The leap to 3D lands beautifully, this roguelike pushes power scaling to gloriously absurd heights. The relentless clock forces tense decisions, and in four-player co-op the stacked-item chaos becomes downright intoxicating.
Your verdict
Category
Roguelike4 players7+
Co-op
Description
Stranded on a hostile planet, survivors face waves of ever-fiercer enemies. Published by Gearbox, released worldwide in 2020. Third-person action, difficulty that climbs with time, stacking item effects and co-op for up to four.
Risk of Rain 2 review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
2/5
Story
★★★★★
"Classic"
Gameplay
"Masterful"
The longer you linger, the hotter it gets: that relentless clock fuels a power escalation that tips into glorious absurdity. Stacking items turns every run into an exhilarating avalanche where speed and survival pull constantly against each other. The jump to 3D distorted nothing. The screen sometimes drowns in effects, but the mechanical hook keeps a rare staying power.
Fun
"From the very first seconds"
Stacking items until you become a walking tornado spitting fire, lightning and missiles is power scaling at its most gloriously exponential. The late-game chaos rewards every choice, especially in co-op where builds combine and spiral out together. The roguelike structure begs you to retry, piling up ever more absurd combos, run after run.
Addictiveness
"Obsessive"
Everything hinges on wanting to start "just one more run": each Risk of Rain 2 attempt begins from scratch and snowballs, item by item, into a stack of bonuses that turns your character absurdly powerful. Difficulty scales with the clock, creating an exhilarating tension between fleeing and looting. Permanent unlocks of survivors and items feed straight into the next session. One caveat: a long run can stretch toward an hour, and death wipes everything, which can push you to keep going out of frustration as much as joy.
In this twitchy rogue-lite, every Teleporter boss tests your build: Mithrix orchestrates phases that flip the rules, while Aurelionite or the Worms force frantic 3D dodging under a hail of projectiles. Difficulty scales with time, so surviving is as much about your loadout as your reflexes.
Better with friends
The screen fills up, enemies pour in and the four-player team improvises in jubilant chaos. The roguelike cooperation rewards sharing items and covering each other, with every run rewriting its own rules. The difficulty ramp is relentless and a player who joins late struggles to catch up to the others' power, but the absurd escalation guarantees belly laughs and runs you'll retell long afterwards.
Is Risk of Rain 2 still worth playing in 2026?
Risk of Rain 2 pulls off the risky bet of moving a 2D action roguelike into a third-person 3D view without losing its identity. The core idea is still brilliant: the longer you linger, the harder it gets, and stacking items turns each run into an insane power climb. That tension between speed and safety stays exhilarating solo or in four-player co-op. Readability blurs when the screen floods with effects, and the storytelling is minimal, but for pure mechanical addiction few roguelikes endure this long.
