Quick Breakdown: A great 3rd person shooter roguelite that's addicting to play.
Genre: Roguelite / 3rd Person Shooter
Score: 8.5/10
Review Date: 2020-08-10 (Early Access)

Full Review: I figure with Risk of Rain 2s 1.0 launch tomorrow it was time to finally review this gem. Despite enjoying the first game (something I should probably give another play now that I've sunk more time into rogue lites, and especially the sequel) and having friends recommend me the game I put off actually playing ROR2 until just after the release of the Artifacts update (in March 2020, close to a year after the initial release). I should've started sooner, but at least coronavirus quarantine allowed me to sink 115 hours into the game in a very short time span.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2062608517
So what is Risk or Rain 2? Well it's a 3rd person shooter roguelite where you play as a survivor on a distant planet. A lot of the core mechanics of the first game are present here in the second, and it's really great seeing how well Hopoo Games managed to translate the original 2D game into a 3D one. ROR2 feels exactly how a 3D Risk of Rain should feel, and those who played the first will be already familiar with the games core mechanics. Namely that as you progress through stages difficulty increases, but more uniquely the more time you spend in game difficulty likewise increases. This forces you to balance spending time killing enemies for gold (used to open chests), looking for chests (which grant you items) vs going through the level quickly so that the difficulty doesn't out scale you. Things can get pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nutty after the difficulty scales late game and the map is filled with enemies, especially if you have the right items to set off chain reactions of mayhem and murder.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2067789142
As for the items many from the first game return as well as new ones. Stacking multiple of the same item increases its effects. This can provide for very powerful combinations if enough of the same item are stacked, such as guaranteed crits, significantly buffed damage on hit, insta killing certain enemies at higher percentages of their max HP, to even very meme-y things such as playing as the Engineer character and stacking Bustling Fungus enough times to always instantly hear to full when standing near your turrets.

You begin the game with only one character and a smaller pool of items, but as you progress through repeated playthroughs completing various challenges you unlock more potential item pickups and different survivors (characters) to play as. There's a lot of cool variety with the survivors, you have a pretty standard Commando character, a melee oriented Samurai, a robot plant that damages itself to hurt enemies and heal itself on hit, and even an alien dog that vomits acid.

The game also includes unlockable modifiers known as artifacts that alter gameplay. Some artifacts make things easier, such as the Command Artifact that lets you pick your item pickups (as opposed to random drops), while others make the game harder, like the Artifact of Honor that causes all enemies to spawn as elite variations.

The game is a lot of fun singleplayer, but it also offers up to 4 person multiplayer, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ can that get fun. A buddy of mine would often turn on Artifact of Command and only pickup certain items so that we could do meme runs. (Mostly double Engineer with infinite Bungus circles).

I don't have too many criticisms of the game as it is, there's a few items that are so weak as to be useless. The Magma Worm boss will often ♥♥♥♥ off to the other side of the map while you're trying to kill it, which I'm pretty sure is just the AI buggering out an going after a stationary turret off in the distance. Biggest issue is that at present there's no real end game to ROR2, as after you complete the set of stages you loop around and keep running through them. You can choose to obliterate at an Obelisk every 3rd stage after the first loop, which is the closest thing to an endgame (or I guess killing the Twister Scavenger instead). Seeing as the game is still in Early Access and it's 1.0 release is literally tomorrow and seeks to add a proper endgame I'm not hung up on that, and even without a proper endgame I've already spent 115 hours playing this game and thoroughly loved it.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2078875410
Risk of Rain 2 is great ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun, and Hopoo Games has already confirmed further updates after the 1.0 release. It's worth your money now, and I expect it will grow even more worthwhile as it continues to be updated.