Deep Rock Galactic - Deluxe 2nd Edition (Review)
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Transcript
Hey folks, welcome back to the dungeon dive. Daniel here. I hope you're doing well and if you're not, I hope you are soon. Okay, today on the channel, we're taking a quick look at Deep Rock Galactic and uh this game was sent to the Dungeon Dive by Mood Publishing. A while ago, I did a video on a game called Stellagbite. And I love Stellagbite. It's one of my favorite games. And that game is all about dwarves and going on mining expeditions. And that's a kind of a typical fantasy setting. I typically prefer fantasy over science fiction. But after I did those videos on Stelagbite, some viewers asked me if I had played Deep Rock Galactic. I had not. I was not a backer, but I did reach out to Mood Publishing and they agreed to send me a copy. They sent me the deluxe second edition, the version that comes with all of these really chunky minis. Fans of the channel will know I am not a big minis guy. I would have preferred the stand version and if I were buying the game, that is the version that I would have purchased. But for fans of minis, I think you will be very very happy with this game because uh the minis are pretty pretty great.
They are very chunky and heavy and they look cool. But uh so you won't see any pain in minis or anything like that. Uh but you know, one thing that this game made me feel is that kind of intense and suspenseful feeling that a game of Space Hulk gives me. And anytime a game can give me that feeling, I think that's a good thing because there aren't a lot of games that provide that kind of intense action. And I did have moments while I was playing it. I played this game three times in a row on my first day. So that tells you something about this game right now. I think this game is pretty fun. When I was first setting up the game and learning it, I wasn't excited. You know, sometimes when you get a new game and you're just you're just unboxing it, you're setting it up, you're learning the game, you kind of have this feeling like, "Wow, okay, this is going to be really special. This is going to be cool. I'm really into it." I wasn't feeling that until I started playing it. But after playing it, yeah, this game is really fun. I put it in that same kind of grouping, that same kind of category as something like Zombie Side. Uh, you know, I think people would call those games, you know, beer and pretzel dice chucking games.
This is definitely a dice chucking game. However, I like this game a lot more than Zombie Side. It's a lot more fun. And hopefully in this video I will be able to illustrate about five reasons why I think this might be one of the best kind of beer and pretzel games. Uh I feel like you know owning this I don't really feel the need to own any game other games that are just like zombie side games where you know pretty simple games that are focused on moving around a map and fighting enemies and doing basic missions. So, in a game of Deep Rock Galactic, you will be playing as these uh mining dwarves. And they're kind of like in these uh in these kind of I don't know steam and electric powered uh power suits. And so, in the game that I'm playing right now that I have set up, I have a gunner and driller. And there are four different dwarves. And the dwarves are going into these mines. And these mines are set up as tiles. And depending on the mission that you have chosen, you will you will set up uh your tiles. And there are also so there are known tiles and there are these unknown tiles. You know, you have scanned this area and you're able to pick up some details about some of the caverns, but some of them are too deep.
Some of them are are too mysterious. And so you don't know what's in those until you mine to them. And you can mine through walls and then you can lay down these additional tokens to create more space in the map. And when you do, then you get to reveal one of these uh secret chambers. And they will have other things. They will have different uh powerups for your weapons or they will spawn different enemies. And in most of the missions, you are trying to mine a certain number of colored gems in addition to these uh secret tokens here. And these tokens will give you power ups. They might allow you to draw more cards or they might contain the material that you are looking for in [snorts] order to uh win the game. in order to win that mission. A lot of the actions you are taking will revolve around combat. And you can take certain actions during your turn, you have a whole bunch of different actions you can take. And on a dwarf's turn, each dwarf, each player will gain uh three actions. They can move, they can attack, they can use their pickaxe, they can throw items, uh they can level up their secondary weapon, they can call in a supply drop because one of the things that you really have to pay attention to in this game are your resources. Your resources of mainly of ammunition, and you have two different weapons. You have a main weapon that has one type of ammunition,
and you have a sidearm that has another type of ammunition. and you might run out. So, you'll need to call in a supply drop and that will come crashing in and then you'll be able to draw a card in order to pick up some new resources. Very, very handy. And you you need to do that a lot. Uh you can exchange supplies with other dwarves. You can assist dwarves because a lot of times in this game your dwarves are getting they are getting overrun by these monsters and there will be a lot of enemies out on the board and it ends up looking pretty cool, pretty chaotic. But your dwarves will get knocked over and then they will have to spend two actions on their turn to stand up unless you have a friendly dwarf around you who can assist you in standing up. So, it is very beneficial in this game to stick together or if you're playing with four dwarves or four players, you know, you want to maybe have uh two teams of two so you can assist each other. And uh the teamwork is really important in this game. It's really important to help your other dwarves and to stay together and work together. But you're also kind of working against a timer because as the more time you spend in these caverns, more and more of these enemies are going to come in and they are going to surround you. They're going to uh come up through the ground on surprise attacks. They might spawn through these various portals. And so things you it's very easy to get quickly overwhelmed in this game if you don't play together as
