I was unaware that Risk of Rain Returns was going to be released on Tuesday and I therefore did nothing else than put almost fifteen hours into a remaster of one of my favorite video games ever made. This week I will talk about Risk of Rain Returns (RoRR).

Risk of Rain Returns is a roguelike from Hopoo Games and published by Gearbox. The game was released on November 8th for the PC and Switch. It retails for $15.

Once again, humans are fascinated with space travel and getting hands-on stuff that doesn’t belong to them. That takes us to the U.E.S Contact Light and their mission to scour Petrichor V in search of relics. After yoinking a bunch of relics, not knowing one was essentially a teleporter that brought all of the monstrosities onto the ship that would eventually crash the shop.

The aim is to survive and get off Petrichor V.

The gameplay is largely unchanged. The drop pod doors fly open and the game starts. Kill baddies to acquire money, and use that money to open different kinds of chests to get items to beat back the droves of monsters until the final fight with the ultimate bad guy.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Providence trials are included to test the skills of players and as a reward, unlock more abilities for the survivors.

Some changes have been made, including new characters, both new and imported from Risk of Rain 2. The Artificer makes a return while the Pilot and Drifter are new inclusions.

With the wide roster available, many would think that there would be some overlap with abilities and gameplay but it is quite the opposite. RoRR has achieved a nice balance between characters and the way that they perform in the game. The pilot can launch high into the air and attack from the sky something RoR has never really achieved in two full games.

Items follow suit with RoRR taking the best, most creative items from previous games and mixing them together. The items in RoRR provide some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Everything just mixes so well and it really feels like love went into choosing each item that would be included in this game.

Some minor gameplay changes and quality-of-life improvements have been brought back like faster teleporting, the challenge of the mountain from RoR2, and challenges that provide new abilities for each survivor. It is incredibly easy to invite friends and host games this time around. You used to have to port forward and all that jazz but now it is as easy as “invite friend” and “ready up.” IT’S A BLESSING.

RoRR runs on a new engine and character models are updated but everything else seems pretty much the same. The music by Chris Christodoulou is still some of my favorite video game music ever. RoR2 went so hard that the remaster still hits a certain way, making the game even better.

Risk of Rain Returns is a fantastic video game. A game that I grew up with was given a much-needed facelift. The old characters and the newly introduced ones are all so diverse that it is mind-boggling that they have almost ten characters and they all provide different gameplay runs.

In any capacity, with new characters, and a slew of quality-of-life updates, and extremely fun gameplay, Risk of Rain Returns is the definite version of one of the best roguelikes ever made. Period.