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LTTP Risk of Rain 2: I SEE YOU. I'M COMING FOR YOU. HAHAHAHA!!! (length warning)

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
God, I fucking love this game. Roguelites usually are good and fun experiences but this one just... hits different, man. It's about as addicting as Vampire Survivors, for me.

The premise is simple: You're a survivor stranded on an unknown planet. You fight your way through hordes of enemies and find teleporters to get further into the game.
The gameplay mostly consists of you being dropped into an environment, exploring that environment for a teleporter, grinding to get to a high enough level for a boss, then activating the teleporter and going to the next environment. This goes on for 6 stages. The main draw for the game imo is the amount of content and the combat. Each of the characters in the game have a Primary attack, secondary attack, Utility function (which can be offensive or defensive) and a special attack. You can activate these but they usually come with a cooldown, so you have to carefully decide on which to use at any time. Not only this, but the game gets harder as you play. Not in the sense of a level being harder than the next, but in the way that there's a difficulty timer that keeps advancing as you play. by 30 minutes in you'll be at HAHAHAHA difficulty even if you're still at stage 1. The game in this sense is a race against time to see if you can get to the end before everything gets too overwhelming. It's a very unique and actually really good difficulty system and keeps you on your toes as you use your character's abilities to get through the many enemies and hurdles. Oh right, the characters!

Like i previously said, there are 14 characters to go through. I've only unlocked 4 (2 come with the game) and only played with 3, i only have 8 hours in so far (that will balloon up in the future)
For a while i'd use the Huntress. She's not the best when it comes to attack speed but her movement is very good thanks to her utility Blink (and Phase Blink) which let her teleport a couple units ahead. Her secondary, Laser Glaive, is an amazing crowd control tool since it hits many enemies quickly. But the poor speed of the primary attack was too much of an issue, so when I got a new character, I switched. That new character is MUL-T

It's who I main as of writing this post, and he's so much fun. His first primary is an automatic & a shotgun at the same time. When you press and hold... it's a constant spray of high damage shots. When you let go, it's a fucking burst of them. You can already see how this is incredibly useful. His second primary is basically a high damage rifle perfect for picking off enemies from a distance. His secondary is a grenade that, when shot, damages and stuns every enemy in its radius and also explodes into a couple smaller grenades which actually damage the enemy further. Amazing for killing tons of low health enemies.
To top it off, his utility is a dash that allows you to go super fucking fast.... it's also a melee tool that stuns enemies and (if small enough) launchers them into the air. Which is great for when you want to move out of a tricky situation while damaging a larger enemy. It's also good for stunning larger enemies too when your secondary is still recharging.
He doesn't come with a special but when you're this versatile and this well rounded you frankly don't need much more than that. Plus some of the items that you get on your journey become great specials.... oh yeah, i should talk about the items too.

As with every roguelike, the main way to power up is to stack items and gain lots of them. When you have tons of status effects stamped on your ass, you can become an invulnerable god. And a lot of the items are pretty memorable and crazy.
There's a catch though, in order to get most items you need money. You get money by killing enemies. You can also get it by opening capsules that contain cash in them. In that sense, grinding is basically part of the game's core gameplay loop. Considering how fun the combat is though, I honestly couldn't care less
You can also get items from trading items you already have in 3d printers, which create the item shown on the 3d printer, which is useful if you have an item that you don't really like
Here is a list of some of the ones I've found really useful

Brilliant Behemoth: Out of all the items, this is currently my favorite. An item that makes every single attack from the player, yes every single one, generate an explosion. Every shot you fire, explodes. Every grenade that already explodes, explodes again. even attacking the enemy with melee, explodes. The game becomes a Michael Bay production. This adds a SHITTON of damage to your arsenal and basically guarantees a longer run if you get it.
Gasoline: When you kill an enemy, that enemy gets ignited. This can spread to other enemies and damage them in the processs. Useful for chipping away at HP and crowd control
Tri-tip Dagger: Every attack gives a chance to inflict bleed, which causes the enemy to bleed and lose HP
Soldier's Syringe: increases your attack speed by 15%. very useful to have
Sticky Bomb: adds a 5% chance that an attack will add a sticky bomb to an enemy.
Red Whip: This adds a boost to your movement speed after 5 seconds of having used no attacks, which is great for movement and scouting out the area (which you need to do a lot if you want to properly progress in the game)
Cautious Slug: If you don't take any damage for 7 seconds, you gain HP much faster. Very useful for when you've just left a difficult battle and need to heal up
Bustling Fungus: If you stand still for 1 second, green bright fungus grows around your area, and you heal much faster. combining this with Cautious Slug and a Healing Drone makes you heal extremely fast

