Risk of Rain 2 is a game about dying.

That may seem like a pretty non-unique statement to make about a roguelike game, considering the genre as a whole is unequivocally fixated on death at the conceptual level, but now that I've come back to this game after a few months of feeling like the single player mode just wasn't really clicking for me, I think I can make a pretty good case for just what makes Risk of Rain 2 special in not just being a game about death, but also being the best roguelike I've ever played.

Let me start with the easy stuff and not leave it merely implied: You're going to die a lot in this game. It will also be frustrating. You'll have some runs were it feels like you can't catch a break and buckle under the pressure, or maybe you just made one crucial error that converted a winning run into a quick visit back to the character selection screen. What I find most interesting about this game, especially as a roguelike, is how detached the game's narrative is from these repeated deaths. It doesn't matter what survivor you picked, doesn't matter whether you died in the Aphelian Sanctuary or during Commencement, and it doesn't matter whether you defeated Mithrix, the Voidling, or obliterated yourself from existence. Most roguelikes/lites either eschew a greater narrative, in the process relegating whatever semblance of story they contain into set dressing for the gameplay to occur within (like Nuclear Throne, for one), or establish a narrative that ties the genre's innate replayability into itself (Like Hades or The Binding Of Isaac: Repentance), but RoR2 does neither of these things. The game has a greater narrative found within the Logbook entries, and while some may be critical of how the act of playing the game is essentially divorced from the story/lore of the game, I think this is a really good decision. Your character, along with everyone else who came to Petrichor V on the Safe Travels, does not care about what has happened to Petrichor V. The only thing you're principally concerned with is recovering as much of the cargo that was lost from the Contact Light in the first game. I don't think it would have been wise to try and place your actions into the greater context of the conflict between Mithrix and Providence, and I think it's smart that the Logbook gives any player who wants to better understand what has happened a dedicated space to digest the story, not just because I think it's important to have that space available for those who want to use it, but because I think the story is worth involving yourself in beyond the minimum the game requires you to.

I won't attempt to sum up the story or point to crucial item descriptions, I think you're capable enough of searching for the specifics yourself whether through the game or the plethora of YouTube videos on the topic. I feel kind of stupid admitting to this, but I find the tragedy of Mithrix and Providence to be genuinely compelling in the same way I find a lot of other dynamics revolving around familial strain compelling. It's probably because I have a twin sibling, but that kind of stuff just hits me really hard when I see it, and the relationship Mithrix and Providence are no different. I know there’s a lot of parts of the lore that paint Mithrix as commanding and generally being pretty bossy to Providence, but I can’t imagine that making the choice to betray his brother and trapping Mithrix on Commencement was an easy thing for Providence to do. I want to think the two of them genuinely loved each other and that choosing to separate himself from his brother was the hardest thing Providence ever had to do, even if he knew it was what needed to be done for the safety of the creatures of Petrichor V. I can’t ever imagine Providence was ever happy with himself for what he did to Mithrix, especially considering how the presence of Lunar items on the various parts of Petrichor are Mithrix’s attempt to gain control of some beings on Petrichor in order to destroy the order Providence wanted to maintain. Whenever I find myself thinking about the two of them, it’s pretty inevitable that I end up thinking about my sibling and I, imagining us in some unreconcilable conflict, creating a point in our lives where everything changes irreparably. It’s a relationship that dies, and there’s such a compelling emotional weight that makes itself known in RoR2 once you understand this part of the game.

Adding to this weight is the game’s phenomenal music from Chris Christodoulou. Most tracks wear their influences pretty heavily on their sleeves, and it’s all just so damn good. I lack to necessary knowledge to really dive into just why the music in this game sounds and feels as great as it does, but I think I can safely say that RoR2 has some of my favorite tracks in any video game. Commencement’s ‘con lentitud ponderosa’ is undoubtedly the best final level music I’ve heard in a game, and it’s pretty much the main reason I choose to not loop almost every run I play. It’s a song that feels like dying. It starts so quiet, so unassuming, a much slower, much more pensive take on ‘Coalescence’ from the first game, and then it just blows up in your face. It feels so powerful yet isolated, all this energy and raw emotion with nowhere it can go. It’s the last defiance in the face of an inevitable death, a constantly squirming and writhing melody that seems to beg out for something, anything to be different, to be capable of pushing away the ending you know is coming, and just like that, it fades away. It dies.

I can’t help but feel like this game blows my mind every time I finish a run. The gameplay feels like this once in a lifetime mechanical achievement that’s unlike anything I’ve ever played before, it’s story is understated and full of enough ambiguities for you to endlessly read into, and all of it is just melds together so cohesively. Risk of Rain 2 is a game that is more than the sum of it’s parts, and it’s a game that will live on in my memories for a long time.