The classic 2D RoR is a slow and difficult game in comparison to the faster paced and more elegant sequels, and while it's certainly one of my favourite action roguelites of the 2010's I can see how polarising it's slow and meticulous design is.

The premise is relatively simple, a cargo ship crashes on a planet and you have to collect the futuristic supplies to help you escape while fighting the local flora and fauna. There's massive variety of items and difficulty constantly creeps up through each playthrough spawning more powerful enemies. You start with one survivor who has a tight long-range skill set and must begin unlocking new items, heroes, and secrets from there.

Risk of Rain's adoption of a side-scrolling action game was unique for the time, especially as a sci-fi roguelite, with it's unique pixelated art style, ethereal soundtrack, and truly alien environments giving it a style and aesthetic that truly stood out. The simple 4-skill design for each character is fine tuned and as satisfying as they are different, embodying a wide variety of unique play styles that is refreshing to see when most procedural games rely on the numbers to set the differences.

That said RoR is truly at its hardest when you first turn the game on. The initial difficulty is very slow paced, the starting character's skill set very simple to learn but hard to master, and of course you have only the starting items. It's only once you've died 20-30 times that you're in a position to start getting unlocks and that's a long time to go without encouragement, getting to grips with the repetitive early gameplay. Most people will dip out before things get interesting, but if you stick with it the unlocked items and characters are the core of this game's variety.

Between the secret items littered throughout the variety of stages, the massive roster of foes to face, the modifiers for enemies you can encounter, the huge variety of items to unlock, the large roster of playable characters, and each level having randomised layouts there is a lot of quality game design to experience here - unfortunately that does mean getting over that starting hump which is admittedly a tall order. It's a polarising title and while I loved every moment of this mechanically tight and challenging 2D platformer, your mileage may vary.