Deep Rock Galactic is one of the greatest co-op games ever. There's nothing quite like joining a group of strangers, spewing sewage at bugs, and then leaving feeling like you've just spent an hour with old friends.

So what happens when you take that formula, crank up the pressure, add a ton of randomness, and make players compete against each other for the best loot? Well, after about 30 hours with the roguelite spin-off Rogue Core, I can tell you it makes everything more exciting, more chaotic, and occasionally a lot more frustrating. And sometimes, all three at once.

Video version of this guide (~19 minutes)

Upgrades and Problems

You see, Rogue Core doesn't give everyone their own selection of upgrades. Instead it gives the whole team a shared pool of perks, and you then take turns picking your favorite. And since most people don't have a full group of friends to play with, this has caused biblical levels of complaining among the playerbase. Because some evil rando can completely ruin the experience for everyone by just hoarding the best stuff.

So is it actually a disaster? A worse idea than even soggy bread? Honestly... the system is actually fine. Maybe I just radiate an aura of friendliness, but I've never had a single problem divvying up loot. Everyone was very polite and considerate of others, which would be genuinely shocking if this was League of Legends, but for the Deep Rock Galactic crowd it's just another Tuesday.

But the complaints aren't entirely wrong. They're just aimed at the wrong target. Because it's not the way you divide the loot that's the problem - it's the loot itself. It's boring. Really, really boring.

Instead of cool perks that make you fly across the screen at Mach 10 like in Far Far West, Rogue Core mostly offers generic stat upgrades or buffs that activate only when Venus is in retrograde and you're wearing leopard-print underwear. So when four people huddle up for upgrades - if you can actually get the bearded bastards to stand still for a moment - it's basically guaranteed that at least two of them will leave disappointed. Not because they were screwed over, but because there's just nothing good to take.

The upgrades really need some work

And when each level only gives you a couple of upgrades, being at the bottom of the pecking order feels terrible. You get to watch others bounce around and blast aliens apart like they owe them money, meanwhile you're stuck with a weapon so pathetic it's best used as a backscratcher.

But when you do get some of the actually good perks the game really starts to shine. I once had a build where I stacked so much fire-rate and reload speed that my grenade launcher just went BLUUUURGH and blew its entire load the moment I pressed the trigger. Nothing in the game could stand up to the BLUUUURGH, not even the final boss. It was just an endless, glorious mess of explosions and gibs.

That run took an entire hour, but to me it felt like minutes. It was just an absurd amount of fun to create earthquakes wherever I went. Which is exactly why I'm so disappointed there's not more of these kinds of builds. Rogue Core desperately needs to ditch the small number increases and embrace the chaos of roguelites. Who cares if it's unfair towards the aliens. They probably deserved it anyway!

Weapons and Melee Combat

With all that in mind, you might expect the rest of the game to be messy as well, but... no. In over 30 hours I ran into zero notable bugs, and had no performance issues whatsoever, which for an Early Access launch is absolutely bonkers. As good ol' Todd Howard would say: it just works.

And that extends to the gameplay feel. It doesn't even matter what you're firing - from the piddly pistols to the mighty minigun - everything feels good to go 'shooty-shooty bang-bang' with.

There's just something really special about standing back to back with your fellow Dwarves, unloading hundreds upon hundreds of bullets in every direction as the core spawn slowly encroach upon you. And even if they break through and it turns into a chaotic brawl, that's no problem at all - Rogue Core has greatly improved the melee combat from DRG. Instead of having one big swing followed by sad little pokes, every Dwarf can now rip and tear through hordes like the Doom Slayer. And the dedicated melee builds can straight up recreate anime scenes by slicing entire hordes.

There's nothing more fun than fighting back-to-back with your team

But in an unfortunately recurring theme for this review, there is a catch - not all weapons are made equal. A lot of the starter weapons are 'I never want to touch this' levels of terrible. Just boring pistols and SMGs that don't do nearly enough damage for the amount of enemies trying to nibble on your toes. And since the team picks weapons in sequence, much like the perks, someone is always going to get saddled with the super-soaker while others get to use awesome stuff like the charge pistol - a weapon that does such an absurd amount of damage that god himself has to duck every time you pull the trigger.

