Major props to the Risk of Rain team deciding that the only way forward with the series was to immediately jump to the 3rd dimension. The first game is perfectly translated to 3D in Risk of Rain 2, and it's a much better game for it.

Much like the first game, the fun of RoR2 is to get as much shit as you can to upgrade your character, within the least amount of time possible. Difficulty and enemy count increases as time goes on, creating a very engaging dynamic of risk and reward, where you decide how far you wanna go in a stage to find new items before bringing forth the boss.

Just as RoR1, the levels are very expansive, but with the 3rd axis, it's much easier and enjoyable to assess the landscape and figure out where the items are and what path to take. Movement options are also much more entertaining and strategic, that depend on the character you choose from.

Unfortunately RoR2 has the same problem for me that its predecessor had. There's a considerable amount of "dead air" time, where you are just running around at the start of each stage without enough enemies to increase your cash flow so you can unlock new items. Unlike, for example, Binding of Isaac, where you dictate the flow of enemy encounters as you decide which rooms to pick, in RoR2 you have to wait it out for enemies to show up in greater numbers so you can get the action going. This isn't that big of a deal, but it starts to weight in after a nubmer of hours, and it makes restarting runs more a chore than they should be.

Despite that nitpick, RoR2 is a very fun time, and now that it has co-op up to 4 players, it's even more exciting to see how much you can fill the screen with enemies and bosses your brain can't keep up with.

Sensory overstimulation in 3D. How does anyone follow what the fuck is going on in this game? When I play with friends, they always ask me "how'd you die?" and every time I say "I don't know." There's so much visual clutter yet so little feedback that something is suddenly tearing through my health bar. It doesn't even get to be tense because it's so unceremonious. Deaths are never punctuated with a "fuck," but a "huh?" Maybe I'm missing something.

The game worlds are expansive yet repetitive, and largely empty beyond the same enemies spawning over and over again to fill the space. Outside of a few interesting movement options on some characters, traversing it is completely uninteresting. Holding shift to sprint helps, but not enough to stop me from wishing traversal was either faster or significantly more engaging. Any kind of platforming or momentum mechanics, even if it wasn't that much faster, would be more bearable. Anything would be welcome, just to add a basic, functional level of engagement to a game that is otherwise about leisurely walking around the projectiles of enemies thirty feet away to trade them some of your own, or, if you're feeling dastardly and playing the appropriate character, approaching to hit them with your fist.

I also don't understand the baffling choice to start players off with the least fun character. [This was improved by the recent update that lets you pick from two to start--the Huntress is less boring, and her 'replacement' in unlock order, the Bandit, is the most fun I've ever had with this game.] I probably wouldn't have ever picked it back up after my first session if I hadn't unlocked the Loader so quickly. The Loader itself is a missed opportunity--how come only one character gets a grappling hook? They're always the best part of any game, and it would help to rectify the dearth of interesting movement tools other characters have.

Navigation in these big, empty worlds with most characters is a matter of holding W and shooting anything you see along the way. Most of the things you find will only be more enemies to shoot or items that you get to press E on. Nothing truly interesting happens getting from point A to B for 90% of the game, which might not be such a big deal if the path from A to B weren't so long and so padded, or if every character had platforming or momentum-driven mechanics. So far, the Bandit is the only character I've found who makes combat engaging enough in itself to ignore how little is truly happening.

Why don't the items in the three-pronged capsules have descriptions before you buy them? They're the same across runs, it's not like what each item does is a secret. It just wastes new players' time as they guess which item might be relevant to them. Then again, the opportunities to actually choose between items that you get are few and far between. There's very little in the way of personalization or buildmaking. There are instead just a lot of generically useful items stacking on top of each other, which makes only a select few truly memorable. This is exacerbated by the fact that so many basic items will be repeated across runs--your character will end up feeling quite similar from run to run. The whole process feels automatic rather than exciting.

Fighting the same boss multiple times in the same run is hugely anticlimactic--so much so that when I first wrote this, I genuinely worried that I was misremembering that detail, because why would you design a roguelite where the level-end bosses can repeat later on? Sadly, I wasn't. Fighting the same boss twice in twenty minutes sure doesn't help the game to feel more substantial or less padded. In fact, much the opposite. In a genre where you can finish most games from scratch in a few hours (if you're good enough), the fact that anything at all feels like padding is the most telling indictment I can think of.

Fun, now in 3d.

+ Still has great music
+ Gameplay shift from 2d to 3d was very smooth
+ New survivors are fun

- Roguelike
- Issues with player agency and pacing

Pretty fun overall, with friends. Playing with randoms is pretty ass in my experience though, because inevitably 2 people wind up hoarding way more items than the other 2 ever could, so you and the other unlucky schmuck just get carried for the rest of the run until you can somehow catch up. It's happened in every single random match I've ever played and is a huge detriment to the overall experience. It makes the "Co-Op" feel less like "Co-Op" and more like a free-for-all. The only time it's felt like a proper Co-Op is when playing with friends, calling out what items you've found, and decide if it'd be an item better for your desired build or for one of your friends.

This game is unbelievably great. I didnt think I'd get something to compete with outer wilds as my GOTY slot, but this came out of nowhere and sucked up my time, and is my go to game if I'm bored.
Every character in this game feels fresh from each other, it's challenging, the combat is rewarding, the later the game goes to crazier both you and he combat gets, and is wrapped together with an awesome art style and great music. I greatly look forwrd to every update this game gets to further suck my time away.