a team. And then another thing you can do is you can play these rock and stone cards. And so we'll talk a little bit about those cards in a minute. But uh yeah, the game is just really fun. It's it's pretty simple. It's very straightforward. There aren't a ton of rules. It doesn't have a lot of uh things you have to remember. And so playing it is very quickly, especially solo. And I've had a lot of fun playing solo. But one of the main things, so there are like five main things that I think really elevate this game to kind of like the upper tier of this style of dice chucker. And one of those is the different characters. And so there are four different dwarves that we can play. And so I have gunner and driller set up. We'll take a closer look at them in a minute. But we also have scout and engineer. And each one of these characters, even though they share that kind of same pool of available actions, they all have uh slightly different benefits that um really do make them feel like different characters. So, the scout here, they kind of have this sniper weapon with these blue dice. And blue dice are very powerful in this game. And all of the combat will use these different colored d6. So we have red for explosives. We have yellow for fire. We have blue for armorpiercing kind of sniping. And then we have green for normal attacks. And all of the monsters or most of the monsters will have a specific defense against a
certain kind of of ammunition against a certain kind of attack. And so you really need to be careful about your dwarves how they are attacking depending on the monster that they are attacking. And I think that's really cool. But, uh, the scout has a grappling hook and a flare shot, so that can help the team out. Uh the engineer is able to summon this uh kind of an auto gun like an autoc cannon kind of like an aliens and that gives me a really big kind of space hulk feeling as these little minions are moving in towards the autoc cannon and you're taking all these pot shots with your with your single d6 you know trying not to get that miss and oh you would finally get a miss or something like that. that uh it doesn't have any like weapon jamming like Space Hulk does, but it still gives you that intense feeling from very very simple mechanisms, you know, rolling a d6, trying to hit, trying to take out these bad guys. And the uh gunner can also create these platforms, and the platforms can help the dwarves get over pits and things.
And so that's those two characters. Now, let's take a closer look at the gunner and the driller. Okay, so over here we have the gunner and the driller. These are the two characters that I've been playing most as. Uh the gunner is just kind of a typical he has a typical gun. He shoots the typical green uh green bullets here. They're probably some of the weakest bullets, but um he has some other things to help make up for that. He has these grappling hooks, and as an action, the gunner can send out these grappling hooks that can allow the dwarves to cross pits. And the gunner can also generate a shield. And this shield can be laid down on a hex and it will protect any dwarf around that shield. Very, very cool.
Now, one thing about the characters is not only do they have their basic weapon, but each of the characters can also bring in a secondary weapon that will give them additional colored dice that they can use for attacking. and then you can spend resources that you mine throughout the game to level up that weapon to make them more powerful. Now, each of the weapons, including your base weapons, can also be upgraded with these weapon upgrade tokens. And these you can find scattered throughout the map, usually on those hidden chamber tiles. And these will give you additional things that your weapons can do. So, really cool. does make you feel like you are really kind of updating, you know, upgrading your your dwarves kit in order to make them more powerful.
And this is just a zero to hero game. There really isn't a campaign. You can kind of play in a campaign mode, but for me, it's all about just setting up a game, setting up a map, and having a really fun time. So, my gunner, they have this experimental plasma igniter as their sidearm. And then we have the driller here. And the driller has a flamethrower. And so they can lay down these flame tokens to create a flame wall that can block the enemies from being able to move. And it can also block line of sight. Uh they have this jury uh juryrigged boom stick, this uh kind of doublebarreled shotgun. I took that as the sidearm. And then the driller is really good at drilling through the walls. And so that's another thing that I think makes this game great and it's something that I don't see a lot of is that and that is the ability to terraform the map to change the map while you are playing. And so if our driller was here on this hex here and they wanted to get into this chamber, they could spin one of their actions to move. And as part of the driller's special drilling ability, when they move, they can generate they can drill through the wall. And so they can generate a new tile, a new place to to uh walk on, to explore, and then they will be able to reveal this. But oh no, there is a pit that is completely surrounding the entrance to get into here. So uh at this point, you might want to bring in the gunner and then the
gunner could place a zipline over one of those pits. Or if you were playing as what is that? The engineer. The engineer might be able to uh lay down a platform that you can jump on, or you could use your dwarves to just mine through the walls and create an entire new uh kind of a new pathway in order to get by the pit. You know, that would take a lot of turns, but that is doable. And by the end of a mission, you're going to have a whole bunch of new tiles, new hex's, new land to move across. And so from the beginning of the game to the end of the game, the map has changed quite a bit.
