This game is objectively inferior to its predecessor, with far less emphasis on co-operative gameplay. The Corespawn enemies are often frustrating to fight and are more computationally expensive than their Glyphid counterparts, meaning you will dramatically lose performance as the game progresses.
The development team has failed to show any serious effort in bettering this game because they actively resist making compromises in their creative vision. They squandered all of their time with their Alpha access builds, refusing to listen to valid criticisms, then went on vacation immediately after releasing this game as an Early Access title. They are extremely slow in their efforts to make critical and necessary changes, instead allowing the playerbase to plummet and continue to drop (as of the time of this review, only up to ~500 daily Steam users are logged.)
The development team has constantly made unwanted and unasked for changes such as arbitrary invincibility phases upon dealing too much damage to a boss. It takes months to finally concede and remove actively harmful features such as the aforementioned invincibility phases or the requirement for all players to stand near ELLIS to pick an upgrade (which substantially sabotaged the flow of gameplay). Some unpopular features, such as the Reaperworms (essentially invincible Leeches from DRG) are yet to be reworked or removed.
Terrain generation is objectively worse in every possible facet, compared to DRG. This was yet another primary appeal to DRG, which featured likely tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of possible procedurally generated caves, often featuring non-linear expanses that varied in depth and complexity. Rogue Core does not have this selling point. It essentially takes only one method of cave generation (that of Mining Expedition), and repeats it ad-nauseum with a few Expenite events (which are basically just Core Infuser events from DRG) littered about. There are few mining structures from the DRG company sprinkled throughout, but these are hardly enough to compensate for the extremely thin variety in cave generations.
Finally, this game lacks any meaningful sense of progression beyond the rather small amount of achievements to collect. While the lack of cosmetics relative to DRG could be justified (and arguably excused), many of the cosmetics carried over from the preceding game are locked behind cosmetic crates (basically the Cargo Crates and Lost Gear minus the tasks of recovering batteries or recovering the gear). These crates require an extreme investment of time, as they only have a chance to spawn. Not much more can be said of this beyond hope that the developers will move these cosmetics into a more respectful progression system, as they had done with DRG's (formerly) retired seasons.
In short, this game needs a lot of work to be worth the price tag it is now. This is work that the developers have consistently failed to show they are willing to do, and thus, at the current rate, it will take several years (if not a decade or two) to present a polished product that is just as extraordinary as their lightning-in-a-bottle game Deep Rock Galactic. Therefore, this game is deserving of a negative review until the developers demonstrate their intent to refine this game into what it should be: a worthy counterpart to Deep Rock Galactic.
