Risk of Rain 2

After dumping a ton of hours into the game it really sucks to say you shouldn't buy or play it now.
The new EULA give Take2 the right to take away your access to the game at seemingly any point simply by saying the wrong thing or being connected to someone using mods they don't agree with.

The mod and community scene is what has kept this franchise alive and now it is a legal minefield.

Not only that, but agreeing to the EULA allows Take2 to start spying on almost all of your data and you can't do anything after you click "Agree". This goes for any Gearbox product as of the time they made the EULA.

Do not support this, do not buy it, and do not stay silent on this matter.

Complete scam
Added EULA that I have no intent of accepting after I bought the game
Now I cannot play the game nor refund it because of it

> gets bought by huge greedy corp
> changes ToS to say they are allowed to gather your private data
> Says you can't use a VPN to play this non-PVP game

uninstalled, will never play online again.
If I ever even bother starting the game again, it will be the "offline" version.
will never buy gearbox games again.

One of my favorite games. Had a lot of fun playing this with friends. Unfortunately, terrible fucking publisher. I'm not letting my device get datamined.

The gameplay itself is fun but you don't get to do much of it.
If you die, which can happen in a single hit, there's no respawn system other than waiting for the next stage.
During all that waiting the difficulty multiplier keeps increasing, and you aren't picking up any items, so there's no way to catch up.
God forbid you're the lobby host and die because then you have to sit there twiddling your thumbs for up to 20 minutes or everyone gets kicked out of the game.

Tons of time in this game. Used to be super good before it was sold to Gearbox. Quality has hit rock bottom since with no end in sight. Current state of the game is that they broke controller support a few months ago and haven't done anything to try and fix. Everytime they release a DLC for the game, it takes a year plus to fix all the issues they introduce/completely rework new items they've added to the game so they aren't garbage.

Wish I could still recommend the game but until someone takes it from Gearbox, it's just going to be stress you don't need to take on.

As someone who doesn't really believe they like roguelikes, this game very much surprised me. My friends have been fans since even the first game, and when they wanted to put me on it around the release of Survivors of the Void (first DLC expansion) I was certainly skeptical. My friend streamed a bit of gameplay to me n it looked fine I suppose. I picked it up expecting to play it a couple of times with the gang but not touch it much myself.

Well, you can all see the hour count on this review (and likely the hours since.)
This game is truly great! It has tangible progression despite being a roguelike and (generally) every run starting you from zero like normal. The game has a relatively simple art style, but not in a way that seems amateur or even minimalistic, it serves the gameplay in a way to let the player easily process everything that's happening on screen even when things get crazy. Nearly every survivor feels great to use, and while I felt the unlocking of other characters n items may have hampered my enjoyment of the game at the time, I feel it was perfectly designed in retrospect. Things like Lunar items I would have just got myself killed by picking up at that time because I wouldn't have known better.

Risk of Rain 2 has a constantly ramping difficulty system - meaning the difficulty is always increasing passively regardless of what items you do or don't have. This keeps gameplay interesting constantly, albeit with quite a slow start on medium or easy difficulties once you become even a little familiar with the loop. That might sound intimidating but I promise it has kept the game fun and interesting no matter how many stages I learn like the back of my hand. There are a lot of little secrets that you will unlock as you become more comfortable exploring every inch of each level, continuing to keep the game interesting on subsequent playthroughs. The loot drops also almost always feel fair, even when it's left completely to RNG. There is only a handful of mildly useless items in the game in a pool of over 200, and even they have their niche use cases. Additionally, random placement of stations that are able to fabricate a specific item at the cost of an item or item scrap of the same tier allow you to somewhat tailor your build to your tastes, without ever being fully in control. It is to be commended how varied the ten base survivors are. None of them move or fight in the same way. Because of unlockable alternate skills, you can give any of your survivors a slightly different way of handling things to an entirely different playstyle depending on the skill.

