Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts Review

Two new survivors and mysterious realms promise to change the way you play Risk of Rain 2, but some of Hallowed Concepts’ biggest secrets come with unexpected surprises.

Risk of Rain 2 turns a straightforward survival loop into an increasingly frantic fight for survival as each run progresses. You fight waves of enemies, search for items, and gradually grow stronger as you progress through each stage. The items you collect can combine in unexpected ways, allowing you to experiment with different builds and strategies while making every run feel distinct from the last.

But the longer you survive, the harder it gets, so every chest you open and every decision you make affects how far you go. Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts builds on this familiar formula by introducing new characters, items, environments, challenges, and systems that change how your usual runs play out. 

The DLC also arrives alongside a substantial free update, making this release more compelling than a straightforward collection of paid content.

Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts introduces the returning Enforcer and the unlockable Acolyte, along with three standard stages, five hidden realms, new enemies and bosses, 14 Hexes, 11 Hallowed Items, and several other additions. Meanwhile, players who own the base game get new survivor skills and the Karma system without buying the expansion.

There is plenty to explore here, and some of the additions are among the strongest parts of the release. However, the experience is not consistently successful. While the new survivors and certain boss encounters stand out, some of the expansion’s central mechanics feel unnecessarily frustrating, and several rewards struggle to justify the effort required to obtain them.

You keep moving through hostile environments, fighting increasingly dangerous creatures and searching for the resources you need to survive. The expansion doesn't have a traditional campaign with long cutscenes; instead, it weaves its story elements into items, secret areas, challenges, and encounters.

One of the more compelling additions is the N’tormat, a mysterious tome connected to N'kuhana. Collecting its pages grants you additional power during a run, but it also draws more of her attention. This presents an intriguing idea: you can strengthen yourself by engaging with something dangerous, but that extra power comes at a potential cost.

The expansion also gives you reasons to explore its hidden realms and challenge new bosses.

There’s one secret boss that really stands out, with an arena and soundtrack that make the encounter memorable. The Anima Harvester, which you must defeat to unlock the Acolyte, provides another dedicated encounter with its own arena and mechanics. Neither addition turns Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts into a narrative-heavy expansion, but they give you new mysteries to uncover. 

Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts' biggest strength is how naturally its two new survivors fit into the game’s fast-paced combat. Enforcer is available by default, and bringing the character into the game’s three-dimensional environments is one of the expansion’s most successful decisions. His primary attack feels reasonably balanced, but his shield is what sets him apart. 

Enforcer is also more mobile than originally thought, given his defensive style. He can dash about while keeping his defensive stance thanks to his movement options. His utility ability and alternate slam give you more options to reposition. You are not simply standing still behind a shield while enemies surround you.

Instead, you can navigate dangerous situations, defend yourself, and counter with your own attacks. The result is a survivor who feels well integrated into the existing game. He is powerful without immediately making every other character feel irrelevant, and his mix of defense, movement, and offense makes him one of the DLC’s strongest additions.

The Acolyte is a bit different, using N'kuhana's dark power to boost its melee combat and abilities.

The Acolyte’s combat feels most effective when you learn how her abilities complement one another. Rather than relying on a single move at a time, you can chain different attacks together to maintain pressure on your enemies. This makes her playstyle feel fluid and rewarding once you become familiar with her skills. However, her transformation ability disrupts that momentum, creating a noticeable break in the flow of combat that makes it feel less consistent than the rest of her moveset.

Beyond the new survivors, *Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts* expands the experience with three regular stages, five hidden realms, additional enemies and bosses, new interactables, and several character skins. These additions bring more variety to each run, giving you fresh environments to explore and secret locations to uncover. Among the new areas, Tenders Quagmire stands out as an enjoyable stage, while Terminal Lucidity leaves a stronger impression through its eerie atmosphere, distinctive presentation, and memorable boss encounter.

Not every location makes the same impression, but the expansion offers enough environmental variety to keep your usual route from feeling entirely familiar. The new skins also give you more ways to customize your survivors, although their quality varies. Some completely change a character’s appearance and look excellent, while others feel comparatively unremarkable.

The free update deserves attention because it expands the base game beyond what the paid DLC offers. Several existing survivors receive additional skill options, including Commando, Huntress, Engineer, Artificer, Rex, and Acrid. You unlock these abilities through new challenges, giving you more reasons to experiment with characters you may have already played extensively.

The new options don’t necessarily improve all survivors, but they do provide new ways to approach familiar encounters. The update also adds Karma, which alters the final encounter against Mithrix and gives veteran players another way to increase the stakes. Overall, the additions make Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts feel like a larger update to Risk of Rain 2, rather than just a collection of new stages and gear.

Combat remains the heart of the experience, and Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts succeeds whenever its additions create engaging decisions during a run.

The Enforcer’s shield and parry mechanics reward careful timing, while the Acolyte encourages you to combine abilities and maintain an aggressive rhythm. Both survivors feel strong and enjoyable without completely overwhelming the game’s established balance. Their designs also show how new characters can change the way you approach familiar enemies without forcing developers to rebuild the entire combat system.

The new bosses deliver mixed results. The giant mushroom boss is one of the more threatening additions, using a powerful area-of-effect attack that can punish you if you fail to move out of the danger zone. The Lynx Totem boss, on the other hand, is less memorable, as its attacks do not leave the same impression. Some of the regular enemies also feel relatively harmless compared with the creatures already found throughout the game.

Although the new enemies bring some diversity to combat, most of them do little to change how you navigate or handle a stage. The Anima Harvester offers a more engaging encounter, but the secret boss is the real highlight. The carefully designed arena, fitting soundtrack, and striking presentation give the battle a sense of occasion, making it feel like a hidden reward for exploring rather than just another fight on the way to the next teleporter.

