Drox Operative Review
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Drox Operative is the latest "sandbox" action RPG from Soldak Entertainment. Unlike Soldak's other offerings, which haven't strayed too far from traditional fantasy settings, Drox Operative takes place in space with you controlling a space ship. Moreover, while you spend your time killing enemies, completing quests, and gathering loot -- the things you'd expect to see in an action RPG -- the factions populating the sector of space you're in try to gain dominance by exploring their surroundings, colonizing worlds, and defeating their opponents. That is, you're playing a space action RPG while the factions are playing a 4X game, and the combination makes Drox Operative unique.
As a game reviewer, I'm always happy when a game tries new things, and so "unique" is a quality adjective from me. But for those of you reading this review, you're probably more interested in "fun," and sadly that adjective is a little but tougher to gauge. Keep reading to find out why.
Ship Development
When you start a game of Drox Operative, you have to pick a race for your ship. There are ten choices for this, including Human, Dryad (peaceful plant-like creatures), and Drakk (aggressive dragon-men). Each race comes with a set of passive bonuses, and they also control some of the components (the Drox equivalent of equipment) that you can install on your ship. As an example, Humans give bonuses to damage and accuracy, and they add components for a mine weapon, a boost to computer systems, and a human crew member. Crew members are special components that gain experience along with your ship, and over time improve the bonuses they provide.
Each time your ship gains a level, you're given five "crew points" to assign to the attributes of your ship. These attributes include Command, Computers, Engineering, Helm, Structural, and Tactical, and they function roughly the same as the standard attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and so forth) that you see in other RPGs. For example, Tactical controls how much damage you do, and so it's about the same as Strength, while Structural controls how much damage your ship can take, and so it's about the same as Constitution. Your rank in each attribute also controls the components you can install, and so all attributes are important for all ships.
The most unique attribute is Command. It controls the size of your ship. You start out with a light cruiser, but over time you can grow it into a dreadnaught -- and perhaps beyond. As your ship size increases, you gain more space for components, but you also take a penalty to your Defense and you increase your Weight, and so you have to be careful not to grow your ship too quickly, or else you might end up with a slow sitting duck.
There aren't any classes in Drox Operative. The only thing that really changes from one ship to the next is the weapon you choose to use. Options for this include lasers, missiles, ballistics, fighter bays, mines, viruses and more -- or some combination thereof. However, while there are plenty of choices, it only seems like three of the weapons -- lasers, missiles, and ballistics -- work for your core attacks, and the others play more of a secondary role (and since component space is so limited, you might not be able to use a secondary weapon at all). Worse, missiles are slow and can be shot down, and ballistics frequently miss, so lasers seem like a required part of every ship, which hurts the replay value of the game. Of course, you can spend hundreds of hours playing Drox Operative with a single ship, so replay value isn't as important here as it is with other games.
Drox Operative also doesn't have anything that's the equivalent of a skill or spell. All you do in combat is fly around and shoot your weapon(s). This can be entertaining for a while, but since the game is about 90% combat, the lack of options in this area eventually leads to Drox Operative becoming overly repetitive.
Gameplay
Drox Operative does not come with a campaign. Instead, you select some options and create a sector of space to play in, and then after winning (or losing) in that sector, you move on to a new sector and repeat the process. Unlike Din's Curse, which gave a whole lot of options for each game, Drox Operative is more minimalistic. You can control the number of planetary systems, the number of factions, and how established the factions are (which basically means how many planets they have under their control), but that's it, and so each game feels a lot like the others. There are also some "challenge" sectors, but they're identical to regular sectors except that the starting options are already picked for you.
Your goal in each sector is not to defeat the other factions. You don't control any worlds or gather any resources (other than money). You just have your lone ship. Instead, each sector has a fixed set of winning conditions. You can ally yourself with the last remaining faction (a military win), you can ally yourself with the last remaining alliance of factions (a diplomatic win), you can earn enough credits (an economic win), you can defeat enough faction ships and planets (a fear win), or you can defeat enough neutral ships and bosses (a fame win). There are also losing conditions -- including spending too much money and being at war with everybody -- but they're difficult to achieve.
