Now, before we start, I want to clarify one thing. This can also serve as a tl;dr of the entire review. I do not recommend against playing this game, for if you take the expenses and community out of the question and you just want to have fun with friends who share the same mindset, you will be completely fine. I reccommend against this game as a product, or a purchase, at least without a significant discount, as well as being overly engaged with its official community.

That out of the way, let's begin our review on a positive note.

PROS:

At its core, the game is fun. I already sank a lot of hours into the game, and I will continue doing so, because I already bought it during beta at a much cheaper price, and I have friends to do it with.

This is a horde game, where gameplay is not entirely focused on combat, or getting from point A to point B through combat encounters. Although those element are still present, the game focuses heavily on terraforming and traversing procedurally generated levels with all the tools at players' group disposal, while also doing mostly non-combat objectives through waves of enemies that challenge you in the process.

This game is a good example of how to tie your progression and customization to the main gameplay loop. Most of the resources you need to progress are found on levels you play (and are usually optional), there is your basic experience that you get for completing your runs; money, that you also get paid upon completion, digging out as gold or doing other events; six biome-specific materials that you also have to go out of your way to gather during gameplay, and different unlocks tied to certain challenges and random events that you encounter during your normal runs. At its core, the gameplay loop stays mostly the same, but your progression and mission goals, as well as modifiers such as biome you play in and random mutators, keep spicing things up so it never gets stale.


CONS:

Price: The first aspect the game falls flat in, is the price. Depending on what region you buy it at, it may cost well past half of AAA price point. And the content currently in the game, as smartly spiced up as it is, does not justify even the game purchase itself, let alone all the cosmetic microtransactions added to it. DRG is very unpolished ever since beta: 80% of gameplay-related bugs I've seen when I bought the game are still present with all the intent to stay that way, considering developers mostly fix the bugs they introduce with new updates that prevent game from launching, or crashes. Yet, there's a class in this game that, at higher levels of play, dies from repeatedly getting his grappling hook bugged much more often than from intended causes or player's lack of skill. That's just one example, but you get the idea.


Then, there's the community...
Now, don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with an average Joe just having a chat with the community or lurking for memes or new info on updates, which is like 95% of the entire playerbase, myself included. However, when you have to engage with anyone close to moderation, development team, or otherwise community "elites", (for example, with suggestions, bug reports, criticism, which they actively feign to encourage), you're in for a bad time.

Now, I don't know if it's a general trend coming from GSG' upper management, or just a few bad apples spoiling the bunch, but anything short of servility in those engagements may get you in trouble. That is, as long as you don't actively identify yourself with "correct" politics. GSG community team actively advertises themselves on all platforms as extremely woke, inclusive, anti-isms and so on and so forth, and signal their apolitical stance, but if you happen to rub the political side they happen to agree with (I think you can guess which) in a wrong way, you risk getting dogpiled by vocal minority from said side, and then getting punished by moderators for trying to dissolve the situation (they, of course, use "hate speech" rules where anything you say can be deemed "hate speech" and get you punished, but the enforsement of said rules is entirely selective). This dogpiling, should I say, is also encouraged, as many times throughout my Discord lurking I have seen mods/devs publically bully their regular users into bootlicking behavior at a threat of singling them out for enforcement of their rules where everyone is already guilty by default.

But that's not where problem is actually relevant. The fact that makes it relevant is that official community is not entirely optional. Firstly, you have to do the Discord intergration and tie your game account to their Discord server account to use any of the "community" game features, which you might miss out on depending on how you choose to play. Secondly, the game's matchmaking / lobby browser functions are implemented quite poorly (netcode is also non-existant, you need as low latency to the host as possible), and the game for solo players is balanced in a way that makes it unfun to cheese through and very frustrating to play as intended on higher difficulties. Unless you have a regular group of friends (who also bought the game for aformentioned unreasonable price), using the official community might end up being your only way of finding a comnetent group. Which, if you want to disengage from real world politics and just play a videogame, might end up backfiring on you, considering that to them, you are a rule breaker by default, and your stay is only decided by which side you pick.


That concludes my review. Good game, bad pricing, does not guarantee escapism due to being closely tied on engagement with heavily politicised community.