The trials are a more divisive addition. Timed Challenges: These present specific objectives to complete during a run, such as traveling between targets or knocking enemies off the map. Target-based trials are particularly fun because you can improve your route and find more efficient ways to complete it.

You can experiment with movement and abilities, which makes success depend on how well you understand your survivor. The trials, however, are limited by your available time. You have to balance the potential rewards against the risk of spending too long on a challenge, and it can become dangerous when your time runs low to continue through additional trials.

Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts doesn't introduce a traditional experience-point grind that dominates your progress. Instead, it builds on Risk of Rain 2’s existing progression: you collect items, strengthen your survivor each run, and unlock additional content by completing challenges. The expansion’s most important progression systems revolve around hexes, hallowed items, N’tormat pages, and the new survivor unlock. 

Hexes are negative effects that remain active while they are in your inventory.

Some make movement harder, others restrict your vision, and the Hex of Mimicry can make mimic chests appear. There are 14 Hexes in total, giving you several different complications to consider. You can get them through some interactions, and you can choose to take more after finishing teleporter events.

The idea is interesting because you are purposely making your run tougher, but the experience depends on how tolerable each effect is. Reduced visibility might encourage you to use cover and change your approach, while effects that interfere with basic movement risk becoming frustrating rather than strategically engaging.

The reward for dealing with Hexes is the opportunity to cleanse them and obtain Hallowed Items. You can't get these powerful items by opening ordinary chests, so you need to engage with the DLC’s systems to access them. Some are particularly useful. Infernal Mark can soul-brand an enemy after repeated skill hits, triggering friendly fire and encouraging nearby enemies to attack it.

Sanguine Chalice adds a chance to inflict bleeding and lets your bleeds restore a small amount of health. Stained Gimitar provides lifesteal, giving you another way to recover health by dealing damage. These effects can be powerful, although their usefulness depends on your survivor and the build you are creating.

The main issue is that earning these rewards often requires more time and effort than expected. You might have to activate hexes across several stages before you have a decent chance of obtaining a hallowed item, and even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll receive the one you’re looking for. As a result, one of the DLC’s most appealing features can feel unnecessarily difficult to access.

The N’tormat pages suffer from a similar problem. Although they provide one-time effects that can be used throughout a stage, some abilities have little impact, and the randomness of obtaining specific pages can make the system frustrating to use. Dark Alchemy stands out as a more practical option, allowing you to downgrade an item to create a duplicate and potentially build more effective item combinations

Karma provides a different kind of progression through the free update.

Certain milestones during a run award Karma, increasing the difficulty of the final confrontation with Mithrix. It can stack up to eight times, and completing a run with Karma unlocks the corresponding level for selection at the start of future runs. This makes the final fight harder, even when your build becomes compelling.

Unlike the Hexes and N’tormat pages, Karma is not simply about acquiring more equipment. It changes the challenge waiting at the end of your run, giving experienced players another reason to test their limits. The new survivor skills also use challenges as unlock requirements, making experimentation and the completion of specific objectives part of the longer-term progression.

Visually, Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts maintains Risk of Rain 2’s recognizable style while introducing several darker environments. The new stages have appealing designs, and locations such as Tenders Quagmire provide a welcome change of scenery. This approach is especially effective in Terminal Lucidity, which pairs its visuals with an arena that underscores the importance of the boss encounter.

The survivor skins also need a shout-out, particularly the ones that actually change the characters a lot, not just minor cosmetic changes. Some of the more interesting skins are the False Sun and mushroom-themed designs, while the simpler ones don’t make as strong an impression.

But the expansion heavily relies on darkness, fog, and screen effects. Some environments become harder to read, and the extra visual effects can make encounters less clear than they need to be. There are also events that change how the screen looks. These changes can be distracting in combat.

Some stages are large, and their dark presentation makes exploration less enjoyable when you would rather see the environment more clearly. A darker atmosphere fits the expansion’s themes, but the frequent fog and heavy effects do not always improve the experience. The environments would benefit from a sharper presentation that preserves their mood without making visibility an unnecessary problem.

The soundtrack is another promising part of the expansion.

Stavros Maroneus returns to provide new music, and the material associated with Terminal Lucidity helps elevate its boss encounter. The music builds atmosphere and gives the hidden realm a stronger identity, especially when coupled with its visuals. The soundtrack is positively reviewed but doesn't get as much attention as the survivors, items, and stages. 

Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts is an expansion with some excellent ideas, though a few frustrating decisions hold it back. The Enforcer is a great pick, and the Acolyte is a decent option if you want to focus on melee combat. The new survivors are well-designed, the best boss fights stick with you, and the Hallowed Items offer powerful effects that can change how you play a run. 

Unfortunately, the weaker systems of the expansion prevent its best features from carrying the whole experience. The Trials can be annoying; a few enemies and bosses are forgettable, and obtaining Hallowed Items is often more hassle than the rewards are worth.

The N’tormat pages also feel inconsistent, and the dark environments and screen effects can make exploring less comfortable than it should be at times. These problems matter because Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts is built around systems you are expected to revisit across multiple runs. Once the novelty wears off, the quality of those systems will determine whether you continue engaging with them.

For players who enjoy trying out different survivors and finding powerful item synergies, Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts is a solid addition worth considering. The free update also adds more depth to the base game, making each run more enjoyable. However, the expansion struggles to maintain the same quality across all its features. While its strongest additions deliver plenty of fun, some weaker mechanics keep it from feeling like a well-rounded, cohesive experience.