If you are anything like me, you also have the problem of getting bored with roguelikes quickly.
Risk of Rain 2 (RoR 2) breaks the mould, though, and is a roguelike that even I found worthy of playing night after night.
Here’s why.
Gameplay
I was pretty taken aback when I booted into RoR 2 to find myself defending against a group of enemies moments after my character stepped out of the shuttle that just crash-landed into the planet’s surface.
The immediate urgency with which the game begins also forms the core gameplay loop, as with every second that passes, the difficulty increases.
This means that you are trying to find the teleporter as soon as you start the game, which you must activate to fight the boss and progress to the next level.
If you don’t do this quick enough, the game’s difficulty will become overwhelming – to the point where you will almost certainly die and have to start the process all over again.
Since the teleporter’s location is randomised for every level, and the order in which you progress through the levels is procedural, the game never grows stale.
This, coupled with enemies constantly spawning close by and the lack of loading screens, means the game flows effortlessly from one action-packed scene to the next.
Character loadouts
You can choose from ten classes, but you only have access to one at first.
The game gives you hints (which can be very cryptic) on how to unlock all the other classes, and this motivates you to play just one more round to try and push further than you did in the last run.
Even though each character has the same types of abilities, like a movement-based skill and basic attack, you will have to learn how to adapt to each character’s playstyle if you want to succeed.
The variation in the classes also allows for an addictive co-op experience that encourages you and your friends to carefully consider how your characters can work together optimally.
In addition to your character’s abilities, your effectiveness in combat depends upon the items you buy.
There are 116 items in the game, and each offers different effects that either provide buffs to your character or apply debuffs to enemies.
These effects include granting you a protective shield after a kill, slowing enemies who are hit by your attacks, increasing your chances of dealing a critical hit or adding chain lightning to your attacks that bounces between enemies.
There is no limit placed on the number of items you can have in your loadout, and you can stack items too, like buying 8 of the same item to get your critical hit chance up to 80%.
In addition to this, item effects also scale with your character’s abilities, which means that if an item gives you +100% attack speed, an ability that fires 10 shots will now fire 20.
When everything falls into place to grant you the perfect build, few other games come close to providing the satisfaction that RoR 2 does when you decimate a massive group of enemies.
Finally, as a massive Synthwave fan, RoR 2’s soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal.
The music increases in speed as time goes by to subtly imply your impending doom, and it always manages to hypnotise me into trying to hold on and push through.
In the end, you have to play Risk of Rain 2 for yourself to know what I’m on about, as the feelings evoked when playing simply aren’t translatable.
Risk of Rain 2 is available on PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox.
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