Now, before we start, I want to clarify one thing. This can also serve as a tl;dr of the entire review. I do not recommend against playing this game, for if you take the expenses and community out of the question and you just want to have fun with friends who share the same mindset, you will be completely fine. I reccommend against this game as a product, or a purchase, at least without a significant discount, as well as being overly engaged with its official community. That out of the way, let's begin our review on a positive note. [b]PROS:[/b] At its core, the game is fun. I already sank a lot of hours into the game, and I will continue doing so, because I already bought it during beta at a much cheaper price, and I have friends to do it with. This is a horde game, where gameplay is not entirely focused on combat, or getting from point A to point B through combat encounters. Although those element are still present, the game focuses heavily on terraforming and traversing procedurally generated levels with all the tools at players' group disposal, while also doing mostly non-combat objectives through waves of enemies that challenge you in the process. This game is a good example of how to tie your progression and customization to the main gameplay loop. Most of the resources you need to progress are found on levels you play (and are usually optional), there is your basic experience that you get for completing your runs; money, that you also get paid upon completion, digging out as gold or doing other events; six biome-specific materials that you also have to go out of your way to gather during gameplay, and different unlocks tied to certain challenges and random events that you encounter during your normal runs. At its core, the gameplay loop stays mostly the same, but your progression and mission goals, as well as modifiers such as biome you play in and random mutators, keep spicing things up so it never gets stale. [b]CONS:[/b] [b]Price:[/b] The first aspect the game falls flat in, is the price. Depending on what region you buy it at, it may cost well past half of AAA price point. And the content currently in the game, as smartly spiced up as it is, does not justify even the game purchase itself, let alone all the cosmetic microtransactions added to it. DRG is very unpolished ever since beta: 80% of gameplay-related bugs I've seen when I bought the game are still present with all the intent to stay that way, considering developers mostly fix the bugs they introduce with new updates that prevent game from launching, or crashes. Yet, there's a class in this game that, at higher levels of play, dies from repeatedly getting his grappling hook bugged much more often than from intended causes or player's lack of skill. That's just one example, but you get the idea. [b]Then, there's the community...[/b] Now, don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with an average Joe just having a chat with the community or lurking for memes or new info on updates, which is like 95% of the entire playerbase, myself included. However, when you have to engage with anyone close to moderation, development team, or otherwise community "elites", (for example, with suggestions, bug reports, criticism, which they actively feign to encourage), you're in for a bad time. Now, I don't know if it's a general trend coming from GSG' upper management, or just a few bad apples spoiling the bunch, but anything short of servility in those engagements may get you in trouble. That is, as long as you don't actively identify yourself with "correct" politics. GSG community team actively advertises themselves on all platforms as extremely woke, inclusive, anti-isms and so on and so forth, and signal their apolitical stance, but if you happen to rub the political side they happen to agree with (I think you can guess which) in a wrong way, you risk getting dogpiled by vocal minority from said side, and then getting punished by moderators for trying to dissolve the situation (they, of course, use "hate speech" rules where anything you say can be deemed "hate speech" and get you punished, but the enforsement of said rules is entirely selective). This dogpiling, should I say, is also encouraged, as many times throughout my Discord lurking I have seen mods/devs publically bully their regular users into bootlicking behavior at a threat of singling them out for enforcement of their rules where everyone is already guilty by default. But that's not where problem is actually relevant. The fact that makes it relevant is that official community is not entirely optional. Firstly, you have to do the Discord intergration and tie your game account to their Discord server account to use any of the "community" game features, which you might miss out on depending on how you choose to play. Secondly, the game's matchmaking / lobby browser functions are implemented quite poorly (netcode is also non-existant, you need as low latency to the host as possible), and the game for solo players is balanced in a way that makes it unfun to cheese through and very frustrating to play as intended on higher difficulties. Unless you have a regular group of friends (who also bought the game for aformentioned unreasonable price), using the official community might end up being your only way of finding a comnetent group. Which, if you want to disengage from real world politics and just play a videogame, might end up backfiring on you, considering that to them, you are a rule breaker by default, and your stay is only decided by which side you pick. [b]That concludes my review. Good game, bad pricing, does not guarantee escapism due to being closely tied on engagement with heavily politicised community.[/b]