Deep Rock Galactic Review

Deep Rock Galactic review by Gañan

Score 10/10

Intro

An easy to play, hard to master kind of game, with some of the best coop features I’ve seen in a long time. The main objective is to mine minerals as a dwarf for a big corporation that has no regards to your wellbeing or safety at all when sending you down into the planet for expeditions. You will be accompanied by up to three more brave dwarves, or a cute mining robot called BOSCO if you decide to play solo. I can’t stress enough how you should be playing this game on coop with four players so each can be a different class, because that’s where you will taste the full DRG experience.

Gameplay

You start your day in the Spacerig, where you have shops to customize your dwarf both weapon-wise and vanity-wise. After gearing up you might want to visit the bar and drink some special beers with your fellow miners. These beers having crazy and wacky effects- some even carrying on into the mission.

Once you select your mission and board the drop-pod, you get launched into the planet with some objectives to complete before you can get back, as in you won’t be able to get out of the caves unless you store enough minerals so that management believes you are worthy of pickup.

There are 4 classes to pick from, each with its unique weapons, gadgets, and functions: Driller has heavy weapons such as a flamethrower and some drilling gauntlets that allow him to make tunnels almost instantly; Gunner has even heavier weapons such as the minigun and can throw down a protective shield for his allies, and a zipline to move around big caves; Engineer has a shotgun and can place turrets that will defend you and your team while mining those shiny stones, as well as being able to place platforms to reach high positions on walls; Scout is the fastest, being able to zipline around with his grappling hook and is quite capable of standing his ground with a rifle and a shotgun.

If you play solo, the cute BOSCO robot will come with you, and you can order him to mine for you, attack designated targets or light up dark areas, so if you are not one for coop gameplay, there’s that for you. Although as I said, the best way to play this game is with 4 dwarves, each playing a different class helping each other out against wave after wave of filthy aliens.

There is a lot of vanity customization for all your dwarven needs such as beards, eyebrows, moustaches and sideburns; hair or helmets with different hair and beard colors are also a thing, plus they are adding armor and pickaxe customization as well.

To be able to buy all this stuff and look your best, you’ll need to pay up, and you’ll pay quite a lot depending on the items you desire. You pay with both gold and some minerals you’ll be mining down in Hoxxes 4, the derelict planet you gain your salary from.

Music and Graphics

The music is nice. It’s nothing great but keeps you in the game as it changes from a more relaxed tune while mining around and a rushing one when monster waves come to eat some dwarven meat.
Graphics-wise the game has a nice style with a nice contrast between light and dark when in the caves, making you light caves up every time you can and being afraid of entering big holes in the ground when out of flares. It’s not very heavy on your system either, so even basic PCs should be able to run this game quite easily.

DLC

Now comes the best part of this game. There are NO DLC, AT ALL. The good folk at Ghost Ship Games (the developers of DRG) do not believe on massive monetization of the game and everything they add is on new, big, juicy updates for free for everyone, as it used to be in the good pre-DLC old days. So once you buy the main game, you got it all, and anything they add will be there for you to play without paying a single coin more for it.

Summary

One of the greatest coop games around, has literally no competitive aspect on it, and is fully cooperative. This makes it so that the community is quite friendly, usually teaching green beards (new players) around, and helping out with any doubts you might have.
You will have fun playing either with friends or random dwarves. From the casual player that wants to have more chill fun to the hardcore one that wants a real challenge, DRG has it.

Pros

-Full coop features. No competitive stuff.
-Easy to play, hard to master makes it fun for any kind of gamer.
–Huge amount of customization allows for hours of “grinding” to get the perfect looking dwarf for you.
-With the four classes and each having four different weapons, there are a ton of options on how to approach the missions.
-Ability to play solo with BOSCO if you aren’t one for cooping around.

Cons

-From difficulty 3 to 4 (normal to hard approximately) there’s quite a jump, and it will take time to adjust.
-For casual players, the “grind” might be too hard for some gear they want to get, but if you play every now and then it shouldn’t be too hard.
-On the hardest missions (Elite Deep Dives) you pretty much can’t play with random teams of dwarves. You will need a team of well coordinated friends.
-The main way to lose a high-level mission is to run out of ammo and the mineral you need to call for more. If you have players hoarding all the ammo and then wasting it, you won’t be able to get back from it and will most likely lose, but this is a rare case, and usually if you explain people how they should share the ammo, it won’t happen to you.

Written by Gañan