Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core

Roguelikes, at their core, are made by gamers who just want to have their own dopamine boost. For those who want as much silly dopamine rushes as possible, even if perhaps at the cost of allowing the game to rng-fight you away from it. That's why whenever you *do* get an insane build in a roguelike it feels so vindicating - you *won* against the game. You managed to break it's rules, it feels like. So it's baffling why this game almost goes out of it's way to *not* give you this feeling. If you've played base DRG game, you will very quickly recognize the game gives you a gun, and 5 rng upgrades for it (that aren't typically *that* interesting even compared to the base game). Sounds *kinda* like a roguelike setup, but...... Isn't that just... Base game? You also just get your gun right away there to, and even get to *choose* it, and the much more interesting gun-specific upgrades there too? So is this not literally just... The base game, but with a needless rng element slapped on top of it? And in this game, it doesn't even let you go *PAST* that power level??? I understand the expenite upgrades are also supposed to serve as a backup power to add to it, but with how minimally the power increases from them, how far between they will be (a "high amount" of these upgrades in an entire mission would be 20ish), and how harsh the journey getting there will be, it feels less like you're actually gaining any progress and more like the game is making you "stronger" by just starting you with absolutely no power at all so you feel special when you get *anything*. Another example of this is the trait upgrades, being your out-of-run progression system - these are similarly extremely minimal. It takes a long, LONG time to get all of them, takes money to even have the slots for them, and even when you do have a perfect build for them, you just kinda feel like you're as strong as any good overclock in the base game would be. I genuinely just don't know who this game is for, honestly. It absolutely cannot be for DRG fans of the base game, because you are just *better* there, even without """""infinite""""" upgrades via expenite. It's significantly harder, you have way less stuff to collect and not necessarily any varying objectives makes all maps and biomes still feel same-y, and even when you start to feel like you're doing something epic with a build you finally landed, the run will likely be over within the next 5-10 minutes. Genuinely, just go play the base game. And don't play this one.

I love DRG. And a lot of what I wanted to be added to DRG was promised to me in Rogue Core. I also mainly play Solo - and unlike DRG that went above and beyond accomadting Solo Players, Rogue Core absolutely does the bare minimum. In fact the devs actually made the game more unfair towards Solo Players whilst attempting to make the game more challanging for Multiplayer - which I understand is the primary focus of DRG and Rogue Core, but as I said DRG at least ensured the game was playable for Solo players. It's overly brutal and unfair, with me having to often fight five different elite enemy types at a time, of which - with out exageration - can have up to twelve of each spawn in per wave, whilst supporting a flood of regular enemies which hit hard and fast already. Most of the enemies are also designed in such a way that just makes them more difficult to fight Solo, having frontal armor always facing towards you as you are the only target for them to focus on so flanking them is far less viable. You also get far less upgrade options when playing Solo than in a squad and the RNG is so unforgiving that many runs end in failure without it being your fault. Ammo is plentiful, armor is worthless, and healing options are abysmal. Just everything that made DRG great was unnecissarily knee-capped by the devs wanting to make an intentionally more difficult experience.

They alienated the only good parts of DRG 1, no way to get heals or ammo in when you need it because no nitra or ability to call down ammo/heals, no ability to have even one reliable standard weapon, a run can be a waste with the first weapon choices are pistols with 8 bullets in them. Kept giving it a shot and after 4 sessions the nostalgia of DRG has fully worn off.

Эта игра - огромный кусок говна. Понятия не имею, что разработчики делали 3 года. Учитывая, что игра тупо пустая и наполовину сделана из ассетов первого DRG, я буквально увидел абсолютно весь контент за 20 часов. Пик онлайна щас это 800 человек, днём меньше 400, найти людей поиграть - просто анрил, можно по 15 минут стоять в лобби, так и не дождавшись ни единого человека. Просто напоминаю, ради этого кала разрабы бросили оригинальный DRG. После выхода первого патча разрабы на месяц ушли в летний отпуск... Вся игра является прогревом фанатов на бабки, не более.

