Rogue Company is one of the most unique titles released by Hi-Rez in the past decade and one of the few not to closely resemble another title on the market.
However, if that uniqueness is enough to ensure its survival in the highly competitive casual-competitive market, it remains to be seen.
PvP Multiplayer.
Rogue Company has good graphics for a late 8th-generation title. However, graphical fidelity has never been the focus of Rogue Company nor the secret to its success.
Rogue Company is a title that relies on stable fps that pushes a console to its limit, and to that effect, First Watch Games have ensured that players, regardless of hardware, can enjoy an optimal gameplay experience; the trade-off for this, however, is varying degrees of visual fidelity.
Rogue Company offers a wide array of racially and nationally diverse characters, with each of the 26 Rogues playing differently and bringing unique passive and active abilities to each match; from long-range detection abilities to devastating melee attacks, each Rogue looks fantastic and feels great to play.
One aspect of character design that First Watch Games nailed is how they handled female and non-white characters; developers often resort to stereotypes when creating playable characters that are frankly anything other than white American males.
First Watch Games has not only avoided this potential pitfall, but they have also done so with style, creating some of the most visually stunning and interesting playable characters I have ever seen.
Female characters can be attractive without being relegated to eye candy. Traditional femininity is challenged by including characters not defined by their body type or manner of dress.
Sigrid is a perfect example of this design philosophy; while an incredibly attractive Rogue, she does not conform to the traditional “hourglass figure” that neckbeards demand of all female characters. Sigrid is a strong offensive Rogue who excels at rushing the enemy, and her well-muscled physique is no more or less feminine than the black widow-esque Phantom or the sensual Ronin.
Non-white characters have seen similar subtly and excellence with Rogues such as Lancer and Fixer, representing black culture without resorting to stereotypes and the Indian rogue Kestrel, who captures India’s charm and beauty without dressing like a cultural museum exhibit.
Even well-meaning developers fall prey to the stereotype of dressing every Asian character in a kimono or straw hat; while it’s not intentional racism, it’s culturally insensitive to assume every non-white character wears their country’s iconic national dress every day of the year.
Rogue Company plays like a mix of Rainbow Siege 6 and The Division 2, emphasising cover-based combat; players must think outside the box as they take advantage of each map’s flanking routes.
Combat in Rogue Company is highly mobile, utilising zip lines and more than enough combat rolls to please even the most diehard fan of 1980s action movies.
A wide selection of weapons, gadgets and passive abilities ensure each playstyle is catered to, from long-range gun battles to brutal melee assassinations.
The wide range of abilities, gadgets, weapons and passives during every match ensure that each match’s minute-to-minute gameplay is a rewarding, nail-biting experience, win or lose.
Rogue Company is free-to-play with mostly cosmetic microtransactions.
Similarly to Rainbow Siege 6, all Rogues (playable characters) can be unlocked by spending reputation earned by playing matches or purchasing directly with premium currency.
While players with money to spare will unlock Rogues far quicker than their free-2-play compatriots, there is a realistic way for free-2-play players to bolster their roster. Rogues purchased with a premium currency are no more or less powerful than their freely earned counterparts.
Like most free-to-play games in 2023, Rogue Company offers a battle pass and cosmetic store, allowing players to customise their Rogue’s appearance and weapon skins in various ways; unlike most free-2-play titles in 2023, Rogue Company began selling lootboxes (supply drops) in 2022, something which is frankly baffling when you consider that most publishers began removing lootboxes from their titles in response to public outcry and government regulation.
Games are supposed to be fun, and Rogue Company is a lot of fun; I find myself thinking about playing it while at work or watching TV; it’s one of the few titles I would play instead of Fortnite when I am in the mode for some casual-competitive fun.
I am a huge fan of Rainbow Siege 6, but it can get very serious at times; Rogue Company, however, captures the essence and tactical diversity of Rainbow Siege 6 and combines it with the carefree “win, lose or die” trying ethos of unranked Fortnite.
