I’m a space game fan. I especially enjoy RPG and sandbox titles set in space. Noctis, EVE Online, FTL: Faster Than Light, Starmade… I have a fascination with the stars. I recently started playing Drox Operative: Invasion of the Ancients and it fits that niche well. I’ve put in a few hours so let’s hit it with a First Opinion.
The first thing to cross my mind was how many fond memories it brought back of Space Rangers 2 (I reviewed Space Rangers 2 here years ago, but apparently the Internet Monster ate it somewhere along the line). Drox Operative: Invasion of the Ancients is a top-down action/RPG where you command a singular spaceship, earning experience for kills and completing quests. My first ship, a Human vessel called the USS AAGH, reached level 7 during a military victory in my first galaxy. A nice touch is that your ship is persistent, and you can take it from galaxy to galaxy, accruing loot and money along the way. My military victory netted me a reward chest that contained a collection of nice, rare loot including a laser that also improves future loot finding.
A minor quibble in this early going is that the galaxy at large tends to leave me behind. In that first game, I wasn’t out of my starting solar system by the time almost every other race was destroyed. I never met most of them and ‘race X was killed by monsters,’ doesn’t tell me allot about what happened. Fortunately there is the option to adjust the speed of the game for slower players like myself.
The action so far is fun and easy to control. One point to combat I really like is being able to shoot down missiles chasing you. Once I figured out that I could do that, my life expectancy shot way up. The basic combat isn’t very involved and mostly consists of swirling in circles around swarms of enemy ships, using your ship’s arsenal to bring them all down. I like that you can use stationary mines, as well as the gravity wells of planets and stars, to your strategic advantage.
So far Drox Operative: Invasion of the Ancients is looking good, and a full review is coming soon.