+ Good performance - 42,000 to 700 players in 2.5 months says everything, - Massive downgrade from the first game, and not because it is a roguelike shooter, I've played a lot of them, Roboquest is amazing, RC though is just terrible, & they still haven't fixed the issues in DRG 1 and want to keep making more games with the same issues. - THEY REALLY SKIPPED THE FLAME THROWER FROM DRG 1, "LETS INCLUDE ALL GUNS FROM DRG 1 EXCEPT THE FLAMER.". Following in the footsteps of Helldivers 2 & Arrowhead where they nerfed the flamer along with everything else to make it all completely useless and unfun to use, GS games has taken it to the next level & straight up didn't include it at all because it is overpowered. SO WHERE IS THE FUN? FUN IS TOO OP? And following suit, just like HD2, they're letting the Community Managers take over with mass censorship - GAME'S PREVIOUS CHARM & SOUL? GONE. RC is so bland - MASSIVE BUGS IGNORED 2 MONTHS ON, simple bugs too, DRG & Ghost Ship Games really has gone straight down the drain, devs know and claim they will get around to it someday. Running Blades(run fast perk) doesn't add bonus movespeed and vids are on YT showing it does nothing, people are stacking up multiples this of perk since going fast is what this game is about, not knowing it does nothing. Not to mention Technical Reload actually gives Born Ready(auto reload perk) which fails to state it in description so many people would've skipped it. I'm sure they'll bring a tonne of nerfs before fixing bugs. - The game isn't going to improve, they are just mass banning & censoring all feedback about the game while constantly asking for feedback in game. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE COMMUNITY MANAGERS SHOW UP TO RUN THE STUDIO. I would refund this game if I could, it clearly has no future GS Games neither. A lot of money to waste on slop being sold on the reputation of the original DRG. - Other Roguelike shooters feature interesting perks or upgrades, in RC they are moslty just stat slop(eg. increase dmg by 10%), not many unique or interesting effects like headshots ricochet. What happened to the fun, creativity & quality that went into the Overclocks in DRG 1? The perks & upgrades could've been great, why not take some inspiration from your own game? Take some inspiration from what your IP, DRG used to be. - Lack of chances to get new guns or equipment, so boring. Only modifier that really makes the game fun is Jumble, you can roll perks or equipment from anywhere giving plenty of chances but is only available to play randomly, missions only cycle every 30 mins. Other Roguelikes feature lots of guns and also a lot of chances at getting random guns, enemies might even drop one, this one has not only very few chances at guns & equipment but also no rerolls? Most entire runs will barely even get over 5 guns to choose from(3 at the start & once chance per level at either a weapon or equipment, runs are only 4-6 levels). With lack of chances to get guns, if you pick a sniper, you hardly have any chances to get a second gun for horde clear. But if against all odds you manage to roll AoE effects that work with the sniper great, if not it is underpowered. - Weapons are mostly awful, rubbish balancing, like the Hammercaster 58mm is the ultimate sniper, had me excited, shooting massive rocket propelled AP Tungsten rounds , game description: "shoots bullets the size of your fist", but the bullets travel so damn slow, can barely hit the fast flying elite enemies, the perfect job for a sniper. And it needs to hit precise weakpoints to deal its massive damage. Oh and you can roll this heavy sniper with extremely limited ammo pool with burst fire, so now you can hit your first shot on the weak point and miss all the rest, draining limited ammo so fast, making it useless. M1 Garand? Still awful, bad accuracy unless standing completely still, needs to charge up the shot to deal more