Now in most roguelikes you could slowly upgrade those bad weapons into 'Killgor, the Eater of Worlds'. But since most upgrades are minor stat increases, bad weapons just kinda stay bad. And the strange thing is, DRG already solved this problem with Overclocks - plus/minus style upgrades that drastically change a weapon's performance. Yet only a few weapons have access to them. Personally, I feel like adding the cream of the overclock crop into the upgrade pool would massively improve the gameplay, so Rogue Core skipping them is certainly odd.

Overclocks were great, so it's odd to see only a few make an appereance

Diggy Diggy Hole

But Rogue Core isn't just action. Staying true to its roots, it's also about exploration and mining. Each level has upgrade stations to hunt down and heaps of Expedite - a green mineral that serves as your experience - to hoover up. It's nothing complicated, but that's kind of the point. You need a bit of a breather between hectic fights, so spending a minute or two slapping barrels and mining minerals is a much welcome reset.

My only real issue is that the caves are simultaneously too simple yet too complicated. Gone are the sprawling labyrinths of DRG, and instead every map is now basically a snake. On its own that's fine since this is an action game and you don't want people getting lost for 15 minutes. But for whatever reason Rogue Core still likes to generate these massive vertical facilities that go either straight up to heaven or all the way down into hell.

To compensate Rogue Core lets you select a movement tool from a randomized pool, but once again, they're not all equal... not even close. What is a guy with platforms, drills or a light supposed to do when the loot is literally on top of the ceiling? But at the same time, the drills are the only tool that lets you make core spawn smoothies in melee combat... so it's all just a bit lopsided.

On the positive side, the new gravity lift is way cooler than anything DRG has. It lifts you up quickly, reaches surprisingly far, and it prevents you from breaking every single bone in your body if you accidentally overshoot. It's the gold standard for mobility, and whenever you're in a run without it, you can really feel its absence.

If I could, I'd always start with the grav lift

Gotta Go Fast

But unlike DRG - which is a chill game through and through - Rogue Core is all about speed. From the moment you step off the elevator you're at the mercy of the timer. Stay too long and you'll be hit by endless waves of enemies that eventually culminate in these nasty looking worms that will straight up kidnap people if they aren't slapped across the cheeks. The worms that is, not the people.

So on higher difficulties you actually have to haul ass and take risks, which I find to be genuinely exciting. There's something sadistically fun about agonizing over whether you have the time to go for another level-up, or if you're just better off playing it safe. And if you decide to risk it, fighting through hell itself to reach the elevator never gets old.

I've seen plenty of my teammates complain about the timer but, honestly, I think it works well for a game like Rogue Core. Runs already take a full hour, so having something to discourage people from slowly grazing across the caves until nothing but dirt remains is definitely a good thing.

Collecting shinies is great, but don't go overboard

Mission Variety

But the timer does expose a more serious problem - a lack of mission variety. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a casual stroll through the caves at depth 1, or a nightmarish struggle up hill - both ways - at depth 4, the missions are always the same. You walk down the snakey map collecting loot, defend an elevator, and repeat. And since you'll be doing this up to five times before the big bad boss, it gets repetitive very, very quickly.

And again, I'm not sure why. DRG has a whole roster of varied mission types sitting right there. We could've skated along pipes, reactivated old drop pods - just anything to break up the rhythm. As it stands, the levels just kind of turn into a blur.

But on the subject of variety - the Core Spawn as enemies are great. They're a diverse faction where every single type of transdimensional horror is fun to fight. They crawl across walls like xenomorphs, jump constantly so you can't just camp a chokepoint, and they all have obvious weaknesses and counters that makes even massive hordes feel fair. As far as new factions go, they do a great job of filling the glyphid-shaped hole in my heart.

Which then raises the obvious question - why aren't there any levels where you fight the bugs? They're a fully fledged faction with battle-tested gameplay. They'd add heaps of variety for basically zero effort. And don't give me a lore excuse. This is a game where a Dwarf can travel through time exclusively to throw fifty grenades in a row - most of it at their teammates. We are operating on complete moon logic here. So as far as I'm concerned, adding glyphids would be pure upside.

