Full ReleaseXbox · PC · PlayStation · Switch

Risk of Rain 2

Hopoo Games · Shooter, Action, Indie

Overview

Escape a chaotic alien planet by fighting through hordes of frenzied monsters – with your friends, or on your own. Combine loot in surprising ways and master each character until you become the havoc you feared upon your first crash landing.

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SURVIVE AN ALIEN PLANET

Over a dozen handcrafted locales await, each packed with challenging monsters and enormous bosses that oppose your continued existence. Fight your way to the final boss and escape or continue your run indefinitely to see just how long you can survive. A unique scaling system means both you and your foes limitlessly increase in power over the course of a game.

DISCOVER POWERFUL NEW ITEMS

More than 110 items keep each run fresh and full of new challenge. The more items you collect, the more their effects combine, the more surprising some of those combinations might be. The more items you encounter, the more lore (and strategy) you’ll discover through the logs.

UNLOCK NEW WAYS TO PLAY

Unlock a crew of eleven playable survivors, each with their own unique combat style and alternate skills to master. Learn the secrets of the Artifacts to toggle gameplay modifiers like friendly fire, random survivor spawns, item selection and more. With randomized stages, enemies, and items, no run will ever be the same.

PLAY SOLO OR CO-OP

Tackle the adventure solo or with up to three friends in online co-op, or compete in the rotating challenge of the Prismatic Trials. Brand new survivors like the Captain and MUL-T join classic survivors such as the Engineer, Huntress, and--of course--the Commando.

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,999 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

GameQ verdict: Essential

An endlessly replayable roguelike with a superb soundtrack, though co-op disconnects and a growing stack of paid DLC wear on some.

94% positive on Steam · 354,301 reviews

1. Summary

93% of the reviews in this slice recommend Risk of Rain 2, and the praise is consistent. Reviewers describe stacking items until a fragile survivor turns into something absurd within an hour, a roster where each character plays differently, a soundtrack that 13% of the longer reviews praise, and co-op runs that turn into chaos with friends. Hallowed Concepts, the fourth expansion, came out in the last week of the export, the busiest week in it; the early reviews that mention it are largely excited, about the Enforcer in particular, and a few report launch bugs. Some long-time players who turned negative after the Seekers of the Storm launch have since edited their reviews to say the game was fixed.

The complaints come from specific groups. Co-op players report disconnects mid-run with no way back in. Veterans with hundreds of hours say each paid expansion ships with bugs and that the total DLC price keeps climbing. Newcomers describe a game that explains almost nothing, hides the teleporter, and offers no way to save a run that can last an hour or more. Others find the randomness shallow and the runs repetitive.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise
Co-op chaos, with solo still holding upHigh

Friends, co-op or multiplayer come up in 21% of the longer reviews. Much of it is praise: runs with friends get louder, stranger and funnier, and some reviewers mention buying a second copy for a child or getting the game as a gift from a friend. Players also like that expansion content follows the host: "as long as 1 party member has the DLCs, it's unlocked for the entire group". Solo players say the game stands on its own. Connection drops and a shared loot pool come up under the same topic and are covered in the frustrations below.

The core loop: stacking items into a "god run" and "one more run"High

12% of the longer reviews talk about replayability, addiction or the "one more run" pull, and 8% describe builds, item synergies and stacking. What they describe is the arc of a single run: start weak, grab items with no cap on stacks, and end up deleting the map, until something kills you anyway. One player said they "always feel like an invincible god for 45 minutes before being instantly vaporized by a single stray pixel"; another wrote that the game "turns 3 hours into what feels like 30 minutes". Reviewers often mention Artifacts (run modifiers), and the Artifact of Command in particular, which lets you pick items, as the way they tune runs to taste. Some players dislike this same randomness; see "Randomness" under the split topics.

The soundtrackHigh

13% of the longer reviews praise the music. Some name the composer, Chris Christodoulou, or single out tracks such as "The Rain Formerly Known as Purple" and "...con lentitud poderosa". The music also comes up in 6% of the longer negative reviews, many of them still praising it. The running joke is that the game is a bonus: "Wow, I can't believe this album came with a free game!" Others put it plainly: "Downloaded for the gameplay, stayed for the music." A few reviewers also thank Stavros Markonis, the second composer they credit.

A roster where every survivor plays differentlyMedium

Reviewers often name their favourite survivors (Loader, Railgunner, Mercenary, Acrid, Engineer, Seeker, Operator and the new Enforcer among them) and praise how much a character swap changes a run. Unlockable alternate skills and skins give each survivor a set of challenges to chase. Criticism here is about balance: Commando's "buff Commando" meme, Rex's unpopular unlock challenges, and DLC survivors that some find stronger than the base cast.