dmg but still makes it consume double ammo, 8 round mag only can shoot 4 shots. Who has time to stand still & charge up shots for pathetic dps, when you have to run & gun with hardly enough time to even check your map. Just like DRG 1 the best snipers are still full auto but accurate, low recoil guns, like in DRG 1 the Deepcore GK2 AR with 100% accuracy & 100% recoil reduction overclock was the ultimate sniper far out performing the M1 Garand. The only good sniperlike semi auto weapon is the Bulldog Revolver just like the 1st game. - THE GRIND, a massive slog, not a fun grind like some other games, without the perks you are very slow and it takes forever to interact without the nimble perk. Being so slow in a game that you were expected to finish yesterday with extremely limited time isn't fun, and it will take ages of suffering before you unlock all the best perks. - Hardly anytime for anything, even just to check the damn map, just on the normal difficulty, with normal timer, sometimes the time is enough but usually not. Rubbish map generation, the exit elevator can spawn near the start of the map, and you have to keep going all the way down to the back of the map for the loot and then come all the way back to the beginning to leave. Claustraphobic mazes can spawn, extremely dangerous to go through during a wave, it wastes so much time to navigate and if a wave is about to start it is safer to wait to clear it before going through the maze. You kill 1 wave, but you barely cleared the wave and in 1 min the next wave is already coming. The suicide explosive spiders instantly explode with MASSIVE damage, no delay like in DRG 1 & also always flank you as well while clipping through edges of terrain. They also can walk VERY FAR from the spawner & I was spamming my scanner in every direction to find the spawner, couldn't find it, they really expect us to go so far to look for the spawner, then come back? When we needed to have completed our tasks by yesterday already? It is ridiculous that the scanner has a massive 35m range and the spiders are still coming from a spawner further than that. - No way to keep map zoomed out by default, have to use the scroll wheel everytime I open the map, EVERY SINGLE TIME, No settings for this, why, we have no time for anything and I have to scroll out countless times every time I check the damn map in a single level. Shows that the devs really don't play their own game or care anymore. - Bad OST, they copy pasted most of the game from the first game, why not copy paste the OST too? They only copied a few tracks, not all. Compare the trailer music for DRG 1 and RC, RCs new music doesn't come close to the original tracks. - They replaced mission control with 'Omega', a ball robot that is EXTREMELY ANNOYING to constantly listen to, every 10 seconds, his voice has a robotic voice filter, made even worse with the constant glitching & stuttering sound effects, it is like audio sandpaper, the original DRG mission control's voice was pleasant to listen to, even after over 350 hrs in DRG 1 I didn't get annoyed with his voice, and he had soul and character. Luckily the devs are aware of how sh*t Omega is, they added his very own volume slider. - Bartender has been replaced with 'Omega' as well, no charm or soul like the bartender from the 1st game, why is Mission Control & the Bartender the same guy? - Base/lobby is bland compared to the 1st DRG - You can see how woke this game is going, icing on the cake to top it all off. The 'female' dwarves look like trans men, these 'women' now feature prominently as the main characters, the main picture on Steam & main menu in-game, the pic is centered on the "women" even though most players are guys, and in any media, not just DRG, like Lord of the Rings, dwarves they show are usually guys too, so why are these 'women' becoming the center focus? No problem with women in games, but this is just straight up woke.

