It's been a long road, but the big day is finally here. For consoles, anyways. Steam players got the 1.0 update over two months ago, while Risk of Rain 2's console audience has been very patiently waiting.
But that wait is over. Risk of Rain 2's full 1.0 release is now available for Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch. With it comes pretty much everything that PC players got several months ago, which we'll recap as per patch notes.
The biggest thing to come in 1.0 is an actual ending for Risk of Rain 2. While the intro cinematic is nice, adding the final stage including a boss and an ending cutscene just proves that the game is actually finished, y'know?
Besides that, there's a new Survivor to play with. The Captain is armed with a shotgun, a taser, and can call down orbital strikes from his spaceship. He can also deploy supply beacons to buff the team and keep everyone's health topped off and equipment in working condition.
Speaking of equipment, there's three more of those in the game, including the Super Massive Leech, Gorag's Opus, and Forgive Me Please. There are also seven new items to collect, three new character challenges, three new game challenges, and a whole bunch of in-game lore.
Risk of Rain 2's update 1.0 also does a general rebalancing of the game, it's enemies, items, and Survivors. The goal is to give "players way more agency over the way a run progresses" without making a run significantly more easy (even though Risk of Rain 2 is notoriously difficult already). For the full list of changes, check out the patch notes on Gearbox's site, but one important note is that Survivor mobility abilities now count as sprinting for the purposes of item effects that activate or improve upon sprinting.
Hopoo Games has recently made it clear that they're not done with Risk of Rain 2. The developer intends to support the game with at least one more free content update and then a series of paid DLC expansions that will arrive once or twice per year. The intent is to keep the game fresh for dedicated fans and encourage lapsed fans to give Risk of Rain another run. They're also expanding their development team so these expansions can come in a timely manner, but one wonders if there's perhaps another game under development now that Risk of Rain 2 has released on console.
Source: Gearbox