Risk of Rain 2

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.

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.

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.

its good but they keep ruining all the items and stuff

its fun and if your bad you can play with others

Actually one of the best games ever made, with its diverse roster of survivors that has their own distinct play styles and hundreds of items that mostly synergies with one another. What I personally love about this game is that it just lets you break it with no limits on item count or the difficulty scaling itself. In a weird way, this game is a sandbox where the player races against time to determine whether they will break the toys given to them or will the toys break the player. All of that accompanied by one of gaming's most memorable soundtracks, this game redefines the rougelike genre.

Screw Take-Two's new EULA I am not accepting any of that.
They're against mods and whatever else is considered freedom, I just am not going to play the game until that eula is shat upon aswell as the team/person who wrote this mess.

this game gives me insane fun and mad rage and I never know which one i'm getting. When the game works you get insane power and melt every enemy on screen. But then you have stuff like opening an offering that costs 50% hp which is fine on it's own, but when you have a useless equipment that you have to bring to the endgame with you, it suddenly blows up the rest of your HP. The netcode and overall stability of the game is also somehow worse than a few patches ago. Dear devs, wtf is this bullshit? Game can be fun, but I can't recommend it in it's current state.

The game is fun with friends. I have issues with connection so after about 40 mins in, i get kicked. I'm kind of half and half on recommending.

It's so sad... I have 425+ hours in this game, I heard the bad news and thought if I wait a bit (7 months) it's gonna get better... But they really destroyed one of my favourite games and I can't forgive them for it.

Engineer Mines that constantly make loud beeping sounds, it's been reported 6+ months ago and it's still in the game.
Weird white textures that flash your screen out of nowhere because some build is starting to get a bit too heavy.
Bosses that would leave a frozen corpse behind that you can climb instead of properly despawning.
Void monsters that would sometimes not fully spawn so you can't get the loot.

There's so many other things and I have never, ever had any issues with RoR2 in my 425 hours on different devices, but now both me and all my friends came back to find the game in shambles.

It's a shame to see what this game has become, it was in my opinion one of the best game titles out there, now it's just nostalgia you can't come back to.

The game is still good and it's nothing game-breaking for the most part, for 8 bucks it's a good deal and for the full price of 25/30 it still is in my opinion, but for me and my friends personally, it's a ruined experience that just sucks coming back to.

So long, Ror2. Thank you for the fun <3

After 2 years of playing, sign a new EULA that you don't agree with or lose access to the game. Great job Steam for protecting me from this and reminding me that I don't own anything here.

Very good 3d rogue lite game. I found it through reddit and I am so glad i bought this when i did. Also, devs pls add crossplay between consoles and pc x'D

Funny number go one shot 10/10

just be sure to meet new people for you to play with since the one who would give the game to you would not play the game once you enjoy it :) Wait I was the friend who gifted and that person I gifted to did not play the game

Commando.

One of my favorite games, I love the aspect of collecting items around the map and becoming stronger and stronger per stage AS the monsters also get stronger. I like how simple and easy it is to pick up and just hop into a game. Def very fun to play with a full team of 4!! :) I've gotten a few of my friends into this game, and I'd keep suggesting it to others! I have already 400+ hours played, I cant wait until they think of making the next one... Risk of Rain 3 lol

So they update the game, they break the game, they break the mods, they break the community's trust and enthusiasm for a game that had no updates for years and they sell a mediocre dlc. I looooove gearbox!

Allow us to downgrade the game version before sots for god's sake.

Do not buy this game until they change the terms of use. It has very concerning privacy terms. Boycott all the games under Take-Two Interactive.

THIS GAME IS SO FUN! It's not necessarily difficult once you get the hang of it, but they definitely aren't spoon-feeding you anything either. Controller functions are crisp, difficulty scaling is fair yet still challenging, and multiplayer seems to be working fine with no bugs so far. Great game to play with friends that isn't like super sweaty at lower difficulty levels. Very nice.

Fuck Take-Two and its shitty practices. First a rushed DLC release, now a downright comical EULA upgrade saying things like they own content made with RoR2, or that you can't use or even discuss mods. No hard feelings towards Hopoo as they wanted to move on, but the result was the unlucky situation game ended up in.

this game was amazing before the newest seekers of the storm update, I put over 100 hours into it. however because of the new update I lost all my game progress, all of my items I unlocked the characters I had too all gone. not only that the game runs super bad now too couldn't even get a loop in before the game started to break, and unfortunately I have a very good computer so gearbox ruined the optimization. for whatever reason gearbox changed the void to the point where it's impossible to do alone or on a character that has low movement. I cannot recommend this game to anyone in it's current condition.

This game and its soundtrack is proof God is still with us and loves us

A few years ago this game was super great. Then gearbox got their hands on it. Even excluding the awful DLC they put out, they changed (and broke) the base game to such a point where its just horrible. Can't recommend unless you have a time machine or something.

This game is amazing and has a cool atmosphere, When you first start its really fun to start learning about all the items and what they do although it was pretty hard to remember what everything does because there is so many items, I would recommend downloading a description mod for the items. The issue I have with this game is the lack of content really, Not too many characters and usually its not worth unlocking the newer abilities because they are just a straight downgrade, exp. acrid 2nd primary change to blight instead of poison( its a complete downgrade). I really wish more abilities/weapons were added to the characters and not make them have huge downgrades on them, after awhile the content just gets boring because of that lack of choice.

This game aged like a fine wine and then someone opened the barrel and took a big shit in it. Their name starts with g and ends with earbox.

It is absolute and utter bullshit that I cannot play a game I have 500 hours on without logging into the epic games store.

10/5, the best game I've played in my entire life which makes me more happy when i win, and mad when i lose then this game, just as a idea for risk of rain 3 *if they make one* make more chest spawn.

game fun, but then gearbox bought it and the games still fun, but less so now, doesn't live to the hype anymore (modded ror2 is still very good I'm told)

Goated soundtrack
Goated boss fights
Goated characters
Goated game fr