Mods that extend the gameMedium

6% of the longer reviews bring up modding, mostly as a plus. Reviewers say r2modman and Thunderstore make it easy, and they use mods for quality-of-life fixes (run saving, item stats, auto-sprint), rebalance packs, new survivors and joke characters. Some present mods as the answer to the game's gaps: "Fortunately mods exist to solve the countless myriad of issues". Big updates also break mod setups until authors catch up.

Runs on modest hardware, at least early in a runLow

Players on old laptops and Steam Decks say the game is small and runs well on weak machines: "Damn, my potato pc can handle this game!" Long looping runs are another matter, covered under the split topics, and strain even strong PCs.

Lore hidden in the logbookLow

A smaller group praises the item, monster and environment logs, which tell the story through letters, lab notes and court transcripts. Some say the lore changed how they see the final boss and the survivors. Others note the story is easy to miss entirely.

Where players are split
Update quality since the change of developerMedium

Reviewers who have followed the game since the original studio handed it to Gearbox describe a timeline. The 2024 Seekers of the Storm launch is the low point in their telling (broken systems, bugs, mechanics tied to frame rate), followed by months of patches, then a better-received Alloyed Collective and Hallowed Concepts. Some older reviews were edited along the way, with lines like "Gearbox fixed all the issues from Seekers of the Storm and it's fun again" and "Was good, then bad, now its good again." On the other side, 17% of the longer negative reviews tie their thumbs-down to the post-handover era, saying new content is less polished, the game "lost its soul", or every launch breaks something. About four in five of the reviews raising this come from players with 100+ hours in the game, so this is a veterans' debate more than a newcomer's concern.

Randomness: thrilling gamble or shallow designMedium

20% of the longer negative reviews call the game repetitive, boring, shallow or too dependent on RNG. They say the same few items win every run, choices are rare, and drops decide how a run ends: "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle." Fans answer that the gamble is the point, and that the Artifact of Command, printers and scrappers give control to players who want it. A few negative reviewers say the game is well made but not for them.

The DLC lineup and what it costsMedium

Reviewers rate the expansions differently. They call Survivors of the Void essential and remember Seekers of the Storm for a broken launch and later fixes. Alloyed Collective divides people: some call it the best expansion, others dislike its enemies, its Solus fights and how hard it is on melee survivors. Hallowed Concepts drew early excitement for the Enforcer ("ENFORCER GAMING WITH PARRY") and new boss content. Price is where opinion splits. 5% of the longer negative reviews are about money: they put the base game around $25 with expansions at $15 each, say there are no free content updates, and object to new achievements that undo a 100% completion. "If you want the full game now, its more like $85 not $25." Defenders point out that the DLC goes on sale often, can be toggled off, and is shared with the whole lobby when the host owns it.

Difficulty, one-shots and a few hated enemiesMedium

8% of the longer negative reviews complain about deaths they could not see coming: hitscan attacks, off-screen projectiles, explosions in a screen full of effects, a fall that kills through revives. Certain enemies come up by name, often as jokes: Blind Pests, Elder Lemurians, the Wandering Vagrant, the exploding jellyfish, Clay Dunestriders, the Solus Wing. Fans tend to treat the sudden deaths as part of the thrill. The objection grows when a run took an hour or more to build, and melee players say some Alloyed Collective enemies punish them in particular: "every enemy from the alloyed collective has a personal vendetta towards you having any fun playing melee characters".

Late-run chaos: frame drops and visual overloadMedium

Players enjoy pushing a build until the game buckles under its own particle effects, and several joke that crashing it is the goal: "The goal is to crash your game, if you get to that point your doing it right". Another wrote: "Game enjoyment is inversely proportional to the framerate. Would recommend". Others are less amused: frame rates dropping to single digits on capable PCs after a few loops, poor Linux performance for some since Alloyed Collective, and screens so full of effects that they cannot see what is attacking them. A handful warn photosensitive players directly.

What frustrates players
Bugs that arrive with each expansion launchMedium

17% of the longer negative reviews cite bugs or crashes. Players describe a launch that breaks things, followed by patches: "Full of bugs on DLC launch yet again, multiplayer doesnt work reliably after installing Hallowed Concepts" came in during that expansion's launch week. Specific reports include an Alloyed Collective transport drone that crashes the game, soft-locks in boss fights, an Artificer unlock that cannot be bought, and controller inputs that stop working. Lost or corrupted saves cost players the most: "I had to restart my eclipse completion runs multiple times due to my save files corrupting." Some positive reviews mention bugs too, as an irritation the developers eventually fix.

