Major ExpansionXbox · PC · PlayStation

Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts

Gearbox Software · Shooter, Action, Indie

Overview

Death comes for us all - Overcome powerful curses, strange new enemies and deadly trials as two new Survivors but never forget for a moment… She is watching.

One must withstand suffering to learn true balance.

Delve deeper into the dark, cult-like world of N'kuhana in Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts.

Fight through haunting unexplored regions of Petrichor V, endure harrowing Trials, face horrific new enemies, and uncover powers never before possible in Risk of Rain 2.

Bring your friends on the adventure! Only one player is required to own Hallowed Concepts to enable the monsters, levels, and items to appear in-game for the whole lobby.

Players without the expansion will be unable to select the new survivors or permanently unlock new items, logbooks, or other content.

Acolyte dances across the battlefield, toying with her enemies and bargaining for more power with her own life force.

Combine close range glaive attacks with ranged strikes that chip away at an enemy's soul.

Fight well, and Ascend.

Enforcer holds the line or drives it forward with dynamic, tactical movement.

Create cover as a defensive vanguard.

Or dive straight into the heart of the action and decimate your enemies where they stand.

Endure the pain of the Winnowing of Survival.

Hunt your quarry to master the Winnowing of Predation.

Race against time and for your soul in the Winnowing of Mortality.

Discover and endure Hexes in exchange for Hallowed Items.

Find and Collect N'tormat Pages

Unlock the secrets of the new curio: the N'tormat.

Collect its pages to acquire powerful abilities, but at a cost.

And know this, acolyte:

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT634 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

Most players (82%) recommend Hallowed Concepts. Several call it the best Risk of Rain 2 DLC so far, and a handful rate it above or level with Survivors of the Void. The two new survivors get much of the credit. Enforcer, the riot-shield tank returning from the first game, is named in 20% of all reviews. The DLC's final boss and a secret boss also get warm praise, as do the soundtrack and the grimy new stages. Some players like that the new items sit in their own pools, so the regular loot does not get diluted.

Bugs, crashes and performance problems come up in 42% of negative reviews. The one players describe most is enemies and bosses spawning out of reach in timed arenas, where the timer then kills the player and ends the run. The new systems divide players: Hexes (opt-in curses that pay out new items), Acolyte's no-healing design, the item-stripping Trials, and the Karma version of Mithrix that the free update forced onto Eclipse. Trials come up in 23% of negative reviews, more often than Hexes or Karma do. Some negative reviewers call the DLC fun and say they will change their vote once the bugs or balance are fixed.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Enforcer, the shield-and-shotgun tankHigh

Enforcer is the most-discussed part of the expansion: 20% of reviews mention him or his parry. Players love the parry, the shield that lets them stand in chaos, the special that pulls stationary turrets and allies into a barrier, and how well his abilities flow together. One player wrote that "Enforcer god runs are some of the most fun ive had from a roguelike PERIOD", and a handful say he alone is worth the price. Players who knew him from the fan-made Enforcer mod or from Risk of Rain Returns mostly say he made the move well, though a couple prefer how the mod version plays.

Some think he is too strong. "Your half-blind granny can pick Enforcer and still carry you thanks to his AoE barrier sharing," one review says, and others expect a nerf or call him a "cake walk" on Monsoon. A few say his unlockable alternate skills are worse than his default kit, his model looks out of place next to the rest of the cast, or his dash and ground slam drop him through the floor (see the bugs section below).

The DLC's final boss and its secret bossMedium

Players describe the Anima Harvester fight as tough and well presented: "the final boss of this dlc is actually a fair challenge and not just aiming a tracking death beam at you." Reviewers who reached the secret boss, which is tied to the series' history, write about it with obvious delight, and some keep the details behind spoiler warnings. A few call the new bosses the best in the game.

The Anima Harvester's healing draws criticism. Reviewers say it eats other bosses to restore health, which some feel punishes item-dependent survivors: "Developers tend to usually avoid giving bosses the ability to infinitely heal for a reason." A few players complain about an instant-death pit in the arena. Reaching the secret boss is a separate and bigger complaint (see below).

Soundtrack and the new stagesMedium

Music comes up in 4% of reviews, and nearly all of them praise it. Several name composer Stavros Markonis: "Stavros Markonis burnt down the kitchen while cooking up this OST." Players also like the new stages' corrupted, swampy, cultist look, with several calling them gorgeous. A minority find them too large or hard to navigate on slower survivors ("the new stage 3 is a little bit too large"), and a couple say they lack landmarks.

The free update that came with itMedium

Several reviews praise the free base-game update that launched with the DLC. They mention new skills for older survivors (one player is thrilled about Engineer's new primary), new skins across the roster, more settings, and item descriptions on hover ("They added descriptions to all items just by hovering over them"). The gripe is about who got left out: reviewers point out that Drifter and Operator received no new skins, and some survivors got no new skills.

