The game is decent, 100% can't lie to you there. But I wouldn't recommend people buy the game because of the (not so recent anymore) news regarding its sequel. For those that have not played the game, allow me to explain. If you just want to see how good the game is as a product, I've also detailed my criticisms of the games mechanics/core gameplay loop at the bottom.
Prophecy games has had an unfortunate history with game development. You can still see the remnants of it in their Tribes 3 game still on the store, marked "early access." The game hasn't received any major updates, the discord and servers are dead, and it's basically abandonware. A year before, Starsiege: Deadzone was released. It was an early access extraction looter performed poorly; the combat felt uninspired and the game itself was a little clunky. The game was shortly after shut down, but the devs promised anyone who had played the game would instead receive a free copy of their newest title Deadzone: Rogue.
This game would have multiple demos, and free early access until its initial major release. Everyone was skeptical it would do well. But surprisingly, it defied expectations. The game, while flawed, was a major increase in quality over their previous entries. Not even a year later, they announce the sequel to be made, Deadzone: Rogue 2, where we are now. And that's where the problems began.
The problem is Deadzone: Rogue still feels unfinished. There's game-breaking bugs, online mode still feels broken, and honestly the game just feels like it had bigger opportunities to be made a deeper, more well-rounded game. Deadzone: Rogue doesn't feel like it had a proper development cycle, and it feels like Prophecy is choosing to instead cash-in on their games rather than build quality pieces of work that continue to get updates. It feels anti-consumer. Whether it is or isn't is up to the individual: Some people will say that the game is finished and the devs have the right to start their next game no matter how long it took. Others will disagree and say the game deserved a full "proper" development cycle. I personally lean more towards the latter.
There's only two scenarios this can go if this kind of development behavior continues. One, the sequel goes badly and people once again lose faith in Prophecy games' dev team until they can produce a quality game again. Or two, the game does well, and the devs are instead encouraged towards a Call of Duty style of aggressive development. A dev team continuously releasing entries in a game year after year with little regard for innovation or finishing the previous one, leaving each game feel more or less the same. Of course, the second one could also not happen, but with how early they were to jump on the sequel, it's not an entirely illogical conclusion.
I don't think that kind of dev behavior should be encouraged, so even if the game is decent, I wouldn't recommend the game for the sake of consumerism.
TL;DR: Game is decent (not the best FPS OR roguelite, or FPS roguelite) but the devs don't feel pro-consumer.
My response to the criticisms (alongside a more deep dive into the games mechanics itself):
There's no winning, you have no hours in the game and give a negative review "you didn't play enough of it to give a proper review"
You play the game a lot and give it a negative review and people say "how can you give a game with 91 hours a bad review? Just stop playing if you didn't like it lol"
I will reiterate: The game is NOT bad. I am NOT saying this game is slop. I disagree with the PRACTICES OF THE DEV TEAM, and I think that their aggressive development is a bad precedent moving forward. I sincerely hope their next work is a work of quality and they do not milk the series, but reputation exists for a reason. This is their first big hit in a series of flops, and I'm saying this from a place of passion that I want to see this sequel go well.
Regardless of what you believe in the devs or the sequel, I do also think it was terrible PR to announce it so early for the fact that there's any large-scale discourse/dissenting opinion around it in general.
While I don't think DZR2 needs to be live service (please don't) I do think that games don't deserve to get abandoned (see my explanation on Tribes 3) and DZR1 still feels unpolished in some areas. AI pathing is okay at best, and verticality makes the AI just lose all sense of direction. The AI is really just the equivalent of "move towards and shoot/swing" and lacks any interesting tactics that set it apart from other enemies, the only differences either being having an element or having a different bullet spray. And before people say that's too much, keep in mind games 20 years old had these implemented (half-life).
Lack of proper variety in enemy and enemy AI makes the game an equivalent of a dopamine rush with big damage go up, and lacks any deep mechanics. Similarly, the player themselves lacks any meaningful variety: Guns are very clearly skewed towards fastest fire rate, as there is no compensation for elemental or crit chance/damage on slower firing weapons. This means a faster firing weapon has a higher raw dps from more crit connections, and disproportionately better element procs, both of which are exacerbated with making your build centered around either. Basically, unless you run very specific builds, any slow firing weapon aside from maybe the crossbow and sniper/DMR are just straight up worse to run overall. It especially sucks because these slower weapons also often take longer to reload and barely have any extra ammo to compensate.
As an fps, there are unfortunately better in the cyberpunk aesthetic. And as a roguelite, there are far more intense and fun arcadey roguelites like Nuclear Throne or Windblown. As an FPS roguelite, great ones include Returnal. FPS with a cyberpunk aesthetic, some other great options include Roboquest and RoboBeat. It's unfortunately not the best in any of its specific categories (in my opinion) but it's not the worst either. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's also not anything saving your breath for if you're expecting a top-end experience.