Nothing is explained, and the teleporter hidesMedium

11% of the longer negative reviews come from players who could not get into the game: no real tutorial, items that show no description before you pick them up, unlock conditions you need a wiki for, and stages where the teleporter is hard to find with no map or compass. "You'll still runaround aimlessly as you look for the nearly unmarked teleporter which could be anywhere." Players who stuck with it point to settings that help (a teleporter indicator, extra particles around it, item descriptions on pickup) but ask why they are off by default: "theres an option to make portals more visible but why is that not on by default". A few of these reviewers refunded the game, and even fans warn about it: "No tutorial, no hints, no guide, you're just dropped into the game and left to figure it out on your own".

Multiplayer disconnects with no way back inMedium

12% of the longer negative reviews are about multiplayer connections: hour-long runs ended by a disconnect, players kicked to the menu right before the final boss, desync on long runs, and no rejoin or host migration. "I keep losing game progress when playing with my friend we get an hour in and one of us will randomly get disconnected with no way to rejoin". These complaints appear in every month from April to October 2026. One long-time player reports that turning crossplay off made the drops stop: "Disabling crossplay fixed the problem". Others mention trouble finding public lobbies and needing workarounds to join friends.

Shared loot in co-op lets one player take everythingLow

In co-op, only one player can grab each item, so a fast or greedy teammate snowballs while others fall behind, and a player who dies loses that stage's rewards. "One person can hog all the legendary powerups... theres no sharing feature whatsoever". Some groups treat it as a joke and agree loot rules among themselves; others install item-sharing mods or quit.

No way to save a runLow

Runs can last from 45 minutes to several hours, and players without that much uninterrupted time ask for save-and-quit: "This game desperately needs a save function, since many runs can drag over an hour". Several note that mods add it, which makes its absence from the base game stand out.

The Karma system in EclipseLow

A handful of Eclipse players object to the Karma system, which they say is forced on in Eclipse, poorly explained in game, and can stall runs. "The core idea isn't bad, but the boss fight now soft locks some runs". Players who do not play Eclipse rarely mention it.

Accounts, crossplay and store issuesLow

A scattered set of complaints sit outside the game itself: an Epic account link required for multiplayer, no crossplay or save transfer with console versions, no split-screen on PC, a terms-of-service change a few players still object to, a DLC bundle that does not discount for owners of the base game, and DLC that is unavailable in Russia. Each comes from only a handful of reviewers, and some of them left a thumbs-down over it.

3. The player conversation

Most reviews are affectionate, and many of the shortest ones are in-jokes ("there was no rain", "risking my rain", "bungus", "you offer to the shrine, but gain nothing"). The longer reviews are detailed, and some come from people who bought the game on more than one platform.

The negative minority splits into groups with different complaints. Newcomers who quit in their first hours talk about confusion, the hidden teleporter and a slow start. Co-op groups talk about disconnects and loot hogging. Veterans with hundreds of hours, who write most of the reviews about the change of developer, talk about update quality, DLC cost and balance. Eclipse players object to the Karma system.

Weekly positive shares held between 92% and 98% from late March through early October 2026, and the Hallowed Concepts launch week was the largest week without moving that share. The edit histories of older reviews show opinion warming: a number of "don't buy until they fix this" reviews from the Seekers of the Storm period now end with "fixed" or "good again". The multiplayer complaint has not moved; it shows up month after month.

4. What the developers could do

  1. Stabilise multiplayer and add a way back into a run. Disconnects that end hour-long co-op runs make up 12% of the longer negative reviews, one player says disabling crossplay stopped them, and rejoin or host migration would save the runs that still drop.
  2. Hold expansion launches to a higher bug bar and protect save files. 17% of the longer negative reviews cite bugs, players describe a DLC launch breaking things "yet again", and corrupted saves that wipe Eclipse progress drive some long-time players away.
  3. Turn the teleporter helpers and item descriptions on by default. New players who bounce off the game complain about a hidden teleporter and unexplained items, while veterans point to existing settings that fix both but ship disabled.
  4. Add save-and-quit for runs. Players with limited time say hour-plus runs with no save are a reason to stop playing, and mods already show it can work.
  5. Rethink how DLC is priced and how it touches achievements. A total that reviewers put near $85, no free content updates, a bundle that does not credit owned items, and new achievements that undo a 100% are the money complaints reviewers raise.
  6. Offer an optional shared or instanced loot mode for co-op. One player grabbing every item, and dead players falling behind for good, is a co-op complaint that groups end up solving with house rules or mods.
  7. Revisit the Karma system's place in Eclipse. Eclipse players say it was forced into their progression ladder with little in-game explanation and can soft-lock the final fight.
  8. Look at console crossplay and the Epic account requirement. Players with friends on consoles, or who refuse the account link, say these keep them from playing together at all.

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