky/round looking character sprites especially while jumping in platformers. I also hate boring backgrounds and that modern Flash Game looking aesthetic. This game seems to have it all at once. 

 

As a disclaimer, I don't even know if 'Flash Game art' is accurate but that's what comes to mind. It looks like some shit I downloaded on my phone for free.

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47 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I keep forgetting that I own Supraland from a Humble Bundle. I'm going to have to dive into that one soon. 

Its a ton of fun at the start. Once I had to start googling how to complete puzzles or took 30+ minutes it kept me from coming back

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On 9/15/2020 at 1:52 PM, Nokt said:

Its a ton of fun at the start. Once I had to start googling how to complete puzzles or took 30+ minutes it kept me from coming back

I'm about 15 hours in and while it does get pretty challenging, it always feels really fair and obvious to me once I do solve them. I did google one puzzle so far because I was about five seconds from a meltdown and ended up feeling like a dummy afterwards. 

 

What I do really appreciate about it is that it's never willfully obscure or overwrought. The puzzles always consist of simple ingredients presented in a really clever way. What I do agree with is that the pacing can become exhausting later on. There is rarely a breather area between a tough puzzle room and the next one. 

 

That all being said, I think the positives vastly outweigh that gripe for me and I usually have a legitimate grin on my face when I figure these out and realize 'ah wow, you can actually do that...' 

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1 hour ago, Bloodporne said:

What I do really appreciate about it is that it's never willfully obscure or overwrought. The puzzles always consist of simple ingredients presented in a really clever way.

 

This is it for me.  The puzzles are harder than your typical game, but never over complicated or obtusely designed.  It's the antithesis to The Witness in that.  I never audibly groaned after figuring something out, or just looking at a puzzle for the first time.

 

There is a good 'hint' guide on the Steam community page that doesn't outright spoil solutions.

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2 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

This is it for me.  The puzzles are harder than your typical game, but never over complicated or obtusely designed.  It's the antithesis to The Witness in that.  I never audibly groaned after figuring something out, or just looking at a puzzle for the first time.

 

There is a good 'hint' guide on the Steam community page that doesn't outright spoil solutions.

I actually wanted to use The Witness as the negative example in my post but refrained. That game actively made me feel like a fucking idiot, then made me angry when looking up the solution because it seemed so esoteric to me even knowing it. 

 

Supraland on the contrary feels like 'ah shit yeah duh...' and I always fail because I get stuck in what I think should be the solution. 

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Finished Supraland at 77% and 22 hours completion and my opinion stands. It's honestly a great game from beginning to end. No fat, just pure fun and surprisingly tight gameplay. I can't believe the majority of this was conceived and made by a single person, the quality is especially stunning considering that. If this had been packaged as a new Nintendo title with maybe just a tiny big more polish in terms of the HUD, I wouldn't have doubted it for a second.

 

Great game that I'd recommend to anyone really.

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  • 3 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

@ShreddieMercuryRisingdid you ever end up playing that Huntdown game?

I did, I got it for Switch and it's pretty fun.  It's well designed and feels good to play, but it's somewhat shallow and repetitive overall.  It has a great art style and soundtrack, but I found that it wore thin towards the end.  I would say go for it if you're interested, but probably wait for a sale if you can.

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HoB (PC/PS4/Switch)

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I love 3D isometric puzzle games.  They fulfill a fantasy of what an otherwise 2D game could look like with polygons, vertical puzzles, camera pans, etc.  HoB at its best perfectly encapsulates that, in a way I don't think other games have.

Traditionally, this sort of game is designed on a grid.  You may get full analog movement in some cases, like in Zelda: ALBW, but the world design doesn't match.  HoB throws all sorts of curvy, windy pathways at you, then tells you to leap off them.  So it's really more of a 3D platformer with some light puzzles.  You're expected to aim your jumps, and the camera does a decent job not making any of those leaps feel blind.  Landmasses are stitched together in a a way that flows organically from one to the next.  None of the puzzles are very hard, but they do force you to go explore and think less about obvious routes.  It's much more focused on overworld puzzles than dungeons in a Zelda-esque way.

The main flaws are in the controls.  The game could have benefited so much from letting you control your jumps mid-air.  It feels a bit finicky as is, with some deaths not feeling totally deserved.  I have no idea why they made that decision.  Combat is also nothing special, but gets the job done.  It's a bit buggy too, I noticed, but nothing too bad.

Overall, I'd recommend it if that all sounds interesting to you.  Not a must play, but with how cheap it gets these days ($2 or less on PC), it's worth picking up.

8/10

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On 10/14/2020 at 6:17 PM, Boyle5150 said:

risk of rain 2 is digital crack!  Once you start playing it, you can't put it down.  It's also a game that would be pretty rad in VR

 

I was thinking about that the other day the graphic style seems great for VR do you think the Quest 2 could handle it?

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