Have you ever wanted to go through a mine while fighting enemies with guns? Well-modded Minecraft can do that but instead, Deep Rock Galactic is just as fun. It gives you four different dwarfs to play as, each with its own tools to make the experience enjoyable. You and three other friends can team up for missions and collect loot.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Enjoyable multiplayer-based combat with very fun weapons
- Four different dwarf classes, each having different weapons
- Various perks and abilities to utilize
- Ten unique biomes for you to explore
- Beautifully detailed art style that makes each area interesting
Cons
- You will be fighting the same enemies over and over
- Drop Pod locations can be a bit troublesome to get to
Gameplay
You will be given a series of missions to complete but will only have a certain amount of time until the selection refreshes for each region. There are a total of nine unique mission types with one of them being Deep Dives - the most challenging collection of three pre-seeded missions available each week, in two different overall difficulties designed to test the metal of you and your teammates. While down on Hoxxes you will have the option to collect various minerals either helping you on your current operation or with customizing your equipment back at the space rig.
Items such as minerals and gold are used to buy cosmetics or upgrades for your weapons or armor. You can try out different upgrades to see what fits best for your play style and you can save and swap multiple load-outs.
If you are playing with other people or with friends, all materials you collect will be shared with everyone as you all get an equal amount. So no need to worry if someone goes and steals your gold, you will get your share regardless. You and your teammates can carry only 40 of each mineral by default, so you will need to safely deposit what you have gathered before getting more. This limit, however, can be increased with upgrades and perks.
If you are playing solo you will get a drone known as Bosco as your companion, which is very helpful to the player. Bosco can help mine minerals, take out enemies in combat and will revive the player a fixed amount of times if they ever go down. Bosco will disappear if a player joins the lobby you are in if you are hosting it but will return if you are left alone again.
While you are doing missions you can also do assignments that will help you unlock new types of equipment for you to use or other benefits. There are a total of 31 assignments and some of them have to be done on a certain mission in order to complete them. Four of them are promotion assignments for your dwarves when they reach level 25, and seven are prestige ones where you get rewarded pickaxe customization sets, armor paint, and helmets. You have to complete previous prestige assignments to get access to later ones.
You can also get access to perks; These are passive abilities that you can get that will help you on your missions. You can get perk points by achieving certain milestones. All dwarves can equip individual perks and players will start with both a passive and active slot. You can get ones like a dash, one to help revive teammates faster, a hover ability, and more. There are also weapon perks that you can get as well that will help in combat or help you and other team members.
There are ten different biomes to explore, with each having its own hazards and obstacles. Make sure to be careful when exploring, as some hazards can prove difficult to handle. Each biome has a different mineral for you to collect and these minerals will help you unlock stuff like cosmetics and weapon perks.
Dwarves
There are four different dwarves for you to play as, each with their unique weapons and tools to help out with the task at hand. There will be times when you will need to restock on stuff like ammo, to do this you will need to collect some Nitra which will give you a resupply pod. You need at least 80 Nitra for a resupply pod drop to spawn in.
Drillers can create stairways, pathways, help clear obstacles for the team, and they also come equipped with a flamethrower which can help with large hordes of enemies. The drills can be used to drill down anything, except ores like gold and Nitra. Drillers can use their drills to help the team move out through the areas of the map.
Engineers have the ability to create sentry turrets which can be used to help hold a small base area for you and your teammates. They also have one of the best weapons in the game, that being, the Platform Gun. This can help you and your teammates to other areas of the map you are on. You also come equipped with a grenade launcher, which can deal large amounts of damage to tougher enemies. Engineer is one of my favorite classes to play as, as I love using the sentry turrets in combat. Guess all those hours of Team Fortress 2 helped out.
Gunners are a complete combat-based class and out of the four have the highest DPS in the game. He comes equiped with a minigun but also a zipline gun, which is very useful for getting across large gaps - assuming you are in range to fire it. You do move a little slow while using it but there are perks to make you go faster. You also come equipped with a shield generator, which can protect you and your teammates when dealing with ranged enemies.
Scouts have the fastest mobility in the game with his grappling hook and is also the only class that has access to the sticky flare gun. This will help light up areas for the team to see, the area is much larger than the typical flares. He also comes equipped with an assault rifle, which is one of my favorite guns to use in the game. Thanks to his other tools, this makes him my second favorite class to play in the game.
While the game is fun, I do have two issues that don’t hinder it completely but are noteworthy.
You will be fighting the same enemies, over and over again. There may be a different method to take the enemy out or there will be times when you will get a giant version of that enemy which is a boss, but generally that's it.
Another issue I had is that the drop pod can be a bit troublesome sometimes when you are done completing missions. This isn’t a huge issue but sometimes it can be a bit annoying to get to, especially when you only have five minutes, sometimes three, to get back to it before it takes off.
Graphics and Performance
Deep Rock Galactic has a very nice art style to it that makes it very colorful but at the same time hostile in some of the environments you explore. It had a certain fear of the unknown vibe to it that makes it special. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. I experienced no issues while I was playing.
Final Verdict
Deep Rock Galactic is a fun multiplayer experience that is worth playing for those that love team-based games. The game is still getting updated to this day and the added content is really fun to go out and play. I recommend this game for those who want a fun multiplayer-based game to play with friends.