Quick Look: Risk of Rain 2

Quick Look: Quick Look:? I do hope this is everyone sat down and looking over their previous quicklook

I think it's bullshit that MUL-T takes fall damage. For frick's sake he drops into the first level without a pod, c'mon.

@kamakazie: I've had Doom Guy as my Xbox avatar for a dozen years, and I legit had a moment where I saw your post and went "wait... when did I post this??"

Anyway, this game looks interesting and I should really try it. And the video looks and sounds solid, seems like last week's tech time was worth it.

I find this game a little nauseating to spectate

This has been my comfort game through quarantine, and sunk about 200 hours through it's early access. I've really enjoyed it, definitely endorse it.

I play this solo all the time, have over a hundred hours in it. It's a great comfort food game! Also while it may seem overwhelming, you very quickly learn the ins and outs through repetition.

@drew327: Yeah it's definitely a bit of a mouse-twitch game, so it figures as much. If you were playing it with mouse+KB yourself it likely wouldn't feel as bad - it also works well with a controller FWIW, even if your accuracy may vary as such (though headshots aren't a factor in this game anyways).

Regardless, I absolutely love this game, so happy for the devs that got this to the 1.0 release.

Risk of Rain and Risk of Rain 2 are great games. Especially in co-op. I hope they stick to it, and maybe do some streams where they cooperate more and distribute items to each person's preference and needs.

For instance when I play as MUL-T, I like stack as much movement speed as possible to make his ramming ability stronger. But I might not need as many of armor upgrades, so I can let other people grab those. And also opening chests and buying items for each others when you got extra gold is also a key element of the co-op aspect.

Of course this requires a bit more familiarity with what some items do by just looking at them and reading their names, since the actual item tooltip doesn't show up until after you picked it up.

This game fuckin rules. Right now its my GOTY.

@vinny For a game coming out later this year with the "How does ANYONE play with any build other than this!" feel, make sure to give Hades a try! This feeling escalates with almost every hour put into that game, in a good way.

My friends and I have been playing since early access, and every run we call out certain items and help each other optimize our builds. It's one of my favourite things about the game that isn't the actual gameplay.

I love the character variety in this, and I think they did an amazing job with transitioning to 3D.

@toxicantidote: the buying for your teammates is something that I think most players don't consider early on. And it is hard to communicate if you're not on a headset. When RoR2 was brought up on the bombcast, Jan mentioned how the person who died on a previous zone is then behind everyone else levelwise and upgrade wise. My friends & I usually combat that by purchasing items for the lower level person on the next zone.

It's a Quick Look, baby!

@benpack that rain smell is petrichor, and I love that smell.

play ur class!

I've put about 10 hours into this game solo, same as I did for RoR1, and it's still surprisingly fun that way (with the exception of the final boss/area who very much suck).

Takes a little to get ramped up because the environments are a little confusing at first, so it's easy to waste a ton of time running in circles until you know the environments and efficient strategies. Plus the first character is by far the least interesting. But once you learn how to circle the maps and get some of the crazier characters it gets amazing. And solo you can just sweep up all the items and get some ridiculous builds.

@deathpooky: I beat the boss on my first try using Multi and I'm not sure if this is the fault of proc gen but there is a large gap on the last level where it is impossible to cross. The only way to get through is to keep falling down to a lower level and jump off to your death so you can spawn on a platform above where you died.

Not my favorite level.

Pretty interesting game. Not sure if it's for me but it looks enjoyable.

PSA: Xbox has this game on sale for a massive discount. 13.19 CAD which is probably 10 bucks American.

@merxworx01: Level geometry is not procedurally generated, the devs just messed up. The final level was not part of Early Access and clearly lacks a lot of polish. Similar with the final boss. On my first run in 1.0 I managed to get an enemy that was a mandatory kill stuck outside the level boundary, leaving me softlocked.

@icedmetal57: The planet is called Petrichor V...

IMO the biggest flaw in the game is that it starts you with the Commando class. I hate that class. It's boring and pretty weak, no interesting synergies or situational moves.

@kdr_11k: That's unfortunate. The last level seems a bit awkward, looks like parts of a parking garage and those dividers that are located between flat and sloped ground that are just barely low enough to jump don't seem like they should be there. But I do like those tank enemies that I think are new to 1.0.

This game has an absolutely stellar soundtrack too. The whole thing is up on the composer's youtube account, spotify also!

Sounds and looks good guys, pretty indistinguishable from the studio

This felt normal! Are things normal?!?

Been playing this game with friends every since it launched in Early Access, and had a blast with it every step of the way. Definitely enjoyable solo as well. Only issue I've had is the amount of status effect you can deal with later on, which gets insane if you take too long.