In Risk of Rain 2, you progress through the game in "Stages." These are a collection of environments per level you have progressed to. For example, there are (including variants but not including DLC) five potential environments you can load into on stage 1. From there you must find the elusive Teleporter, which spawns randomly on the stage every time, enhancing replayability. Once you have charged the Teleporter and fought a boss, you can progress to the next stage. Begin again at stage 2. The base game is nearly devoid of bad enemy design. Most enemies have multiple methods of attack depending on their range from the player, which keeps the dynamics interesting regardless on if you're firing away from a distance or getting down in the dirt as a melee survivor. The final boss is always a threat due to how Risk of Rain 2 handles its scaling. As mentioned before, the difficulty is increasing with each passing second, which guarantees the final boss to be a challenge regardless of how long you've put off facing him. There are of course the rare times when you've gotten an absurd amount of strong items in a short enough amount of time and are able to just dogwalk him but judging by the fact he is still responsible for my most deaths 500 hours in, I can verify this is the exception not the rule. I'd say all of his phases are engaging, with the possible exception of phase 4, his final phase. Without spoiling how it functions, I will say on some survivors they are substantially weaker against this phase than others depending on their kit, and even for those who can deal with it somewhat easily it's not the most engaging way to cap off the end to your run.

I'd be remiss to not mention the stunning soundtrack that accompanies this great game, but as this review is already quite lengthy, I will simply say that there is a reason Hopoo and later Gearbox have kept the same composer on since the first game and all of its subsequent DLCs (at the time of writing this.)

TLDR; Play Risk of Rain 2.

A game so good that I bought it after pirating it

Fuck the grease lord Randy Pitchfork and Take2 though

Take-Two has enabled spyware in their games (search "Kernel-level Access") to spy on you and sell YOUR data because they believe they have the right to do so. "Oh, but this game is old," you might say. Nope—they're rolling updates out to all older games that are compatible. Shady business practices like this have killed—and will continue to kill—this industry. By the way, Take-Two is the company that owns Grand Theft Auto, so that's a hard pass for me. I used to really love the company that made Risk of Rain, but unfortunately, they’ve quickly become one of the most untrustworthy companies in the industry. You and I shouldn’t be giving our money to companies like this for such bad behavior. Save your money and reward businesses that operate with integrity.

This game has been one of the best games I have ever played. I can always boot this bad boy up and have fun. There have been a couple of rough patches, but overall it is in an amazing spot, and is heading towards even more greatness. I can't wait!

The EULA is a warcrime, Will not be playing unless they remove the bs from this game.

I would have reccomended this years ago. It was an amazing game, with an amazing soundtrack.

And then Randy Fucking Pitchford touched it.

Fuck Take Two, fuck Gearbox Executives (Developers are fine they're just trying to live), and fuck capitalism.

Take the game away from me if you want, I've modded this game to high hell (Now banned according to the EULA!)

great game, unfortunately i am not signing that new eula

pirate this shit

this game is a solid 9/10 without friends and a 20/10 with them, and both expansions are 200% worth it if you enjoy the main gameplay loop

Gearbox retroactively added an EULA that you HAVE to agree to to even play the game that is literal spyware that can scrape your data and take away your game if you do something they don't like, like using the wrong mod or saying something they disapprove of.

I love this game so it sucks having to give it a negative review. I really wanted to come back to it since I heard that they fixed the SotS Survivors, only to find out I effectively lost access to it after 800+ hours, because I won't hand over my information to Take2.

Fuck you Randy.

The fact that I still get pumped just starting a vanilla run, this many years after release, is a testament to how solid the core gameplay is.

One of the greatest roguelikes games I've ever played.

You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.
You offer to the shrine, but gain nothing.

i love this game

I cannot believe I have to leave a negative review on one of my all time favorite rogues, but I CANNOT in good faith recommend people to play this game or ANYTHING that Gearbox/2K have developed until they revert their recent EULA changes.

By downloading any of their games you are basically giving them access to scrape your computer of your personal information, including computer files and your damn SEARCH HISTORY. It is a blatant invasion of privacy and I’m completely disgusted by this complete disrespect towards customers.

I’m never buying any games under this company again.