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.

[h1]750 hour DRG player here, hi hello.[/h1] [b]I bought this 5 minutes after it went live. I was so hyped! Ghostship take my money![/b] But if you are looking to play this solo... Don't. The game is kinda... Confused? right now? Its not really sure what it is or what half of the implmented things are supposed to do or go together. They are actively updating the game with things like timers and changes to perk selections and enemy interactions. Y'know. [b]THINGS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IRONED OUT IN PLAY TESTING?[/B] These other negative reviews aren't just salty players or haters, a majority are people who geniunly care about this game but are just as disapointed as I am. [i][u]Thats not saying we've given up on it either[/u][/i] [I]Hey i'm not a game developer. I don't want to dog on Ghostship. I cannot rate the original DRG enough, go play that! Now![/I] [b]I know the thing going round is "this isnt DRG, dont treat it like DRG thats why youre not enjoying it"[/b] But if it looks like DRG, plays like DRG, has the same weapons as DRG, the same biomes/map generation as DRG, the same voicelines as DRG, has references and direct parrallels in the space station to DRG and is litterally CALLED [b]DRG[/b]: ROUGE CORE Its hard not to... no? I mean come on they decided to carry over the bloody zipline launcher even though is has 0 PURPOSE in this "fast-paced, against the clock, grab what you can and get out" rougelike. Why even pick it? - So many perks and weapons feel irrelevant. Mmmm yes please i WOULD like to do 1 poison damage to enemies within 2 metres on the second tuesday of every month (So long as they were already on fire) So many elemental based perks that are supposed to synergise with... Something? Even if these perks WERE easier to utilise... The enemies are either too weak or too tough where its either an instant kill or a bullet sponge anyways rendering these silly elemental perks pointless. Dont get me wrong, some perks [i](im looking at you 25% power attack regen on melee hit, smack, smack, smack, smack, POW)[/i] are very cool! But the pool is so muddied with these nothing burgers you can end up with 1 rank in 15+ perks during a run. One very confused dwarf. - Some of the new guns are so ass too, being left with the sloppy 4th choices of a bunch of pistols at the start gate that feel like farting on the enemy would be more effective is NOT fun. Who thought it was a good idea to mix primary weapons from DRG into the same pool as the secondaries from DRG? Yeah let my teammate have the fully automatic assault rifle with pinpoint accuracy while i take a zogging M1911. The workbenches give you a random option to switch it out, but theres no guarrantee its a better choice, + you sacrifice a pretty vital weapon/ability upgrade to compensate for this dookie start system. - Its fun the first few runs. But there's no meta proggresion to keep you hooked. EXPENITE is the only resource and that's bound to the mission the same way NITRA was, no cool minerals, no weapon upgrades, no Overclocks... You go in, you get your ass beat immeidetly or you breeze through it... then you leave. They kept the grind-y prestige system to lock a bunch of content behind so you are forced to play the game to unlock certain things... but not... the fun... stuff? - People squabble over weapons and picks, you can favourite choices but that's not a guarantee the new player without a mic wont steal a perk or weapon you ACTUALLY wanted. And then leave right after. On floor 3/5. With no way to replace that missing slot (Imagine someone dipped mid DRG deep dive, but apply that to potentially every mission. its fustrating) - And tbf the missions can be LOOOOONG 40+ minutes is a guarrante, even on lower difficulties, unless you have a well co-ordinated team that is moving like an oiled machine. All it takes is one dude to get lost in a pointless structure, or spend too much time obbsesing over that last shred of expenite on the cieling, or refusing to start the objective by standing in the 4/4 player required activation circles or just going down for revive on the other side of the map for Karl knows what reason to completley ♥♥♥♥ a run for everyone. [b][u]DRG: Rogue Core has its good parts no doubt, its got sturdy bones. [/u][/b] It has things i love like: - The new M.U.L.E which can fly and is more responsive) - It still looks and runs FANTASTICALLY even on lower end PCs - The universe, the lore and the DRG theme is always banger - Dwarves with guns in space fighting wierd alien creatures while trying to mine loot - When the perks line up it can be fun to go full ham into one thing and feels truly powerful (like full melee) - Female dwarves exist now and they're not forced or out of place. ♥♥♥♥ yeah - Everything is still free, no pay to win, no DLC locked weapons. The Ghostship staple. we love that. - Its a wholly unique (albiet confused) multiplayer roguelike. As wonky as it is, its still one of a kind. But even now, a good chunk of those positives apply to the ORIGINAL DRG. [i]Get it on sale guys (or get it in general) and let it ferment in your library. This will slap hard eventually... But the road is long and Ghostship are not exactly the fastest when it come to updates, even minor patches.[/i] [B]Rock and Stone Mine- I mean Reclaimers[/b]