Rogue Company is not a game for young children due to its more realistic approach to violence or combat. Still, teens and young adults will enjoy its fast-paced tactical combat and diverse array of playable Rogues (operators).
While it’s not unheard of for developers to stop updating live service titles on last-gen hardware, it’s uncommon for titles to stop supporting a current-gen platform while its successor has yet to be officially revealed.
While everyone knows Nintendo is bound to announce a new console shortly, with some insiders believing that we will have a glimpse at the next-gen of Nintendo hardware before the end of the summer, the developer’s decision to sunset Rogue Company on the Nintendo Switch in June 2023 (source) is a curious one, when you take into consideration that Nintendo’s next console is likely to be some variation of a switch. While the Nintendo Switch is the weakest of the three 9th-generation consoles, it is very much a 9th-generation console, and prematurely dropping support for it will leave a bad taste in the mouths of many Nintendo fans.
As of April 2023, the developers seem unwilling to commit to a full-length battle pass in 2023, with smaller (and cheaper) 35-level event passes filling in as a replacement while Rogue Company undergoes a massive overhaul of almost every aspect of the game following a lacklustre response to its full release in May 2022.
While this effort is to be applauded, it could prove to be too little, too late if the developers do not keep the remaining community engaged long enough for Rogue Company to see the revival it deserves, as despite its flaws, it remains one of the best free-2-play tactical shooters on the market, and one I would like to see remain relevant for the duration of the 9th console generation.
Rogue Company is a shooter video game developed and published by Evil Mojo, it was released on 20 July 2020 and it is Free-2-Play.
Rogue Company is available on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
In June 2023, Hi-Rez Studios announced that it would be rebranding itself as Hi-Rez Ventures and part of this restricting involved the First Watch Games (Rogue Company) & Red Beard Games (Divine Knockout) ceasing to exist as separate studios, with the former becoming part of Evil Mojo (Paladins & Realm Royale) and the latter becoming part of TitanForge (Smite).
As part of this restructuring, Evil Mojo assumes all development and publishing responsibilities for Rogue Company, while Titanforge assumes all development and publishing responsibilities for Divine Knockout.
While consolidation can be a good thing, it seems that Rogue Company will not be a priority for Evil Mojo, who stated in their welcome to the community that they were a small team and that while Rogue Company would occasionally receive updates, for the most part, it will remain as it is right now, and that future updates would focus on bug fixes and quality of life improvement.
While they did not outright say that Rogue Company would never receive new content (and it may do so in future), it’s clear that Rogue Company is on the back burner, at least for right now.
Rogue Company is far from dead; however, the matchmaking servers frequently overload at peak times, resulting in some players being caught in an infinite queue, giving the appearance of low activity; However, exiting the queue and rejoining it will quickly match them with other players.
When matchmaking servers perform correctly, matches can be found for most unranked modes in less than 30 seconds at any time of day, with near-instant matchmaking at regional peak times.
Rogue Company is fairly active due to its 20 million plus registered players and robust cross-play support, and as a result, can offer near-instant matchmaking during peak hours and wait time of 30 seconds or less during off-peak times; these numbers are made even more impressive when you consider Rogue Company utilises skill-based matchmaking; which intrinsically causes longer matchmaking times.
Perhaps quite unintentionally, Rogue Company has not only become a competitor to Rainbow Siege 6, a serious player in the casual-competitive market, but also holds its own against the likes of Overwatch, Fortnite, Apex Legends, League of Legends, and Call of Duty Warzone.
Rogue Company supports:
Rogue Company offers the following matchmaking options:
The Rogue Company in-game store sells:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Rogue Company is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
After a strong start to 2023, I had hopes that Rogue Company would never again have a year as bad as 2022, however with First Watch Games ceasing to exist and the already overturned Evil Mojo assuming all development and publishing responsibilities, I cannot help but question the wisdom of spending too much time and money on Rogue Company, when its best days are now firmly in the past.