Loved the game and devs for years and wanted to buy DLCs, but guess what- They are not available in my country. Great, thanks

you get no fancy graphics, but you get a top-notch gameplay mixed in with an incredible lore you can only discover through reading the in game items. 10/10

edit. I forgot to mention the amazing music made only by the maestro Chris Christodoulou

It's a great game, but the current publisher, Take two has made a Eula change for all their games. They can steal all data on your pc, this includes credit-card information, home address, search history and all pc files.
And for those that say that a lot of games do so nowadays, we gotta remember that those games do it to stop cheaters. RoR2, and most games under Take two such as the Borderlands series, are usually played offline or with friends, where no cheating really happens.
This is simply a way to take your data, and in case of a data breach on their end, well enjoy giving someone access to your credit-card.

Predatory EULA changes to gather all sorts of information and store, sell and do whatever they want with them. No choice but to accept or lose the game that you bought. This has to stop!

It genuinely pains me to give this game a negative review due to how much fun I used to have with it but what Gearbox, Take Two and RANDY PITCHFORD (CEO of Gearbox and alleged holder of illegal pornography) did to this game is beyond almost anything I have ever seen.

It wasn't enough for them to release a broken DLC with a forced update that destroyed functionality on both PC and Consoles.
It wasn't enough for them to make a FUCKING ROADMAP for BUGFIXES because they didn't playtest or debug their own DLC or update.
It wasn't enough for them to LITERALLY release a character that is UNFINISHED EIGHT(8) FUCKING MONTHS after they released the DLC.
It wasn't enough for them to make it impossible to "legally" rollback the game to the version before they fucked the game up. No no no no. You see that's not enough for them because god fucking forbid you mod this game to make it playable and fun again. So now in order to even play this game you have to sign an absolutely hilariously bad EULA that openly and outright tells you that not only is your data going to be scraped for data mining but that you also have literally no legal right to sue or withdraw agreement for them if they abuse this data (they will btw.)
Oh and it gets even better than that too, if you sign this EULA they can legally take the game away from you for:
1. Modding the game.
2. Negatively reviewing the game. (Literally)
3. Negatively talking about the game. (Literally)
4. Any percieved slight against Take Two or Gearbox.
5. Mentioning or talking about RANDY PITCHFORD (CEO of Gearbox and alleged holder of illegal pornography)
6. Sueing them for literally performing illegal data mining breaches on your computer.

No. Absolutely not. I am done, I understand at this point I'm pissing in an ocean that's full of piss already and this review will probably get buried but on this day I have uninstalled RoR2, which was once in my top 5 favorite games easily, and I have absolutely no intentions of ever reinstalling it because I simply cannot play the fucking game anymore unless I agree with an EULA that is absolutely insane to read through. I will not expose my computer and data to what is essentially corporate spyware. I am not signing a contract in where at any given point the publishers can steal the money I paid for this game over 6 years ago because I hurt their fee fees online and on top of that I cannot even mod the data that is already existing on my computer that I ALREADY PAID FOR!

Do not buy this game, if you absolutely must try and play this game then search for other venues. *wink winK*
DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! DO NOT GIVE TAKE TWO OR GEARBOX MONEY FOR DESTROYING THIS GAME!
Last but certainly not least; FUCK RANDY PITCHFORD (CEO of Gearbox and alleged holder of illegal pornography). I will NOT sign your stupid and openly immoral EULA. Fuck your ass with a cactus.

A Case Study in Beautiful Suffering

Damn near the 200-hour mark, and I find myself reflecting on this game the way one might reflect on an ancient text: with reverence, confusion, and the growing suspicion that my death is a core game mechanic, not a consequence.

Risk of Rain 2 is a procedurally generated fever dream engineered by a team of developers who clearly passed both calculus and therapy with flying colors. It's a masterclass in ludonarrative alignment: the story is told not in cutscenes, but in how loudly you scream when a blind pest punts you off a cliff at 38 minutes into a god-tier run.

Every death is an unscheduled performance review. The game doesn’t ask, “Are you ready?” It says, “We’ll find out.” You don’t play Risk of Rain 2—you participate in a hostile merger between your self-esteem and randomized item drops.

Pretty Praise

The characters? Legends. The gameplay? Crack. The difficulty? Feels like the devs coded in personal vengeance. And just when you think you're built different, the game reminds you: you’re built like a limp baby arm.