As for the final bosses - there's currently three of them, and all of them are great. They have enough health that you actually get to enjoy how broken your build is, but they also throw in small obstacle courses to mix up the fight and force you to use your full toolkit. They're basically the perfect kind of boss for a game like Rogue Core.

The bosses are simple, but a lot of fun.

Classes and Customization

Rogue Core has also added something with a ton of potential - a brand new class system. There's currently five of them, each with three unique abilities and special upgrades you can find mid-mission. The slicer, for example, can do an air dash or an anime swoosh straight through a horde of enemies. And it's exactly as fun as it sounds.

My personal favorite is the Retcon - the previously mentioned time-travelling Dwarf. Her shtick is that she can save her position and stats, go absolutely hog wild on the enemy - blowing through her entire supply and suffering horrific burns to every limb - and then just zip right back to before any of it happened. There's so many cool things you can do with that ability that I simply cannot stop playing her.

And the more observant among you probably noticed I said 'her' right there. Rogue Core now has female Dwarves! But not any fancy-pants, Elf-loving ladies - no, no, no. These are proper Dwarf women, with beards that can reach their knees. All of it is purely cosmetic, but it's a great addition.

Which makes it genuinely baffling that the classes are gender-locked. Three are male, and two are female. You can change literally everything else about your Dwarf - from the length of their mustache to what kind of vomit-colored monstrosity they'll be - but apparently gender is a step too far. It's the exact same pattern with Rogue Core, over and over again: it has awesome ideas, but then the Rival corporation sabotages them right at the finish line.

Now that's how you do female Dwarves!

Roguelite Progression

And since this is a roguelite, there is naturally a set of upgrades you can grab to make yourself stronger between missions. It's a cool idea, but this is quite obviously the most Early Access part of the game. By which I mean, a lot of it feels placeholder.

Every upgrade is a stat bonus, and they range from completely inconsequential to 'good lord this is broken'. The end result is that most of my builds ended up looking exactly the same, because why would you take fall damage resistance or throwing strength when you could instead get +50% weak spot damage. You'd have to have a weak spot in your head to pass that up.

It's obviously not done, so I won't harp on it too much. I'll just say that much like the perks, here's to hoping we get more interesting stuff in the future.

The upgrades are powerful, but pretty boring overall

Visuals and Music

As for right now, Rogue Core has brought with it DRG's promotion system - and it's honestly kind of wonderful. Once you hit level 15 you'll be able to promote a class which gives you new cosmetics and lets you mix and match class 'decks' to - at least slightly - finetune your own build. But it's the visuals and music that make me want to get back on that pedestal. It all combines to create this atmosphere of grandeur that makes you feel like you're a part of something truly epic - and not just a corporate drone that just paid money to have a machine ruin their pickaxe.

Rogue Core, much like DRG, just looks great. It's a simple style that can't really compete with AAA games in terms of sheer graphical fidelity - but honestly, who cares if you can't see your character's butt sweat in perfect detail. Rogue Core has atmoshpere and charm, and that's the sort of thing that'll stick with you a lot longer than pretty textures. Also, I'm pretty sure the game is powered by pure black magic, because it's somehow under 4GB in size. Which is crazy, even for a roguelite.

And the same goes for the music - it's also under 4GB in size! No, but seriously - it's all quiet and ambient synths when you're exploring, but as soon as the bullets start flying, so does the soundtrack. It's not something I'll listen to in my free time, but for a bunch of Dwarves about to die in some hole in the far reaches of space - it's pretty much perfect.

Is Rogue Core Worth Playing?

Which brings us to the most important question - would I recommend Rogue Core? Not yet. The game has a lot of potential, and I had loads of fun playing it, but everywhere you look there are cracks - either because someone mined there, or because an idea just wasn't fully developed.

It's a fascinating and frustrating experience in equal measure. So if you're willing to embrace the jank, then by all means - give it a bash. But if you have even one toe on the fence, I'd advise keeping your wallet closed for now. At least until they fix the perks - because that feels like the core of Rogue Core's problems.

And finally, it's worth remembering that Deep Rock Galactic didn't start off as the masterpiece it is today. The first version was barebones and wonky, just like Rogue Core. So don't write it off just yet. It could become something truly special with time. Rock and stone!