And what's really nice though is that it still fits on this one board. So you're never having to guess, well, how much uh, you know, how much space is this in map going to end up taking? You always know that it has to fit within the confines of this one board, but being able to drill through the walls, being able to create your own passages. And sometimes that can be very beneficial, not in just discovering what you need to find in order to win that mission, but also by making new passages to where you can lead enemies through. Maybe you got to do some ambushing, lead him through a corridor of fire, or also finding new ways to get back to your drop ship because at the end of each mission, you also need to make it back to your drop ship so you can get out in time. So, after you, as the dwarf have taken all three of your actions, you will then draw an event card. And this is kind of the way that the game scales because, you know, if you're only playing with one dwarf and you can play a full solo mode, you can't play with just one dwarf. If you do that, you are joined by this little robot named Bosow. And basically, Bosow gives you two additional turns or two additional actions that you can take on your turn, but you take them as Bosow. And then Bosow can also help you while you are exploring and doing the things that you need to do. But I found that playing with two full dwarves just uh gave me more fun because you have more abilities that you can use. And that's really
where the fun of this game comes in is is learning how to use the dwarves and their weapons and their power. But the event deck, so you will draw one event card at the end of each of your turns. And playing with Bosu also makes the game just a little bit easier, at least according to the developers, the designers, because you basically have two additional actions before each event card. So, it does scale pretty well. And I think this game plays great solo. I guess I'll just slide in this uh this topic here. This game is fantastic solo. I have had so much fun. You know, Zombie Side is a really fun game, but playing it solo for me is a nightmare because you always have to play with six heroes. No matter the number of players in Zombie Side, you're always playing with six heroes. And that's a pretty big detriment for me. It ends up taking up way too much table space, and it's just a lot to manage. And so, Deep Rock Galactic is an amazing solo game because you can play with one dwarf and Bosow or you can easily play with two dwarves, and it feels good both ways. But another thing that this game gets absolutely right is the event deck. This is one of the coolest event decks that I've seen in a game like this. In a game that is mainly focused on on combat, you know, it's not focused on creating a a a grand sense of adventure. You're not interacting with NPCs and merchants and discovering mysteries. You know, you are in here getting your hands dirty, fighting monsters, and that's kind of
the main thing you're doing. But this event deck is great. And that's one of the things that I talk about on this channel quite often is when a game has an event deck. When a game has a deck of random events, I want to be excited. Every time I draw a card from an event deck, and a lot of times in games like this, I don't get excited because the event deck is just always bad. It's always just associated with the enemies, with the monsters. Well, in Deep Rock Galactic, there are a huge number of different things that can happen when you draw these event cards. Uh, you might have missionspecific events. And so, in the mission book, when you draw one of these cards, you will look up and see what happens uh drawing that card during that mission. Uh, sometimes enemies will ambush you. They will come up from the ground and you will have to deal with them. However, what's really cool is if you get one of these ambushes and there is another dwarf that is in line of sight of you and of the enemy that is coming up through the ground.