For the most part, what you do in the game is fly around and shoot things. There are neutral enemies in each sector, so you don't have to involve yourself with the factions if you don't want to. You can just kill neutral enemies (including special boss ships and structures) and complete quests for the factions, and as long as you don't ally yourself with anybody or go to war with anybody, the factions largely ignore you. That means it's easy (but sometimes time-consuming) to win each sector. You can just hang around and wait to see which faction is going to dominate, and then do things (like complete quests for them, kill their enemies, and protect their planets) to curry their favor and gain an alliance with them.
There are a variety of quests available in the game. Factions ask you to kill things, explore planets, rescue stranded ships, deliver goods, and more. Each faction planet is basically a shopkeeper, and deliveries require you to buy an object from one planet and then FedEx it to another. I found the delivery quests to be a bit tedious (and at odds with action RPGs) so I mostly avoided them and focused on the quests to hunt down enemy ships. Conveniently, the game makes it straightforward to see which quests are available in the planetary system that you're currently in, and so it's easy to scroll through and select the quests you want to tackle. But you have to be quick. Sometimes factions complete quests on their own.
To help you influence (positively or negatively) the other factions, there are also special covert actions that you can take at each planet. These actions include stealing technology from the planet's faction (you can't use the technology yourself, but you can sell it to another faction), cause rioting on the planet (which might cause it to declare its independence), sabotage the planet (to damage or destroy it), or spread rumors on the planet (to cause the planet's faction to like another faction more or less). Unfortunately, you can only perform these actions on planets you're not at war with, so they only have limited appeal. I only used them to break up alliances so I could go for a military win instead of a diplomatic win.
As you defeat enemies and complete quests, you find loot in the form of components. Components are a little bit trickier than the equipment from other RPGs. That's because not only do they provide bonuses for your ship, they also have power requirements. So you can't just put the best components on your ship; you have to hunt around for the most efficient components. For example, you might find a laser that does 10 damage but requires 100 power and 20 energy per shot, but depending on your ship, you might be better off with a weapon that only does 8 damage but only requires 75 power and 15 energy. The components also come in common, rare, elite, legendary, and artifact qualities, and there is enough variety to what they do that they give you lots of options for how to set up your ship.
Finally, if you die in the game (which happens when your shields, armor plating and structure have been destroyed), then you get "cloned" and your ship replaced, and you take a 50% experience penalty for a while -- unless you can recover the black box where you died, and then the experience penalty is drastically reduced. You can also install an escape pod component on your ship, and if your escape pod survives for long enough after you die, then you don't take an experience penalty at all. Drox Operative also includes a hardcore mode, and in that case when you die, that it's for your ship.
Interface
As is always the case with Soldak's games, you're given lots of options for how to control your ship. For movement, you can use the WASD keys to drive the ship, or you can hold down the left mouse button to guide the ship where you want it to go. For weapons, you can left or right click on an enemy, or you can press a hotkey for the weapon. There are also boosters that you can use (the Drox equivalent of potions), and they can be activated from hotkeys or the right mouse button as well. And better yet, if you don't like any of the default controls, then you can reconfigure them in any way you want. A lot of developers could learn a thing or two about interfaces by playing Drox Operative or one of Soldak's other games.
Graphics and Sound
I was pleasantly surprised about how Drox Operative looks. Each planetary system has a gorgeous background, the ships for each race have a unique appearance, and the weapon effects and explosions are all effective. The only downside to the graphics is that space is rendered in 2D instead of 3D like you might expect, but this was likely a tradeoff to keep the controls simple, and to make it easy to maneuver and fight. Meanwhile, the sound in the game doesn't fare as well. There isn't any voice acting, and the music and battle sounds are competent without being memorable.
Conclusion
Overall, Drox Operative is serviceable but repetitive. Each sector plays about the same because the win and lose conditions are always the same, the factions aren't all that different, and combat doesn't have enough options to it to make it exciting for a long time. I played Drox Operative for about 25 hours, which was long enough to get my ship to level 36 (out of a maximum of 100), but by that point I just felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again, and my enthusiasm for the game quickly dwindled. That being said, if you enjoy Drox Operative more than I did, then there isn't any limit to how long you can play it, because you can just keep generating random sector after random sector. And at $20 (with a money back guarantee) there isn't much reason not to try it out and see if it holds your interest for a while until the next big thing comes out.
