-Upgrades are just minor buffs, and don't change the way you play. There are no "builds", just different guns, grenades, and equipment. This means every run feels the same outside of the class you play.
-Core spawn are not fun to fight. The way they act make most grenades and precision play useless compared to spray and pray.
-Armor system is tedious and unrewarding. A lot of enemy attacks melt it off of you in 1-2 hits.
-Enemies bobble, jerk around, leap, and generally make precision weapons useless / frustrating to use. I am a mouse aimer, and love my m1000 scout in DRG, but forget it in Rogue Core. Might as well take a shotgun or one of the dozens of same-y ARs.
-Bosses are not fun, all have the same throw-the-rock-in-the-hole mechanic, and are bullet sponges otherwise. They have damage that's annoying to avoid while dealing with the regular enemies constantly spawning. The boss fights are a game of regularly drinking from the ammo supplies and hoping you have health-back buffs because you'll be health and ammo starved the whole time. Also good luck reviving your buddies when it's the flying shark boss. Picture any glyphid dreadnaught / pyramid boss fight in DRG - nothing in Rogue Core is that fun or creative or rewarding.
-There is no short form run. It's a time commitment, and if you have 35-40mins to kill on a random night to play games - this won't be the one you reach for, because you don't have time to play a run. You and your buddies die on level 3? No time to roll another game. GG no re.
-Multiple stations to have to make sure you check in on isn't fun, neither is the timer. Now we have sliders for the timer, the difficulty.. in other words the devs have no idea what's fun or how to balance the mechanics they introduced. Early access I know.. but this is so underbaked and poorly designed that they'd have to throw out the enemies and bosses and start over, not to mention my previous point about the upgrades being nothing-burgers, and there being no such thing as a unique run - just class abilities and slightly different guns. Basically in my view nothing works or has depth. How to improve on enemies, bosses, and systems that don't work and aren't fun? Good luck.
-Oh and the beers/bar.. you know how in deep rock it's cool to have buff beers, collect flowers, spend time at Lloyd's with your buddies between missions? Forget it in this game. No buffs, and you have to do annoying mini games to afford a beer. My friend group dances, drinks, and shoots the sh*t at Lloyd's in DRG, but simply doesn't engage with the bar at all in Rogue Core.
Basically once the new-and-shiny effect wares off you realize there's nothing here worth the time. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm thinking the issues with this game can't be fixed with patches and balance, and it's never going to see full release given how poorly it's been received / how bad player retention has been. I hope I'm wrong.. I have thousands of hours in DRG.
Sorry for the negativity but yeah.. at least at the time of this review you'll be in for 20-30 hrs of "hmm this is interesting" before that interest falls off a cliff and you realize being stressed out about missing upgrade stations, the timer, the fact that your gun sucks, or how bad the enemies and bosses really are to fight - isn't worth it. Go play Deep Rock Galactic, that's what the rest of us are doing.
