Drox Operative: Invasion of the Ancients mini-review

by Dr_Worm on Nov 30th, 2013

Rare Gamer regulars might remember a game I reviewed last year called Drox Operative. For those who don’t want to click this link, it’s a mix of Diablo-style action RPG with strategy elements mixed in, wrapped in a space theme. I liked it for what it was, but I felt like it was a bit too niche, however if Drox happens to fit your niche you’ll probably enjoy it very much. A new expansion had been released a few weeks ago, and while it doesn’t fulfil my fantasy spaceship dream game, I didn’t expect it to. Instead, Invasion of the Ancients does what every expansion pack should do: expand on the content of the original.

Now, I haven’t played Drox Operative since I reviewed it back then – my interests in games shift all the time so I just don’t tend to stick to one game or genre for very long. Since the time between then and the expansion’s release, there have been multiple patches since then, so I don’t know for sure whether some these differences are due to the expansion or from patches.

For starters, I wasn’t bombarded by communications this time around, especially towards the beginning. That’s an immediate improvement to a problem that I surprisingly didn’t bring up in my original review (whoops). Previously, even towards the start of the game you would get flooded with communications from other races, sometimes salutations, sometimes death threats, often regarding your status with other races that they don’t like. Since then, this emphasis on communication seems to have been reduced, which puts more emphasis on actually flying around, exploring, and combat.

The game also just feels more refined overall. There’s music during combat that I don’t remember before, there are some new options I don’t remember (like number of races and sector shapes per scenario), and item drops seem to be more plentiful. It also feels like the controls were touched up a bit.

As for what I know the expansion pack includes, the new content adds to the game without making it a different experience or overdoing it. The title of the expansion comes from a new feature where ancient races from the universe’s long past occasionally return to just wreck everything. These occurences don’t happen very often, and it can sometimes be problematic when they affect races you’re in good relations with, but it does add another layer to the mostly free-range gameplay.

The new race, the Scavenger, focuses on bonuses from kills and increased drop rates. There are new quest archetypes like attacking defensive space stations, new non-racial pirate enemies to fight, and my favorite addition, socketable components, with the sockets being computer chips. Also, the Drox guild now gives you quests directly from time to time, giving you quests to do that aren’t race-specific. Like the ancient invasions, they can cause issues race relations, but only if you choose to go through with those missions.

Unfortunately, one thing that should have been improved that wasn’t is the multiplayer connectivity, in fact I think it might be identical. I still had problems connecting online, and still couldn’t find the game’s master server. There’s still a LAN option, but it’s not easy to play this game online, and naturally the more people playing the more problematic it becomes.

Overall, Invasion of the Ancients does exactly what I expect from an expansion pack… expansion. It just straight-up adds new content to the game, so even though it’s not groundbreaking, it’s not gamebreaking, and that’s what’s important. As a personal rule, I don’t give scores to expansions or DLC, but I can easily recommend it to people who own and/or enjoyed Drox Operative. It’s also reasonably priced to boot, at $10. Obviously, if you didn’t like Drox Operative, then this expansion pack probably won’t change your mind.

Check out the game here, the expansion here, and the free demo here.

Categories: Reviews