The itemization loop is nothing short of alchemical. Characters scale from squishy interns to demigods of destruction in a ballet of synergy, probability, and hubris. And yet, no matter how strong you get, the game evolves with you—an adaptive ecosystem of things that want you dead and have the tools to make it happen.

A Roguelike That Rogues My Life

My favorite moments? The deaths. Not even kidding. You think you’re a god with 17 ukuleles and 3 goat hooves, then a jellyfish sneezes in your direction and suddenly you’re a speed bump on the lunar highway. It’s humbling. It’s poetic. It’s pain in stereo.

Do I desire more content? Naturally. But that craving exists not from deficiency, but from excellence. What’s here is complete. It’s curated chaos. It’s interactive poetry for masochists and min-maxers alike.

Final analysis

11/10. Would get obliterated again.

it hurts me deeply but i must not recommend RoR2 or any other title within take2's grubby fingers, as the new EULA is extremely invasive and anti-consumer and since i do not agree to have my pc and browser essentially full scanned by them i can no longer play one of my favorite titles anymore. no news of a walkback has reached me at the time of this review either. consider this as the review for the borderlands franchise as well.

Was a great game until they dropped a shyte DLC. Then, Gearbox had to get involved and popped out a new EULA for no real reason at all. Uninstalled and will never play again.

Take-Two up to their usual bullshit. Don't buy any games connected to Gearbox for the time being.

it was great but recent changes in balancing like the void fields barely anyone wanted it to be more difficult to the casual player just made it mid

One of my absolute favorite games completely ruined by Gearbox and Take Two Interactive with a horrendous DLC that botched the base game, and a recent EULA that wants to scrape all my personal data, prevent me from using mods, or even talk about glitches, bugs or cheats. It explicitly even states against using VPN to bypass this bullshit.

Until, at the very least, this current EULA is rolled back, I can't in good faith recommend anyone to purchase this game. A real shame that a modern classic is completely and utterly ruined by corporate greed.

Really great game, but Take-Two's recent EULA changes that demand your data, force arbitration, and discouraging modding whatsoever have basically killed it for me. Not touching on this or anything else Take-Two's got their grubby hands on until they get their act together.

Great Game... However now Anything Gearbox Publishing can spy on us and will stop Modders and if caught talking about mods or even using mods they will literally stop access to your game. This is Insane as risk of rain 2 has a awesome modding community and is part of the reason people still play. Heck Even Twitch Streamers use Mods because it has Twitch interaction where your chat can actually mess with you. First of all this is going to ruin support for this game. Remember that this game was developed by hopoo games. But Gearbox Bought this game and broke it.

Rip RoR2. Take2 has been the worst thing that's ever happened to this game. New ToS makes every IP they own spyware now . Rip to a real one.

Take 2 Interactive is a scummy company in my opinion. The game is great but I do not agree to the latest TOS change.

The game itself is great. New Take2 ToS, however, makes it into a literal spyware. Until they revert it, stay away from their games. This goes for Borderlands series as well.

You load up the game. spend 30-40 minutes killing enemies and getting items and then get 1 shot by an elder lemurian from across the map.
Game of the year!!

EULA is straight up spyware.

The game is mega fun and good, but don't buy it until EULA is reverted.

New terms of service for gearbox is full of shit. Wait to see if they rescind their terms or spend your money else where.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME UNTIL GEARBOX REVERTS THE EULA CHANGES.
they are putting spyware on a game THAT DOESNT CONNECT TO A SINGLE SERVER.
and if you do have the game pls uninstall they are collecting everything from your ip ,to the dust in yo bumcrack

The changes in the EULA and terms of service make this game borderline spyware at this point. Taking data like: Passwords, Address, Phone Number, If mods are installed, and even I.P. Address. Do not install or play this game unless Take-Two and Gear Box change it back.

Nice EULA change, tracking user information such as passwords, addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses. Now in borderlands modding is now a bannable offensive. Do not buy this game.

