Risk of Rain 2 Review (johnny5K4L)
First off: I love RoR2! I've played hundreds of hours. If you haven't played it, buy the base game, right now!!! The reviews used to be overwhelmingly positive, until the new DLC tanked it. The base game deserves a high rating. Survivors of the Void DLC is also pretty good, and adds a fair amount of fun content. I recommend it as well.
BUT....
DO NOT BUY Seekers of the Storm DLC. Yes, they fixed some of the bugs that were glaringly apparent at launch, but it's still completely under-cooked and uninspired. First, let's talk about the price. $15 is insane for an expansion of a handful of maps, 3 half-baked playable characters, and however many items (17 I think), when the base games is around $25 or less. You aren't getting anywhere near double the content of the base game, yet they're asking you to pay more than half of the base game cost.
The new maps are just okay, but probably the best part of the DLC. A couple of them are well designed and fun, and a couple are the opposite.
The new characters feel like modded characters. Modded characters aren't polished, many of them are still fun as hell to play, but they all have one thing in common that makes the lack of polish acceptable; the're FREE!!!!!!!!! The new characters are severely lacking in creativity and polish. Worse than that, they aren't really unique. They all kind of feel like an amalgamation of already existing characters, but not in a fun way. I found them boring.
For me, the worst part of the DLC is the new items. They aren't fun. Most of them are defensive, so you almost don't even notice their effects. They don't make you feel more powerful when you get them. Some of them are just objectively pointless. For example: Knockback Fin. Causes enemies to pop up in the air like 5 feet when hit. What could possibly be the purpose of this? If anything, it's a hindrance. More often than not, an enemy is launched and then you miss them with subsequent shots. Dumb. I find myself avoiding almost all of the new items. Again, there are a ton of mods for items if you want to spice things up, but for FREE.
To be clear; I don't mind paying for content. I want to support games that I spend a lot of time playing. But, nobody wants to be taken advantage of, and that's what this feels like. It feels like they leveraged the community's love for the game to price gouge and put out a product that would take just long enough to realize how bad it is that you won't be able to refund it. You'll spend 2 hours hoping that there's more, just to find out it's too late, and you're a sucker.
I see myself as one of RoR2's biggest fans. I've loved it since early access, and I still do. Corporate greed has just gotten the better of the new DLC. Yes, Gearbox released a statement promising to make it right, but don't give them your money until they deliver. They've done literally the bare minimum so far, which is fix stuff that shouldn't have been released in the first place. The sell now, fix later model has got to stop. It's BS. I'm tired of it. You're tired of it. You're going to see a lot of reviews saying to cut the devs a break and it's going to get better. I'll cut the devs a break when they give us $15 of content. Right now, I see it only as a cash grab.
I will change my review to positive if/when the devs deliver on their promises.