After seeing little bits and pieces if this quirky little platform arcade adventure game I spent a little time playing last night. I didn’t play too long before I had to head off to bed but my first impressions were pretty positive.
I don’t usually like platform style games but this one seems to have enough going in to interest me. From the get go my little guy has 4 basic attacks I can only assume the other unlockable characters share this as well. The generated maps keep things fresh and the unfolding of new items and creatures is a great hook. It looks like there is some good stat tracking as well. The throwback art style that has been popular now I have mixed feelings about but Risk of Rain’s hits well for me.
I’ll be playing more tonight but I’d encourage people to give it a look. With games like Race the Sun making endless runners interesting its nice to see something that looks similar in the platform adventure genre.
I had rather positive initial impressions, as well. Getting a few new characters helped to mix things up, and the map variations appeared to be ensuring I’d have plenty of replayability long into the future.
Unfortunately, you quickly discover that there is next to zero map variation. The first level is always the same, there are two choices for levels two and three, and the remaining levels all use only one map until the end of the game. They had already grown dull before I hit the ten hour mark.
The difficulty ramp-up also grows tiresome very quickly, as enemies start to accumulate so many hit points that it becomes an obnoxiously time-consuming chore to kill them rather than any exercise in genuine challenge (particularly once you acquire a character who is able to more effectively kite than the starting Commando).
Is ROR a terrible game? Absolutely not. I was lulled in by the strong first impressions given by videos I’d seen, and I was disappointed to discover that this wasn’t the “endless runner” that had been expected. It’s more or less a speed run where you hope and pray you don’t get any bad item drops, since your entire success or failure in the game is determined based on what items you get. Sadly, the items you’re offered in a particular game are determined purely by luck, which isn’t a mechanic I particularly cared for in a game like this.
That’s a shame the staying power wasn’t there for you. I won’t know when I’ll be done until I play some more. If I read your post right, It’s disheartening to hear that the tactical choices seem to limited by lucky drops.
Hmm, still looking forward to a little more time with it though. Maybe it’ll pan out better for me. The one thing in your post that I can’t say it’s just your experience is the level layouts. If they really are that limited that’s not good considering it’s one of thier bullet points. If they hadn’t pushed that so much maybe it wouldn’t be as much a sticking point. I’ll have to pay attention there.
It’s true that there isn’t much map variation, but you got the details all wrong. Each of stages 1 through 4 is chosen chosen from two possible maps. Additionally, each individual map has small variations in layout it can experience. Emphasis on small
This is 40% off on Steam today, so… is it worth it? I just noticed that it’s actually released. Kinda like Eldritch, I just assumed because of the style of game that this was Early Access!
It is absolutely worth 40% off. I think I got it on sale for something like 40% off around Christmas, and it was by far my favorite purchase of the sale period. I found it to be one of those games that is fairly easy to learn, but difficult to master.
Grabbed this game yesterday and proceeded to play it for around four hours coop with a friend, using Discord for voice chat (pretty sweet UI they have).
We played for 100 minutes on a level before we fought the end boss. Seems like “HAHAHAHA!” is the hardest difficulty we can get.
Surprised we didn’t unlock more in that game, but I guess we’ll just have to play it longer, and harder :-)
I feel like I’ve played this a LOT (alone, and maybe not very well) and I’ve never unlocked any characters. Really put me off the game. Why did they make it so hard?
Some of the characters are really terrible, and some of them are quite easy to play with.
The first few times we played we wiped pretty early, then we proceeded to rush to the exit on each level to get to the end. Once we finished that round we unlocked two more characters, and when playing them the game became MUCH easier.
I had a shotgun/shield type of character, with the third ability gives me the option to block ANYTHING that attacked me from the direction I was facing, so I tended to stand on edges of platforms etc and just shot stuff in the face until I got a reward.
As there is some randomness to the rewards I suppose the game can be a lot harder if you have a unlucky streak.
Tips is to get a drone as soon as you can, I guess.
There are a couple characters that are tricky to unlock, but most are pretty straight forward. To have not unlocked any by accident seems a bit odd. Some are quite easy to unlock once you know how. I would suggest looking at a guide.
I still haven’t unlocked the newer additions though.
I’ve sunk loads of time into Risk of Rain co-op and it is indeed a blast. The maps are randomised, order-wise and layout-wise, though they’re built from static ‘chunks’ so you will see a lot of similar bits unfortunately.
I’ve unlocked most of the characters and pick-ups at this stage and got a few of the special artefacts that change aspects of the game (my favourite is one that allows you to pick by tier what items you get on drops – gives the game a lot more strategy), and to be honest, I think I’m about done with it.
We found most of the characters useful, depending on your playstyle and knowing which items to pick up to complement their abilities (in coop of course). The Sniper is by far the hardest one to master from my experience but can be fun when dealing with high level mobs and bosses, especially with crit buff items. Love the Enforcer riot shield guy.
You shouldn’t need to look at any guides for the unlocks as I’m pretty sure it tells you what you need to do in the game under… Logs? It’s from the main menu and lists objectives that correspond to each character.
Oh and yeah, Discord is pretty slick. Not used it much yet but it looks like a really good and simple alternative to things like Mumble, TS and Ventrilo.
I don’t grok this game at all. The enemies are all berserk bumrushers that teleport in behind you, and then everything turns into a giant blob of pixels. I can see that melee skills would help, but the default guy is so frustrating and repetitive, I’ll never reach any of the unlocks.
Absolutely. You’re never safe and you’ve got to keep moving. Risk of Rain is at its most exciting when you’re just hanging right on the edge of the power curve, trying your damnedest to survive amidst all the chaos, because once you manage to get over it the game gets a lot easier and somewhat dull for it. It’s at that point the game becomes an awesome mess of sprites and effects as your arsenal snowballs in tandem with the swell of enemies on screen. Amusing at first but after awhile I found myself sort of zoning out which is usually when I want to finish!
I hate to rain on anyone’s parade (comedy!), but I’m with Nezz and others. This game suuuucks.
The screen is 90% wasted space, with the remaining 10% filled with some of the ugliest pixel art out there, almost Atari-level. Finding your way through the levels is a chore. Too many damned enemies that take too long to kill. It’s just all so unsatisfying.