Add all of these items together and stack them frequently and you will become more and more of an unstoppable force. Nothing will get in your way when you've got these many items on your side... besides the bosses

The bosses are some of the most exhilarating and adrenaline filled gaming experiences I've had in a while. For one thing, more enemies spawn when you're not actively shooting them, so you have to avoid the horde of insane enemies while you're busy trying to take down the boss and whittle away its HP. here are some of the few I've encountered

Wandering Vagrant: no this isn't the homestuck character, this is a giant floating jellyfish that will fuck you up if you're not leveled up enough. The Orb Volley smacks you down with 6 orbs that take away a giant chunk of your health if you don't dodge in time. the homing orb chases after you and threatens to eat up your health bar with the only retaliation being a well-timed couple of shots to the orb to make it explode prematurely. If you manage to survive through those, the worst attack is the Genesis Supernova, a giant blast which pretty much eats your entire HP bar like a KitKat. This is my favorite boss so far

Stone Titan: The red eye it has isn't just there to look pretty. It fires a rapidly damaging laser that will bring your HP down to double digits if you let it hit you for long enough. When I die from it, it makes me angry. So angry as a matter of fact, I want to punch the ground! When a Stone Titan 'punches' the ground, though, they're not doing it to release anger. They're doing it so they can burrow their hand through the ground and surface it.... right below where you're standing. If you don't dodge it, you'll take major damage, and get launched into the air.

Beetle Queen: She actually isn't that hard. 2 of her attacks, Acid Shot and Beetlejuice Spawn, are pretty negligible and while they can hurt you, don't really do as much damage compared to the 2 beetle guards she summons every now and then. So now you have to fight off 2 giant beetle cunts while trying to attack her and lower her health, and these beetle guys hit hard. Ground Slam and Sunder are 2 attacks you have to watch out for, the former happens when they get too close to you and it can fuck you up hard. The latter happens when you're farther away and can easily catch you off guard if you don't see it coming.

I'm not an encyclopedia on this game, so I'm gonna stop here. Besides i've talked at length about the game's gameplay enough, I need to get to the game's visuals

Honestly I love this game's artistic direction and environments, they all look so pretty. It's this simple, low end yet charming and beautifull cel shaded visual style that keeps the environments looking like a painting, i love it. I wish they'd be rendered with AAA qualities to really sell the immersion but they look stunning in their current states
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All of the environments were detailed and rendered in a way where it really makes you wanna jump right in and explore every nook and cranny, I love it. They did a good job with these visuals, especially since this was their first jump to 3D. I haven't played the original Risk of Rain yet, so I have no idea how that compares to this... but what i can say is that this is THE roguelike, IMO. If you liked Returnal you'll likely love this

And thanks to anyone who actually read this far, this is way too much time I put into a GAF thread. I haven't even been able to play more of the game because of this :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
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Rhazkul

Member
I love roguelike/lite games but i could never get into it. The timer is super-stressful to me because i like to explore maps and items at my own pace. The game kinda forces you to rush through each stage because of that stupid timer.
Also the items don't change your playstyle at all like in Binding of Isaac for example. Itemization is one of the most interesting things about Roguelikes, and in that regard the game lacks too. I wish i liked the game and could get into it because it looks cool and plays well, but it doesn't hit the right spot for me.
 

Evil Smurf King

Neo Member
I love this game and it was like a revelation for me to discover it.

The whole point is that it has many mysteries and secrets and it's amazing how our understanding of its systems and mechanics evolves just spending time playing it online.

For example, the issue of time limits: I saw on several sites that there was a specific time to beat a stage - 5 minutes, tops - if not, later on, the game would be impossible soon.

The truth is, it doesn't matter that much; what matters the most is the items and how you build your character. It's possible that your character becomes a hellish destruction machine very quickly and you can play in almost endless loops, to the point where you don't even need to touch the ground anymore...

Risk of Rain 2 is a true classic! Great game, love it to bits and it was responsable for getting me back into games again.

I'm on xbox live if someone wants to play, my nickname is EvilSmurfKing.
 
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