It's certainly much better than the first installation. I had some fun with it for about 10 runs or so. Tried out 4 of the characters a few times each.

...but it's really not that great. The abilities you have are pretty basic, even when switching between characters. Your character isn't very fun to move around, especially in such "open-air" environments. There's plenty of down time. I wouldn't count running in to 1 or 2 enemies and automatically destroying them as instances outside of down time, either. The way the game is balanced makes it so that you're either decimating things or getting killed in 2 seconds.

The fact that basically nothing you do carries over to future playthroughs makes this game unfun. With games like Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells and Hades showing how it really should be done, games that stray from that concept and instead stick to a hard reset every time miss the mark by a wide margin. It's boring to not be constantly making progress.

Don't gimme that roguelike vs. roguelite shenanigans either.

Redoing this review because it was "extremely basic".

Risk of Rain 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, the gameplay is tight and punishing (Collapse isn't fair but we don't talk about that). However, the real gem is the banger of music Chris Christodoulou. Each stage has a track that fits its vibe and overall memorably boss themes. The soundtrack is so good that I have it over 400 hours on YT music listing to the Suvivors of the Void OST. However, I need to address the elephant in the room, the console ports. As it stands right now in October 2023 we are inching closer to SOTV 2nd anniversary with no console update happening no. I really want everyone on console to experience the plethora of new items, enemies, damage types, and stage music Hoppo Games and Gearbox have added. Currently, the PC version is the best way to play this gem and sadly i wish more people on console could have a great experience instead of a subpar port like the Nintendo Switch version.
Either way, this game is one of my all-time favorites, I will always have a blast booting this up and jamming to the menu theme before dying to collapse stacks .

A huge step up over its predecessor, all the more impressive for the complete shift from 2D to 3D, and all the many changes that resulted. Unlike 1, I've only played this in singleplayer, but it's a blast to run through. Like the best roguelikes, there's a range of characters to add the extra variety needed.

Unfortunately, a short while into each run, enemy power reaches the point that your health disappears so fast you need to learn how to dodge enemy attacks. While there's nothing really wrong with this level of challenge, it means runs can end very quickly, seemingly out of nowhere.

It would have been nice if local co-op had remained for the PS4 version, but unfortunately it's another casualty of the shift to 3D.