Risk of Rain (2013)

SI

Honestly, I love this game to bits. It's quite rough around the edges, and (obviously) lacks a lot of the polish and design philosophy of the second, but it's fun. Really fun. It absolutely has flaws, like some mediocre level design, or how tanky most enemies are, their lack of mobility, and how arduous it can be to get rid of them all after a teleporter attack, but at its core, the gameplay is so much fun, and it's a sensory delight to see a thousand different missiles and other items fly off at once and rain down on a bunch of mushrooms and giant jellyfish. The characters are quite varied and unique, and the process of getting enough items at a quick enough pace to get ahead of the curve of the difficulty that ramps up over time is genuinely really exciting, partially due to how much more impactful the elements of time are in this game compared to the sequel. Getting ahead of the enemies and going from just barely making it by the skin of your teeth to becoming an unstoppable force of nature is inherently incredibly satisfying - and even if it weren't - I'd still probably boot this game up once every few months just to hear Moisture Deficit, Surface Tension, or Double ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Rainbow again. Despite being rough, if you stick with it, it's a highly rewarding game to learn and it holds up in terms of gameplay and how much fun it is, to the point of being absolutely worth checking out on its own merits, beyond potentially wanting to see the origins of its even more beloved sequel.