Rogue Company

Genre: Third-Person Shooter

Players: 8 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

(Note: This game is no longer available)

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Rogue Company is a Free-To-Play Third-Person Shooter released to multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch in 2020. This is a team-based online-focused game that combines elements of multiple games in the genre. From Counter-Strike, you have classic modes like bomb deployment/defusal with between-round weapon purchases. From Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch, you have an array of heroes to choose from with different skills, abilities, and weapons available to them. From Fortnite, you have a round that starts with your characters skydiving to a location. And from publisher Hi-Rez Studios, who brought us games like Paladins running at a smooth 60FPS on the Nintendo Switch, comes a track record that promises a similar level of quality here.

Does it achieve that goal? In a word, yes. The game does run at 30FPS during the beginning-of-match skydiving, which is perhaps understandable as a trade-off for rendering the entire map at once, and the game then transitions to 60FPS when you hit the ground, with a dynamic 900p in docked mode, dynamic 720p in portable mode (thanks as usual to Digital Foundry for the numbers). In practice, this makes for an exceptionally smooth experience on the Nintendo Switch, although I did notice a bit of pop-in in a few spots. Nothing major, though. Plus, this game does overall have a good look to it that gives it a lot of personality, with some fairly memorable characters, though nothing quite as memorable as Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch.

In terms of online performance, I never once had an issue with online connectivity or lag, and this game’s cross-play feature is seamless (I couldn’t tell you which players were on which platforms, but there was no shortage of players). The Nintendo Switch is of course not the ideal platform for online games like this, but the folks behind Rogue Company have done everything they can to ensure the Nintendo Switch’s online experience is solid.

So how is the actual gameplay, then? Well, that’s a bit tricky. Here’s the thing, the foundations this game uses are all solid. The gunplay is good, the characters are varied and interesting, the maps are well-crafted and give players a good amount of approach options without being too open, and all of the mechanics this game borrows are implemented well and work well together. The Nintendo Switch version even implements optional gyroscopic aiming for those who prefer it. This game has the potential to be an absolutely solid, if somewhat derivative, entry in the genre.

The problem is that as of launch, the amount of content here is pretty poor, with only three game modes, and only 14 heroes, with only 6 of those heroes available to free-to-play players. You can of course gradually unlock the others in-game, but the process for this is extraordinarily slow. You can likewise opt to buy the $30 Standard Founder’s Pack to unlock six of the remaining 8 heroes, but even if you do this, it’s not a very wide roster to choose from, especially if your favorites are among the starter characters, where odds are good you’ll be butting heads with teammates over who gets to play them.

The thing is, usually when I say “this game has potential”, it’s a statement of disappointment for what could have been, as the game will likely never see that potential. However, Hi-Rez Studio has an outstanding track record of supporting their games, and one of those fourteen characters is one they’ve already added while the game was in beta, and no doubt there will be more to follow, as well as hopefully more content in the rest of the game. And hopefully when they do, they’ll also open up some of the game’s other characters to be available to free players from the start to make the competition for starter characters less cutthroat.

As it is now, Rogue Company is a very good, albeit somewhat derivative, Third-Person Shooter, but one that’s somewhat lacking in content. It’s fun, but it definitely feels like it needs more. However, knowing where the game comes from, it likely will get more over time, and I’ll probably be coming back to review it again after some time has passed. In the meantime, you may still want to try it if you like online team-based shooters, but be aware that this is a game that’s still very early in its lifespan and likely needs more time to fully mature.

tl;dr – Rogue Company is a Free-to-Play online-focused team-based Third-Person Shooter that pulls elements from a lot of other team-based online games like Counter-Strike, Fortnite, and Overwatch. However, it integrates these elements well and the core gameplay here is excellent. What it currently lacks is content. Thankfully, there’s a pretty good likelihood it’ll be getting that content eventually, but for now, this is a game that’s a bit limited.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Microtransactions

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