Risk of Rain Returns has got to be one of my favorite roguelikes I’ve played this year. I was a bit late to it, but I still love it.
To start with, its gameplay is a roguelike. I don’t know what else to say, you’ll go through 6 stages, with two stages you can get (aside from the 5th and 6th stage), with six variants (besides the last stage). There are three difficulties: drizzle, rainstorm, and monsoon, all of which change how fast the timer is and change your health regen. You must go through the levels solo or multiplayer (the timer can scale with multiplayer) killing enemies getting money from them opening chests getting enough items and finding the teleporter and killing the boss getting harder over time due to the timer in the top right showing how hard the game is though the timer does really matter too much at least for me personally.
There are fifteen characters (sixteen if you’re counting the secret survivor) with unique abilities and designs that differ them from the cast. I’ll list all the survivors and what they do first.
We’ll start with the first survivor commando. You’re going to use all games and they’re simplest, so I won’t really have to explain much basically you just shoot it’s pretty simple his primary does 60% and you shoot pretty fast, his default secondary does 230% damage pierces enemies and knocking them back a bit,
his default utility is a dive that gives you I-frames for its duration and his default special does 60% shooting 6 times (scaling with attack speed) stunning enemies if there’s an enemy behind you then you’ll shoot both left and right. Alright now we’re going to talk about his alternates this is where he actually gets a bit more interesting for the alt secondary instead of getting a piercing laser shot he instead gets a combat knife to slash at them for 150% damage wounding them wounded enemies take 50% more damage, for his alt utility instead of just sliding and not being able to be hit you can shoot while sliding but you can still be hit unlike in risk of rain 2 this kinda sucks since not being able to hit is important in this game and for his alt special he pulls out a shotgun doing 6×100% from a close range.
Now for Huntress she’s the most agile survivor not being slowed down with any of her abilities (aside from her alternate primary) for her abilities her primary strafe just fires an arrow for 120% damage it also you can use your other abilities whilst using your primary, for her secondary she throws a laser glaive that hits up to four 4 hitting a closest enemy increasing 30% per enemy hit, her utility is simple she teleport a small distance not scaling with movement speed, for her special she fires an explosive arrow dealing 320% and dropping 6 small bombs dealing 80 damage. For her alts her alternate primary does 750% (the game lies about it doing 1000% for some reason at least that what I got from the wiki) when fully charged up infinitely pierce through enemies and walls this ability can also scale with attack speed, for her alternate secondary she throws a slow moving laser cyclone doing 100% damage after throwing it slowly returning back to you, you can actually out run this just by walking but it will slowly catch up to you but you can just jump over it and repeat the cycle while its out the cooldown will not go down for obvious reasons, this has to be huntress’s strongest abilities due to it activating/procing your on hit items like atg, rusty knife, sticky bomb, meat nugget etc. by well, hitting a lot. also it synergies really well backup mags. For her alternate utility, it replaces the teleport with an arrow when you shoot it, doing pitiful damage but teleporting where it lands. I don’t really need to say how much better this is from a simple teleport, its cooldown may be longer, but the things you can do with this are a lot more.
Now for enforcer this is the closest survivor to a tank (even though he doesn’t have the most health) with the main gimmick is that he can raise his shield with his utility blocking all damage from one side making him move slower and only be able to look the way you were looking at before you raised your shield your primary is a shotgun shooting with limited range in a straight like infinitely piercing and shooting fast whilst having his shield raised it does 160% damage, your secondary is you slam your shield at enemies knocking them a far distance dealing 210%, since I already talked about the utility I’m just going to go on to the special for his special it does 250% stunning in a large radius and can bounce at shallow angles. For his alt primary his piercing shotgun gets replaced for a shrapnel grenades doing 3×60% it holds up to 4 grenades and reloads when shooting at 0, for alternate secondary he charges into enemies moving then whilst charging doing 5×100% damage and finally for his alternate special he shoots three blasts shooting upwards on the ground and shooting downward when airborne and does 3×300% damage.