Risk of Rain 2 runs great on the Steam Deck! The fast-paced gameplay and roguelike progression feel smooth Controls are responsive, visuals are sharp, and performance holds up well even in chaotic moments. Perfect for quick sessions or long runs—Id lean towards playing this game docked rather than handheld.

This is easily my favorite game that I've ever played.

I have played many rouge-lites, and this one by far stands at the pinnacle of them. RoR2 is a extremely polished game that does quite literally exactly what every rouge-Lite wishes and hope to do. Be engaging over and over again, Many games in the rouge- lite genre are great at making you want to play the exact same game over and over again, take Hades, and Dead Cells for example, (Try them too) but RoR2 does it with more fervour.

The gameplay is fun, playing as the 17 different vanilla character will surprise you at all of them stand apart from each other. Yes, you will have a favorite (Mine is MUL-T) but you will enjoy most all of them. The items of this game, the meat so to speak, are incredible. All the legendary items fun to pick up, but even the common items have charm in strength. Going from a scared powerless noob to a genuine god causes white tears to run down my leg. The environments all with their own styles never fail to be a sight for sore eyes. THE MUSIC. I know its beating a dead horse but the music is phenomenal music hear is on my daily Spotify playlist because its just that powerful. The lore. Again, many games in the genre have well crafted stories. But theres a magic in RoR2s story. Reading logs, cross referencing ideas between the first and second game, all the story of RoR2 is hidden to someone who doesn't care. But to ones that do? They'll find a story that emotional, tragic, a story that can stick with you like the best of books.

RoR2 is already amazing by yourself, but this game takes it up one more notch. Unlike many (if any) rouge-lites, if you can grab a couple friends, convince them to buy the game? You've just got a one way ticket to double the fun, maybe even triple the fun. The kind of stupid fun that brings people back to the better times of getting with other kids in neighborhood and going on silly adventures and eating pizza after a long day together.

(IMPORTANT) Now one last thing, the reasoning for the not recommending. The game has had a stressful time lately, Our beloved Hopoo sold the IP of RoR to Take-Two interactive, a hopeless pathetic switch in. This has caused some concerns to long time fans for the future of RoR2 and the franchise. I mean hell, I planned to write another section about the amazing modding community this game has (Totally not suggesting you use it) before learning that the new EULA discourges it. I will say now that if this comes across Fake-Two's eyes, we are watching and we as a community are terrifyingly ready to tear apart everything you stand for if you continue to disrespect the consumers of your newly acquired product. Despite the ever constant bleakness of the universe, I am hopeful. I hope that the game is optimized, I hope they fix their DLC as soon as possible, that they accept mods and the joy that they add to a wonderful game. The game in this state is a dirty nugget of gold, just waiting for its time as the pinnacle once again.

Once Take-Two Interactive gets off their high horse amends their mistake, I will say one thing and one thing only. Please play Risk of Rain 2. Whether you have been a forever fan of rouge-lite and want to get into the genre, play this game.

Fun game. The true difficulty is finding friends that can play on hardest mode without dying in the first minute.

You can interrupt a wedding, murder the bride and groom, and steal their wedding rings and use them to kill people.
You even get an achievement for this.
10/10 game

If you play with a friend who's put some good time into it, you can unlock a lot of achievements really fast.
Just uhm... expect difficulty.

This game has honestly one of the best original soundtracks you will ever hear.

It's also pretty damn fun.

I've heard a lot about this game and even seem some of my friends playing it, didn't caught my attention initially but when it went on sale I thought "Why not?", been playing 4 days straight. The very next day I bought the dlc, I highly recommend it. Risk of Rain 2 is highly addictive if you enjoy rogue-like, exploring and challenging games.

revert the game to before the seekers update randy

you had to just not touch it randy

how do you fuck up the main menu randy, i didn't even get the DLC and shit is still broken RANDY

pirate the game and grab a copy from before the greasemaster got his grubby little hands on it, the hopoo guys won't see any money from a new purchase

this game is great if you want to run around and shoot a lot of things. highly recommend with friends for the chaos, and solo for the enjoyment

Game died with transfer to Gearbox, RIP. Also Chef bad, look what they did to my boy, won't play after the rework on principle. Beans.