few games in recent memory have put a profound effort into making compelling and enjoyable gameplay that can replayed to your heart's content, and of those few, risk of rain 2 might be the only one to truly perfect it.
playing as one of the many survivors that can be unlocked over the course of playing the game, risk of rain 2 at it's core is simple-- get items, fight the boss of the stage, repeat. however, such broad simplicity allows for more time and effort to be spent on the specific details which make the gameplay so replayable, which in risk of rain is mostly the items you pick up during your run. there are over a hundred different items in risk of rain 2, each with various rarities and abilities to match, and the interesting, and often times gamebreaking, emergent properties of item combinations make each run vastly different from the next, and form the foundation of the incredibly addicting gameplay loop. every good item that drops in risk of rain 2 is a dopamine hit of itself and each time you have an "oh shit" moment of realizing two items synergize together in some way, it is extremely euphoric. i have 207 hours in risk of rain 2 and it feels like every other run, i'm like "holy shit, x procs with y? that's insane." not only that, but once you collect enough items in a run, you hit this moment where nearly everything around you just dies, and often times, you're not even sure which item or drone or ability actually killed it. this is usually referred to as a "god run" and it's one of my favorite parts of risk of rain 2, and why i think it's such a groundbreaking contribution to not only the rougelike genre, but video games overall.
somewhere in the bug fixing stage of video game development, so many game dev studios try extremely hard to keep you in the confines of the game they set out to make, and i feel like some of the most compelling parts of video gaming as a whole is when those confines break. watching legend of zelda speedrunners do hyperspecific inputs in game in order to write and execute literal game code during a speedrun has got to be one of the coolest things to happen in a video game. an entire competitive video game scene with tournaments dishing out thousands in prize money from a game made two decades ago is still around very much on the back of janky, unintended game mechanics that turned into viable and extremely competitive strategies. and some of these same types of game breaking bugs get patched out of triple A titles constantly, which is extremely disheartening as someone who really fucks with boundary break shit. this, i think, is where risk of rain 2 truly breaks the mold. the only limitations imparted upon the player in risk of rain 2, aside from some very niche exceptions, are the processing power of your computer and the time you want to spend playing the game. hell, with some of the item combinations possible, it seems hopoo games might want you to break the game sometimes, and that is awesome. however, it's not extremely uncommon amongst the roguelike genre. you can get gamebreaking runs on quite a few other popular roguelike titles, but the commitment to accessibility and the very nuanced ways in which difficulty presents itself (most times, FUCK U BLIND PESTS), allow for most players to have a blast breaking risk of rain 2 without spending hundreds of hours mastering its core mechanics.
overrall, risk of rain 2 is an amazing game that i can and will spend hundreds of more hours in, and can endlessly return to without ever getting tired of it.
playing as one of the many survivors that can be unlocked over the course of playing the game, risk of rain 2 at it's core is simple-- get items, fight the boss of the stage, repeat. however, such broad simplicity allows for more time and effort to be spent on the specific details which make the gameplay so replayable, which in risk of rain is mostly the items you pick up during your run. there are over a hundred different items in risk of rain 2, each with various rarities and abilities to match, and the interesting, and often times gamebreaking, emergent properties of item combinations make each run vastly different from the next, and form the foundation of the incredibly addicting gameplay loop. every good item that drops in risk of rain 2 is a dopamine hit of itself and each time you have an "oh shit" moment of realizing two items synergize together in some way, it is extremely euphoric. i have 207 hours in risk of rain 2 and it feels like every other run, i'm like "holy shit, x procs with y? that's insane." not only that, but once you collect enough items in a run, you hit this moment where nearly everything around you just dies, and often times, you're not even sure which item or drone or ability actually killed it. this is usually referred to as a "god run" and it's one of my favorite parts of risk of rain 2, and why i think it's such a groundbreaking contribution to not only the rougelike genre, but video games overall.
somewhere in the bug fixing stage of video game development, so many game dev studios try extremely hard to keep you in the confines of the game they set out to make, and i feel like some of the most compelling parts of video gaming as a whole is when those confines break. watching legend of zelda speedrunners do hyperspecific inputs in game in order to write and execute literal game code during a speedrun has got to be one of the coolest things to happen in a video game. an entire competitive video game scene with tournaments dishing out thousands in prize money from a game made two decades ago is still around very much on the back of janky, unintended game mechanics that turned into viable and extremely competitive strategies. and some of these same types of game breaking bugs get patched out of triple A titles constantly, which is extremely disheartening as someone who really fucks with boundary break shit. this, i think, is where risk of rain 2 truly breaks the mold. the only limitations imparted upon the player in risk of rain 2, aside from some very niche exceptions, are the processing power of your computer and the time you want to spend playing the game. hell, with some of the item combinations possible, it seems hopoo games might want you to break the game sometimes, and that is awesome. however, it's not extremely uncommon amongst the roguelike genre. you can get gamebreaking runs on quite a few other popular roguelike titles, but the commitment to accessibility and the very nuanced ways in which difficulty presents itself (most times, FUCK U BLIND PESTS), allow for most players to have a blast breaking risk of rain 2 without spending hundreds of hours mastering its core mechanics.
overrall, risk of rain 2 is an amazing game that i can and will spend hundreds of more hours in, and can endlessly return to without ever getting tired of it.