Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core

Alright. Lets be honest here. I love the gameplay and feel of DRG, and DRG: Rouge Core. However a rougelites needs more than just the feel of shooting guns and movement so you keep playing the game. Rougelites NEED variety, which this game lacks at the time of my review. 8/23/2026 I would also argue that the play time is padded by how long / how much effort it takes to grind out currency to get meta progression. YES it is EA, no I do not forgive them for this as a good portion of this game is re-used tech on an engine they are used to. But I will say this game will get much better over time It is just a matter of how long. It is an incredibly generic rougelite, with DRG gameplay / feel. It is fun but absolutely not worth the current asking price. If it ever goes on sale for 20 dollars or under I recommend it. But otherwise wait for that.

It's just bad DRG and a bad roguelite 👎 A game for no one 🤷

Gameplay is fun but way to repetitive. After 10 games I've experienced the entire game and can't muster more then one game before logging off.

Unfinished game, enemies uncompatible with the game design, not worth the purchase for now at least

Caveat: wrote this review while it is in Early Access with 160 hours playtime. If you're a DRG veteran and you're looking for that nice, campy fun that the original game had, the unfortunately, Roguecore is going to sorely disappoint you. Playing Roguecore feels like you're playing a more terrible. jankier and more frustrating version of the original DRG. People keep saying that we shouldn't compare the two since they're in different genres but my counterpoint to that is then maybe the developers shouldn't have lifted so much from the DRG game and tried to shoehorn it into Roguecore. There are so many weapons that were directly lifted from DRG and transferred to Roguecore but they were extremely terrible fits for a horde roguelite shooter game. A couple of examples are the M1000 rifle of the Scout and the Engineer's Breachcutter. The M1000 rifle was a powerful gun for the Scout because he had his grappling hook that allowed him to continuously make space for himself and allowed him to make use of its charged shot mechanic. In Roguecore, you don't get any mobility tools and the M1000 is, by majority consensus, the worst gun. The Engineer's breachcutter was perhaps his best heavy weapon in DRG because it mowed down large swathes of enemies that were approaching you. The bugs in DRG always approached horizontally and you could aim, shoot and destroy them by the dozens. In Roguecore, it is the worst heavy weapon because a lot of enemies were given verticality as well as jumping which meant that they bypassed the breachcutter. These weapons should have been reworked heavily for the new environment of the game or not been transferred at all. Play the highest difficulty in DRG was always exhilarating because you were pushed to the limits of your skill. It always felt good to outmaneuver enemies while whittling down their numbers (grappling, platform hopping). Roguecore offers no such option. The most basic enemy has a built-in jump which means you can never outmaneuver it because it's simply going to hop over obstacles. In Roguecore, there is no outmaneuvering. There is only "you must have a decent weapon". Dying in DRG felt fair because I always knew were I fell short. Dying in Roguecore always feels unfair and frustrating because this game has too many unfair mechanics that kill you too quickly (enemies that clip through the ground and hit you from underground, enemies that leap at you and then immediately hit you mid-air, enemies who can shoot through walls because a small portion of their head clipped through but you cannot shoot them back because not enough of their head is showing through the wall). It's like playing a Dungeons and Dragons game where you switched from a DM whose aim is ensure everyone has a good time via a fun but challenging session to a DM who thinks the game is a me vs the players situation and that he wins if he manages a total party kill. That is the best way I can describe the current state of the game. The first and most recent patch (as of this writing) has done some good to address the issues (they finally reworked perks because there were some truly trash ones out there) but the game's core gameplay loop is still so very far from desirable for me. For disclosure, I am consistently beating the highest difficulty of this game (Depth 4), maybe 8 or 9 times out of 10 tries. The difficulty is manageable but in those 10 times that I played, how many times did I have a good and enjoyable time? Maybe like 2 or 3. I remember DRG always lending itself to moments of enjoyment through campy, skill-filled opportunities of cooperation. Roguecore hasn't quite managed to unlock that sauce. The friends I played DRG with played it for 400 hours with me (I have 800 hours on DRG). They dropped Roguecore in less than 50 hours. Don't get me wrong: Roguecore IS beatable. But is it fun? Unfortunately, no.