New items kept out of the regular loot poolsLow

Some players value that the new purple Hallowed items, Hexes and pages sit in their own pools instead of diluting white, green and red drops: "The new items all being in their own pools exclusively is probably my biggest appreciation." Players who want new regular loot see it the other way: "This DLC has no new regular items (white/green/red)," and for them the expansion changes less about a standard run.

Where players are split

Hexes and Hallowed itemsHigh

Hexes come up in 12% of reviews, and they divide players. Fans love the risk-reward loop of stacking curses for a payout of powerful Hallowed items: "if you're the kind of person who automatically activates every single shrine of the mountain you see no matter what, this dlc is for you." Players also enjoy the chaos in co-op, where a friend's greed can doom the team.

Critics say the hexes are badly uneven: "The hexes flip-flop between basically doing nothing and straight up being a run killer." Blindness, Acceleration and the hex that disables item stacks are named as miserable, while others barely matter. Some say the best play is to leave hexes on the ground until the teleporter, which they find tedious, and some call the debuffs annoying rather than challenging. Hex of Blindness gets singled out even in positive reviews. One player points out that hexes are green and hard to tell apart from uncommon items, which could trouble players with weaker color vision.

Acolyte, the survivor who cannot healHigh

Acolyte appears in 13% of reviews. Several players call her their favorite or the most fun survivor in the game, praising her combos, her demon transformation and how she forces a careful style. Others find the design punishing: she cannot heal normally and relies on recoverable health, which makes early stages painful and turns every healing item into a dead pick. One critic put it this way: "she has two ways to play: the way that isn't fun, or the way that makes you lose." Some players also call her alternate special weak.

Opinions can shift with practice. One player added an edit: "acolyte is OP as hell it was genuinely just a skill issue on my part." Her critics make concrete suggestions: a small heal on hit, or letting healing items work while keeping her lack of natural regeneration.

Trials and the Reckoning timerMedium

Trials (timed challenge rooms that take your items and let you draft a few back) come up in 9% of reviews and in 23% of negative ones. Fans enjoy the game-show variety and the shared timer: "the trials are the obvious highlight for me." Critics say the difficulty swings wildly from room to room: "The new challenge mode is either trivially easy or insanely hard." They name the combat, money and indirect-damage trials as the run-enders, while the race and chest trials take seconds. Players also say the timer cannot be won back, a slow zipline can eat the clock, and the lamp trial is rough on melee survivors. Some want more trial types; others want trials moved to a separate mode.

Karma Mithrix and EclipseMedium

As reviewers describe it, the Karma system from the free update makes Mithrix harder the more power you collect, and 5% of reviews discuss it. Players who found Mithrix too easy love it: "Now, he is a skill check." Eclipse players object that it is switched on for them with no opt-out, that his summoned adds and healing wisps can leave melee survivors stuck, and that Karma rises from triggers they find arbitrary. For a few, this alone decides the vote: "Negative review until Karma is removed or neutered in Eclipse. Otherwise, good."

Where it ranks among the four DLCsMedium

Reviewers often measure it against Survivors of the Void, Seekers of the Storm and Alloyed Collective. 6% of reviews call it the best or their favorite DLC, and a few put it level with Survivors of the Void: "Hallowed Concepts blows every other DLC out of the water." A handful rank it last: "This is the worst of the available DLCs, in my opinion." They cite the hexes, trials and pages, and say they miss new regular items and enemies.

How much the DLC changes a normal runLow

Hallowed Concepts mixes its content into ordinary stages instead of sending players down a separate path, and players disagree about whether that works. Supporters say "baking this DLC's content into regular runs, rather than alternate stage paths (which are a good idea in their own right), was a really smart move". Critics find it overwhelming or out of character for Risk of Rain 2, and some plan to disable it: "It's a dlc that I can see myself turning off for most runs to only put on occasionally."

PriceLow

Price comes up only now and then. Some reviewers call it fair ("worth the $15"), a few because of Enforcer alone. A few negative reviews say to wait for a sale or for patches ("probably not worth the 15 euros.").

What frustrates players

Run-ending bugs, led by enemies spawning out of reachHigh

Bugs, crashes and performance problems come up in 42% of negative reviews, more than any other complaint. The bug players describe most is enemies or bosses spawning under the map, outside it, or inside scenery; 24 reviews describe it. In the Soulbound Threshold wave fight that unlocks Acolyte, and in other timed arenas, an unreachable enemy means the timer runs out and the run ends. Players lost runs of 50 minutes or more this way: "in one day two runs died to bosses spawning outside of the map and becoming impossible to attack." Another wrote: "I shouldn't have to keep restarting a run because an enemy spawned a million miles under the map in the acolyte unlock event." Several of these reviews call the expansion great otherwise and say they will switch once it is fixed.

Enforcer's dash and slam, and Acolyte's transformation, can drop players through the floor to their death. In co-op, players spawn as monsters or drones, the Shrine of Descent fails to appear in four-player games ("cant even get to the boss of the dlc on multiplayer."), and one group found the page requirement climbing to 16 with four players. A few players report crashes during the ritual or teleporter events, a cutscene that let minions kill them, and an unlock with no achievement.

