(Originally a comment on the Risk of Rain Quick Look, but it's kind of unreasonable to expect people to read a comment that long)

I bought into Risk of Rain back in the beta after the first Quick Look Patrick did because I really like the look of it, the music, the characters, and the items. But something about the balance of the game still feels way off, both in the beta and the final release. I think the time management mechanic fundamentally ruins the whole game, or needs to ramp up way, way slower.

Sure, your guy levels up and increases his HP and damage slightly, but that increase pales in comparison with how each new area has enemies with way more HP than the previous, plus the difficulty is gradually increasing (which I think affects enemy spawn rate and likelihood of the palette-swapped enemies which are tougher). Whatever slight damage increase you get is in no way keeping up with the sheer HP increase of enemies.

It feels like the enemies in this game should die in something like the time span it takes to kill an enemy in Diablo, or at most the time span it takes to kill some tougher enemies in The Binding of Isaac or something. But this only happens in the first area. Like, jeez, once you're in the second area or farther, and say about 15-20 minutes have passed, you're just kiting huge mobs of enemies constantly because your weapons do garbage damage and you're slowly whittling them to death. The movement speed increase item actually seems like one of the best items because, again, you are kiting enemies CONSTANTLY and some of them are kinda fast, and you can't tank damage for shit (this also makes melee classes completely unplayable).

I've made it to the 3rd area a few times, and it never felt like my stats were remotely up to snuff. I either rushed there, meaning I skipped buying a bunch of upgrades but the difficulty bar is lower, but even though there are less enemies in the 3rd area, they wreck me because I'm underleveled. Or I didn't rush there, in which case I have a bunch of items and leveled up, but there are way more enemies spawning and they wreck my shit because even with a few more levels it still feels like they have a completely unfair amount of HP, and they are legion.

I know this game isn't meant to be Spelunky or Volgarr the Viking in terms of "enemies die in 1-6 hits", but I really don't like how enemies just have silly amounts of HP. Even when I've found a ledge to stand on so I can just cheese enemies because they can't cross the gap or whatever, it'll sometimes take like 20-50 seconds to just clear a mob of enemies that's been chasing me, with me constantly holding down the attack button and spamming my abilities as soon as they're off cooldown. Literally constant DPS, and even then, the 20-second end of that range only happens when I luck into some powerful rare items.

The Steam forums don't seem to have any complaints about the difficulty, so I guess I'm just terrible at this game, or need to be advancing through levels like 5 times faster than I am, or something. I've played like 10-15 hours of the unfinished beta, and about 5 hours of the finished game. I don't feel like I'm improving at all. Sometimes I get good items, and at best that allows me to beat the teleporter rush at the end of the 2nd area, after which the 3rd area wrecks me. I know what the enemy attacks are capable of and what my own attacks do, but I don't understand how you're meant to reach the game's ending. At a certain point, mobs spawn at a rate slightly faster than you can kill them (and then this only gets worse), especially when half your time is wasted on running (and you can't deal damage while running, unless you're using Acrid who leaves poison everywhere, but sadly you have to unlock him in the final version).

I just don't get it. At least in Spelunky or Binding of Isaac, I could envision how I could take less damage and do better. Even if I take less damage in Risk of Rain, the main issue is still that mobs spawn faster than I can kill them, unless I find a cheesy spot where I can just hammer on the mobs for like 45 seconds straight without moving. In Binding of Isaac, you know when to advance because you run out of enemies and rooms on the floor, and in Spelunky you know when to advance because the ghost appears; in Risk of Rain, you could keep grinding out the first area forever so the only incentive is the nebulous time limit, and I feel like there is some optimal time the designer wants me to advance before the difficulty meter gets too out of hand (ASAP?), but I honestly can't tell if there's ever a way to feel "prepared" for the 2nd or 3rd level (or god forbid, the mythical 4th level?). It seems like you just have to get good items, because the tactics and strategy aren't all that deep and I'm pretty sure I know how to use the abilities on the Commando (and the Enforcer is unplayable garbage).

Perhaps Risk of Rain just doesn't properly scale to the number of players, because it feels completely unbalanced for single player.

The music is still totally bangin', though.