Bom, sobre o jogo: Comparando com Deep Rock Galactic, existem alguns problemas que tornam as partidas estressantes de forma desnecessária. Um exemplo é a interação entre os Nucleogênicos e as plataformas, que ainda não foi corrigida e pode fazer você perder uma partida por absolutamente nada. A velocidade dos personagens também poderia ser um pouco maior. Mesmo que a velocidade dos inimigos fosse aumentada para manter o equilíbrio, isso daria aos jogadores uma opção real de fuga se aproveitando do mapa e mecanicas. Outro ponto é a quebra de imersão na história. Não somos mineradores; somos Recuperadores, enviados para investigar e resolver o problema do Núcleo. Por isso, a enorme quantidade de mineração acaba tornando a experiência repetitiva e cansativa com o tempo. Na minha opinião, os upgrades poderiam ser obtidos principalmente ao derrotar os Nucleogênicos, enquanto os minérios serviriam apenas para melhorias secundárias ou para a troca de upgrades. Também sinto falta de um modo infinito, onde fosse possível aproveitar as builds por mais tempo sem a pressão de um encerramento rápido. Esse seria, de longe, o modo que eu mais gostaria de ver adicionado ao jogo. Por fim, acho que o jogo precisa de um final de missão mais marcante. Seria muito mais imersivo chamar uma nave para resgatar os anões ou até mesmo um enorme feixe perfurando o teto da caverna para abrir o caminho de volta. Hoje, sinto falta daquela sensação presente em Deep Rock Galactic de que, mesmo após concluir todos os objetivos, ainda precisamos escapar vivos e garantir que nenhum anão seja deixado para trás. São mais de 300 horas dedicadas a explorar tudo o que o jogo pode oferecer, testar seus limites e conhecer o trabalho que a equipe colocou neste projeto. Entendo que o jogo está em Acesso Antecipado e todas as implicações que isso envolve. Deixo este comentário na esperança de que, no futuro, eu possa editá-lo e substituí-lo por uma mensagem muito mais simples: Rock and Stone!

Im sad to say that unfortunately not worth the money right now, and im not entirely convinced it'l ever be particularly good as the fundamental gameplay floor isnt very compelling. This is sad for me because as a big deep rock fan even though i knew this would be a quite different style of game, i was hoping that itd be a blast, especially for Ghostship games own sake as they clearly are very passionate about this project. That said i will quickly say what i think is praiseworthy: the game looks lovely, and is only 5 gbs worth of space, and seems well optimised. They also maintained the deep rock art style very well. I don't want to be that guy who's going to complain that this is why we were starved of deep rock galactic content, as i honestly hoped the game would be good especially because Ghost ship seems to be very invested and i know how disheartening it must be to see negative reactions to your hard work, but i must be honest. Character budling is very minimal, build choice is significantly weaker than deep rock galactic, this is partly due to you acquiring most of the things that make your dwarf feel unique randomly during missions, and as such, most of the equipment isn't even class exclusive anymore, this is an example of what i mean when i say im not sure how much it can be improved: This system of effectively building your build through random drops through the missions is baked into the games core loop and balance. The game also lacks the soul the original had, they said they wanted a darker tone for this game, but taking this game in a darker direction was a silly choice, deep rock is fundamentally a highly satirical world, it doesn't suit a more serious direction, its hard for me to treat it as a serious game when i know that, in cannon, there are probably other dwarves just 3 km or so above my head doing absurd things like laser pinging a mushroom over and over again and saying the word "mushroom" on end for minutes and annoying management. I can't take that seriously as a "gritty" universe. This is a problem all over the game: Everything is far more bland, even the new Molly equivalent just has no charm, it looks like a generic sci fi drone, none of the funny waddling charm of molly, the dwarves lines about it aren't as charming either, and mission control has been replaced with a generic sci fi ai, that isn't relatable, and barely ever funny...... its like the souls been sucked out of the game. They gated the beer and bar behind doing QuickTime event minigames to earn calorie points before you can have a drink..... which is baffling to me, deep rocks community is wholesome because the game subtly encourages it in many ways, one of which was the quick access to the bar before and after the mission where players could just quickly grab a drink for 30 sec before a game, gating that behind a QuickTime event minigame EVERY TIME is going to result in almost no one doing it. In fact this game has several quirks that i think will greatly reduce the community's bond: No one really playing a set clear role like in the previous game will make each member of the team blend in more and not have a "purpose" that stands out, which makes it feel much less cooperative. The multi staged missions that cause you to fail the whole stack and have to redo it like the old deep dives will make everyone less tolerant of newer or worse players. There's nothing inherently wrong with that type of setup but given this is deep rock and its largely about encouraging a close bond in the community i think this will step on the toes of that heavily. The ai enemies aren't as well developed as the glyphid encounters either, that ones honestly hard to pin down my exact thoughts, it just didn't seem to stand out as much as the glyphid swarms. The whole dynamic of it seemed more basic. I could go on, but that the gist. Ill reupdate if i ever rebuy in the future and it's good, which i will only do if community sentiment heavily turns in it's favour after future updates.

Game is dead now after a rocky and ultimately failboat launch and subsequent damage control update (1.2). Just play DRG, it has 10x the players and is actually fun. The Devs here stand in their own way rather than listen to the community. It's just a bad idea and they need to get over themselves and convert this to DRG 2 and move forward in a positive way (maybe keep some core elements of RC as side missions/activities). They keep trying to spin this idea that eventually the game will be fun. It won't be and the community has spoken since before launch in the private play tests - whether the devs choose to listen will ultimately determine whether the game remains a dead failboat or finally finds its legs. Avoid this until they figure out what they are going to do with the game.