Years ago, I had a mixed impression of a previous Soldak game, Depths of Peril because they tried to mix their Diablo-style ARPG formula with what was functionally a 4X game's diplomacy system in a way that clashed and detracted from the game overall. I would be in a dungeon wanting to finish that dungeon, but nope, one of the factions back home declared war and the game is over now. Drox Operative keeps the 4X diplomacy and has a lot of the elements of their previous Diablo-like ARPG ported over into space opera terms (lasers do what's functional "fire damage", fighter hangers are functionally summon monsters,) and because all the exploration is now done in an open area where all your goals are tied to the diplomacy system (because you only get quests from other factions and there are no dungeons,) the entire system comes together much more cohesively.
Just note that Drox Operative 2 has already been out and finished and is just this game but more, so if you have a choice between the two, skip to 2. I played this game so late because it was in a bundle but DO2 was not. No regrets, I'll probably pick up DO2, as well.
In the game, you can move with holding down the mouse and punching number buttons to use weapons or items, (shield rechargers basically being health potions,) or fly around using tank controls with some slippery momentum and click on enemies to fire. (You also have no reverse, so you have to [i]sloooowly[/i] bring your ship around.) I find the latter to be cumbersome to use since tank controls do not come naturally to me, especially when distracted aiming at the space monsters.
Space monsters spawn in infinitely but the first time in an area, they're basically carpeting space wall-to-wall, so going can be slow. The first time I started playing, I went at some monsters, tried to go laterally to back off and take the enemy a little at a time, ran into more monsters, tried to back off, ran into more monsters, and wound up with something like 40 monsters chasing me while I was still trying to figure out how to steer... Very low levels have a lot of padding because the enemies haven't scaled much, but at higher levels you absolutely have to slog through huge waves of monsters, monsters come running whenever they hear laser blasts nearby, and you can pull an absolutely crazy amount of aggro, so it's a game of trying to limit how many monsters you pull at a time.
There are various forms of elite enemies that have color-coded rarity/tier levels like Diablo, too, and everything past the orange tier (orange, red, and purple) typically have a quest associated with killing it. These enemies get ridiculous superpowers that can stack, so I've fought a red tier enemy that had something like a +850% damage bonus plus dealt 50% radiation damage (which is basically poison, it does more damage over time) that would blast through all my shields, armor, and start doing structure damage in one shot even though I was hardly getting scratched by other monsters.
Monsters also have random color-coded and level-scaled weapons and equipment drops, but you need to have certain stat levels to use them. Something I didn't realize at first was that "attack" (gained from the computers stat) is for [i]accuracy[/i], and not the same as damage (gained from tactics stat). All weapons have minimum tactics stat requirements, armor takes structure, shields and engines take engineering, etc. You get 5 bonus points to spend on stats every level, and the special "command" stat is used to unlock new ships (which instantly replace your old one) that drop speed and defense slightly unless you can overcome that with more equipment, but
The odd thing is, defense also lets you "dodge" attacks that hit your ship... somehow. The missile hits, there's an explosion, but you just no-sell it. You can shoot down missiles or dodge kinetic weapons, but even if they hit, you can just not take damage from 2/3rds of them. Likewise, without attack, your shots just whiff even when it makes contact. Because this is a game that is made for infinite level scaling, you need to constantly run forward with upgrades to attack and defense to keep in place in terms of how many shots hit or miss.
Beyond that, everyone in the sector is just constantly fighting. The AI is playing a game "like a 4X," but it's a dead simple one, and there are few stats that don't make much sense at a glance, but basically, planets generate money and eventually, ships to defend the planets from the random monster attacks and each other. You pick sides and try to "win the sector" through one of five win conditions, but outside of getting your "fear" and "legend" scores high, (the former for destroying other factions' ships, the latter for generally doing lots of quests and not getting involved in war between factions,) are basically just "be on a winning team when everyone not part of your alliance is dead" or "make a ton of money selling technology drops to the other factions." You take quests like "protect our planet whose last ship was destroyed," "a bad event happened on our planet, fetch the thing that fixes it and deliver it to us," or "kill that boss monster" to gain money, XP, and get that faction to like you. Diplomacy wins are easy but mostly just buying victory because you can just pay for tons of rumors until everyone likes everyone else and you win. The only limit on rumors is money, and even failures are just "go through the menu and pay to try again" with the costs not even being that meaningful. Diplomacy wins get you a reward box from [i]every[/i] surviving faction, too, and the rewards are often worth the money, so it pays to have a big alliance. Fortunately, unlike Depths of Peril, the game doesn't [i]immediately[/i] end and force you to new game+, you can finish some quests and do some inventory management before leaving when you're ready.
Otherwise, this is a game meant to be played in quick spurts. You can easily clear a sector in a couple hours, although you can choose sector size to be pretty big to play a longer game. New sectors are a functional new game+, and you have to explore with no contacts and all factions reset in stats.
It's very repetitive, just the same quests over and over, but you could also play it as a "podcast game" if you turn the music off. (Turn the music off, there's one song [i]per faction,[/i] it is constantly reset when you talk to any faction or fight a monster, and it will get [i]very repetitive[/i].) Because it throws so much at you, it's a very multi-tasking-heavy game that can keep you distracted long into the night, though. It's not the deepest game by any stretch, but it's an addictive gameplay loop because you just always feel you have a couple more quests on your plate.