Damn I thought this had been out for years.

Good QL but I think this game’s too stressful for me. I need a break in-between enemy onslaughts.

Level is always the same (one of the other major flaws in it, since it's a very boring and badly designed level). I *think* there's a way to get through the entire level with base jumps, but it is hard-to-impossible to complete the end if you haven't gotten mobility/jumps/speed to traverse properly, especially since some of the characters have low base speed or no mobility options.

This was a solid quick look, thanks for the quality content!

Super Thank you GB crew. I've been looking for something new to pickup and play. And while I'm normally not a "rouge" anything type of person I like the look of this game and the way seems to play out.

Again, Thank you, the quicklook earned them a purchase.

NOTE: as of 08/19/2020 the game is on sale (xbox version) anyway.

I claim that this would make for a few good, longer coop outings with this very trio of participants!

I made the mistake of buying this on Switch while it was on sale like six months ago. It's way behind on updates (god knows when it'll hit 1.0) and had like three people playing online when I tried back then.

A few thoughts on this game:

-The way you have to "share" drops in coop is fucked. Whoever is closest to the boss when it dies just gets everything, which sucks for people who choose ranged builds. There's literally nothing you can do to defend yourself against shitty teammates, and the game totally rewards that type of play. Getting six stacks of a drop is hard to pass up.

-The lunar items have the most worthless ass trade-offs that almost universally invalidate any reasonable build using them. And charging the only persistent currency the game has to unlock these things is a joke. The lunar tokens are far better spent at the hidden store to unlock characters, trade regular items, and manipulate what levels you're going to so you can do specific challenges.

-The timer on the portal seems pointless. Why not just have the portal open when the boss dies? Occasionally you make pretty quick work of the boss and then you're just standing around because you can't even leave the circle to hunt for things you missed.

That said, I really enjoyed my time with this game. As with my experience with all "early access" type things, I got my fill when I paid for it and now have little interest in relearning the balancing and design decisions in what is basically going to be the same experience. I had more fun playing solo and listening to podcasts while playing than playing with strangers.

Great QL. This game is dense with mechanics and Ben pretty much nailed all of them. I've been playing solo and having a great time with it. The game really lets you play the way you want with all the artifacts and difficulty settings.

I noticed this, but I believe it's so that when you think you are ready, you are locked in and can't retreat and open chests until the teleporter hits 100%.

As for the co-op, I agree it could be more 'random co-op' friendly with designated drops like Diablo 3 (maybe with the ping tool able to 'gift' your drop) but with so many boxes/drones to buy it's not too bad unlike Borderlands where everyone knew the location of each chest or would sprint to the boss, skip the intro and kill them before you'd even got your bearings.

@mrspoon: Yeah, but you can't open chests that aren't in the circle then. The timer pauses when you aren't nearby. So it's not super clear to me the point of it. It's not a big deal, just weird.

And my coop experience was bad. With four players running around grabbing stuff, the loot becomes a commodity. Granted I was used to playing solo and going into the second level with like a half dozen upgrades. Nonetheless, when you defeat a boss and six of the same item just drop where the boss was, there's absolutely nothing encouraging players to share it. If you get six stacks of the double jump, you can practically fly. There should be like a two second cool down on picking something up. Not enough to matter in 99% of situations, but enough to stop one player from taking all the reward from everybody else. Or just give everybody who was around to fight the boss one of the items directly.

I think the point of the countdown is to add more tension to the act of activating the teleporter. Early on it definitely feels a little silly if you wrecked the boss quickly, but the game is constantly threatening to punish you for time spent doing anything other than progressing to the next stage. Knowing there is a minimal amount of time you must spend at the teleporter regardless of your power forces you to choose between betting you're powerful enough to shave a few minutes off your time by taking on a boss before collecting many items vs. spending more time killing mobs and praying to the RNG gods that it's worth it. It's definitely not what I would call "fair", but this game (without artifacts) seems completely content with fucking you regardless of how well you play.

The way you describe co-op just flat out sucks, though. Hopefully they do something to address it, because any game developer should know better than to rely on random people on the internet being cool and cooperating. I've only been playing solo and will definitely keep it that way unless they put some controls in place to prevent people from pulling shit like nabbing all the items after a boss.

@giantrobot24: I bought the game on Switch and the community there is minuscule. It took me a long time to find a full game. When I finally got in, I was pretty bummed out one person was just taking all they could for themselves. And since I was on Switch, I couldn’t even try to reach out to communicate the issue. Maybe with a larger community on other platforms you would have better luck finding reasonable teammates. But I gave up on coop. Single player is really fun though!

No instanced loot in co-op turns me off. Either that or letting people drop items is necessary, IMO.