Frame drops and visual overloadMedium

A smaller group, mostly in negative reviews, reports heavy lag on DLC stages and events: "Almost unplayable framerate drops consistently." One player's game fell to 1 FPS when a boss died in a burst of particles. Others say the effects are overwhelming even when the game runs well. They mention excessive visual noise, overstimulation with all four DLCs enabled, and boss-fight lighting too dark to see the swarm.

RNG gates on the DLC path and the secret bossMedium

Reviewers explain that reaching the DLC's final boss takes enough N'Tormat pages to spawn a Shrine of Descent, and the secret boss also needs a specific page, Reincarnation. Players who want to unlock Acolyte or see the secret fight resent how much luck this takes. One player had one attempt in 20 to 30 runs and asked: "Please let me fight the boss reliably." Several gave up after the DLC path failed to appear in later runs, and the co-op page scaling makes it worse in groups.

The N'Tormat book and its pagesMedium

The N'Tormat, a second equipment-style slot that holds single-use spell pages, gets a cool reception. Even some positive reviews call it forgettable or unnecessary. Critics say each page fires once per stage, too many pages copy existing items, and they forget the book is there: "The book is extremely underwhelming." Dark Alchemy and the lynx pups get named as exceptions. Several players dislike that one page sits among the others in a quick menu and kills you when used: "There's also an item which outright kills you if you use it wrong".

New mechanics left unexplainedLow

Several players, including some who recommend it, say the expansion explains almost nothing: how to reach the DLC path, what Karma counts, or that Acolyte must be revived with your own healing item. "DLC does a horrible job of explaining it's mechanics," one wrote. Some enjoy discovering things blind; others felt lost and quit trying.

Visuals and animations that look unfinishedLow

A few reviewers think parts of the expansion look rough: "most of the animations and visuals look unfinished, but the gameplay is fun." They point to survivor effects, placeholder-looking ability icons and page sprites, and an art direction for Enforcer and Acolyte that they feel does not match the original cast.

Smaller gripes: crossplay and accessibilityLow

Two reviewers marked the expansion down because Risk of Rain 2 still has no crossplay with console friends. One player wants an accessibility option for escaping the mimic chest, which requires rapid clicking.

3. The player conversation

Launch day was a celebration. Reviewers cheered the surprise release, and the first wave of reviews is full of instant purchases, "Risk of Rain 6" jokes, "still no rain" puns and one-line love notes to Enforcer. Reviews written on launch day were 93% positive. Over the next three days, as players reached the Soulbound Threshold, ran Eclipse with Karma and played more Trials, the reviews turned more critical: 78% positive on day one after launch, 76% on day two and 69% on day three (from only 35 reviews).

Who raises what follows how people play. Players who describe casual or co-op runs talk about the survivors, bosses and music, and when they complain, it is usually about a run lost to an out-of-bounds enemy or a co-op spawn bug. Self-described veterans and Eclipse grinders raise the design arguments: forced Karma, uneven hexes, and Trials that "should just be their own game mode". Several of the harshest reviews still praise the survivors and bosses before getting to their complaints. 21% of negative reviews are provisional: they say the DLC is fun but that they will not recommend it until the spawn bugs or the Eclipse change are addressed.

4. What the developers could do

Stop enemies from spawning or falling out of reach in timed arenas. Out-of-bounds enemies in the Soulbound Threshold and other timed fights are the most-reported bug, raised in 17% of negative reviews, and players say they lost long runs and the Acolyte unlock to them with no way to recover.
Fix falling through the map and the co-op spawn bugs. Players report dying after Enforcer's dash and slam or Acolyte's transformation, spawning as monsters or drones in multiplayer, and four-player lobbies where the Shrine of Descent never appears.
Even out Trial difficulty. Trials appear in 23% of negative reviews, mostly because the combat and money rooms end runs while others take seconds, and players ask for ways to win back time on the Reckoning timer.
Let Eclipse players opt out of Karma, or start it at zero. Eclipse players say forced Karma Mithrix, with his adds and healing wisps, made their main mode unwinnable for some survivors, and a few hold their vote on this alone.
Rebalance the hex pool. Players say Blindness, Acceleration and the item-disabling hex ruin runs while others do almost nothing, which flattens the risk-reward choice the system is built on.
Cut the luck needed to reach the DLC path and the secret boss. Players want a reliable source for Reincarnation and the Shrine of Descent, and one co-op group lost time to a page requirement that climbed to 16 in a four-player game.
Fix the frame drops on DLC stages and events. Players describe unplayable lag on new stages and particle bursts that froze the game during boss fights.
Give Acolyte some sustain and make the N'Tormat pages matter. Critics ask for a small heal on hit for Acolyte and stronger, more distinct pages, with the self-kill page moved away from where it is triggered by accident.