And so, let's say that my gunner was here and my u my driller was here and I was ambushed by this uh creature here. Another dwarf could have an opportunity to prevent that from happening. And you have to make that choice if you want to spend a bullet or not because a lot of the actions in this game do require you to have certain resources of certain types of ammunition. And so there's some really good resource management in this game as well. But there are also things that happen that are good. You can find a vantage point. Uh you can find a loot bug. Uh sometimes uh you might be drilling and gold will just, you know, crumble from the ceiling and fall on your head. uh it will change up the way that the enemies move, the way the enemies uh react. You can find uh caches of of of ammunition or of certain potions or things. So, it's just it's always fun to draw a card from this event deck and there is such a good variety of bad things and good things that will happen to you. Now, another thing that you might find is you might be able to find these rock and stone cards. And at the beginning of each game, a dwarf will be able to draw one of these rock and stone cards. And these will be special abilities, special oneoff abilities that you can play without spending an action. And one other thing I forgot to mention about the characters is at the beginning of the game, you will also be able to draw one of these throwables. And there's a huge number of different types of
grenades and different types of little throwables. Uh these can be set up as traps like proximity mines. They can create fire. They can just do massive corrosive uh damage to enemies in an area of attack. So really, really cool. And there's also a chance to, you know, find these hidden within uh that event deck. And a lot of the event cards will actually give you a choice. you know, if you want to do the thing, you have to spend a material or you have to like lay your dwarf down because they are trying to crawl in a small hole and that might prevent you from taking your full complement of actions on your next turn. So, yeah, just just really really great event deck. I think it knocks it out of the park. And the uh final thing that I like about this game is the combat. I think the combat is great. It's fast, it's fast-paced, it's not too complicated, and it's just fun because you have different guns and different guns will shoot, you know, different bullets. And so depending on the gun, the ammunition, you will roll that color of d6. And you do have to think about which dwarf is attacking which enemy because of those natural defenses that the enemies have. So yeah, so this uh Mera spawn here, they are flying. So, they are very hard to hit with your uh pickaxes. And so, if you take a melee attack against one of these, they're going to prevent two damage. Well, the most damage you could roll is two. So, these guys are pretty much uh immune to melee attacks and they are also uh will
prevent one point of fire damage. So, if you had your flamer here or your driller and they used their flamethrower to shoot at that Mecca Mcterus spawn and let's say they had 2d6 and they hit one and miss one. Well, because they're flying, they can just fly over that first damage of fire so they won't get hit. But, so you want to focus on this enemy with a dwarf who has, you know, green bullets or red bullets or blue bullets. Just super super cool. And some of these enemies will have defenses against a whole bunch of things. Uh for instance, this ptorian here, they will prevent one point of damage from a pickaxe, two points of damage from a flame, and one point of damage from a green attack. However, if you attack them from behind, then all of those are negated. That's really cool.
And these very powerful enemies like the Ptorian and the Oppressor, when you defeat them, you get to draw one of those rock and stone cards. So, you kind of get a little reward for killing one of those more powerful enemies. But the nice thing about the uh combat is a lot of the enemies only have one or two hit points. So, you're not having to keep track of a bunch of hit points over and over again. You know, it's not a war of attrition. You're not just whittling down, you know, 20, 30 hit points. Things move fast. A lot of the enemies are cannon fodder and it's more about slowing you down. It's more about the enemies getting in the way of the job of the dwarves uh fulfilling their their their mission, their contract in order to find the things that they need to find on this job. A few of the enemies do have, you know, like seven hit points or six hit points, but that's not a ton, especially if you have a gun like the juryrigged boomstick. When that gets leveled up, you'll get to roll two of these uh blue dice, these armor penetrating bullets. And you can actually roll four uh points of damage on a single attack. So, that is really cool. And there's a lot of tactical decisions, you know, positioning matters, how you are using your dwarf's uh bonuses, their strengths compared to maybe their weakness in the in the bullets that they have, how you have uh outfitted your dwarf with their sidearm.
uh maybe the various bombs and throwables that you have, you know, creating new tunnels to lure enemies down to a certain, you know, kind of in a certain trap or something. Uh just Yeah, there is a lot going on in this game. I think this game is really fun. It's a game that for me didn't make a great first impression. As I was setting things up, as I was learning the game, I was kind of thinking to myself, hm, I don't know. Is this it? Is there is there anything else going on? It seemed a little simple, but once you start playing, once I started playing it, the fun just kind of leapt off the table and I wanted to play it again. And I finished my second game and I wanted to play it again. And I've just had a just a really really fun time with it, especially playing with two dwarves. I think it's plays perfectly solo. It's got great characters with different abilities. They feel different to play.
Terraforming, drilling through the walls and creating new passages and discovering new chambers is great. The combat is fun and it plays perfectly solo. So, I'm pretty happy with Deep Rock Galactic. I do wish they would have sent me the stand version because the box is pretty big. It's one of those big deep square boxes. Um, you know, if if I end up keeping the game, I'm going to have to think of a way to consolidate. You know, the minis are all in these big plastic trays, and so I want to get rid of those so I can choose which of the expansions I want to keep, and I can get everything that I want to keep in one single box because this box does take up, you know, it takes up kind of a whole uh cubby in in one of those uh in your game shelf. And so, but yeah, in a follow-up video soon, we will take a look at the expansions. We'll talk about those because I just haven't had a chance to play with the expansions yet.
Yeah, I hope you enjoyed this look at Deep Rock Galactic and hopefully I can evade to you the reasons why I think this is a really fun dice chucking beer and pretzel game. And yeah, Deep Rock Galactic better than Zombie Side. So, take it easy. We'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.