I've beaten this game three times in the past two months and I'm still in absolute awe that it exists. Every single aspect of it is beautiful, unique, and nigh-perfect in its own way, and it comes together to be even greater than the sum of its parts. It's everything you could ever want from the medium. Every interaction with its world is as harrowing as it is fascinating; every screen and region is breathtaking in its beauty and grandness. It's unfriendly and humbling on every level, but also compelling in a way that little else is. It's fun, it's challenging, it's deeply immersive, it's endlessly replayable, it has an enormous skill ceiling, and it's hilarious to play with friends. Its story is deeply entwined with your gameplay experience and as such is cathartic and meaningful in a way that only games can be; it's complex and nuanced in the emotions it conveys, and as other reviewers have pointed out, it's an almost spiritual experience. It pushes the medium forward with its incredible AI and animation but also questions some of its most fundamental conventions - tight and responsive controls are forgone for floppy and physics-based movement, and its unfairness is a vital part of its themes.

I have a couple of nitpicks - the overabundance of carnivores (mainly in the mid-game) can push the believability of the ecosystem, and juking predators through pipe transitions can trivialize encounters in an overly gamey way - but Rain World is still about as perfect as games come, in addition to being a wholly unique and greatly affecting artistic experience. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully describe how good this game is, no matter how hard I try - you just have to play it. I mean, fuck, am I just supposed to play other games after this? Could you imagine playing Rain World and then picking up some tepid survival game with encumberment and temperature mechanics? I'll be counting the days until Downpour comes out.

Rain World is a lot of things.

It's one of the most frustrating and challenging games I've ever played.

It's a game where every small success feels like a legitimate accomplishment and where earned comfort, rare as it may be, is relief like no other.

It's a game with a breathtaking world to explore. Every single area is gigantic and inspires your curiosity. Every single screen - of which there are thousands - is lovingly assembled and full of detail.

It's a game that nails its fascinating ecosystem. Animals in this game aren't just 'enemies,' they're realistic creatures with autonomy and personality. Sometimes they'll fight amongst themselves or get stuck and appear frustrated. Sometimes they'll just lounge around and seem uninterested in you.

It's a game that rewards you for being interested in its world, where you can learn things through observation and apply them to improve your gameplay.

It's a game with amazing animations, art direction, and music, which do justice to the rest of its elements.

It's a game full of small details and environmental storytelling that you could theorycraft about to no end.

But more than anything, Rain World is a game about making you feel small and unimportant.

The gameplay tells you this - it doesn't even offer you the precedent of fairness. You will die a lot, sometimes to things that seem unavoidable. The world tells you this. Its post-apocalyptic setting communicates that - even for a people much more powerful than you - this world consumes all. Their ruined architecture exists on a scale you can barely understand.

This overwhelming humility is one of the most powerful things a game has ever made me feel. It makes me sad that no other games like this exist. Undoubtedly one of the best and most unique experiences I've ever had with the medium, and one of my favorite games of all time.

Takes an already gigantic, power trippy game and cranks it up to 13. More bosses, harder bosses, harder and more meaningful difficulty settings, gargantuan crafting trees that combine into accessories with 20 different tooltips, weapons with damage values in the thousands with unique abilities so cool I find myself fantasizing about using them before the fact, and some of my favorite bosses of all time. Regular Terraria makes you feel like a badass but Calamity makes you feel like you could kill god with your bare hands. This intensity extends even beyond the gameplay, as Calamity takes the base game's tepid aesthetic and morphs it into something a lot edgier and more focused with some semblance of interesting lore, really impressive sprite-work, and one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in any game. It's actually insane how hard DM DOKURO went on every single song in this mod - the endgame especially is just masterpiece after masterpiece - and it contributes so much to making these already difficult and showy fights feel cinematic. Some things in the mod can feel kind of uninspired, and (much like the base game) there are irritating moments and content that can feel like bloat, but the experience as a whole is fun enough that I don't really mind. I'll probably play 200 more hours of this every year until I die.