Whether played with DLC or not, The Pit is one of the more solid roguelike titles on Steam, especially in a relatively flooded market. It is challenging but generally fair and allows the player a lot of choices in character development while providing a good atmosphere for dungeon delving. While its graphics and sound may not impress, The Pit's gameplay will keep players unafraid of long streaks of failure and ensure they come back to challenge it "just one more time."

While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Sword of the Stars: The Pit, there just isn't anything that is really mind-blowing. It is a well-polished roguelike that doesn't stray far from expectations, but instead stays in a rather comfortable zone from a game design perspective.

If you’re really into the roguelike genre, you’ll enjoy this game. I can’t claim to have been blown away by it, but there were certainly some very cool moments during my playthrough and as this game won’t set you back a huge amount on Steam anyway, if you’re craving some retro, sci-fi action, you could do worse than Sword of the Stars: The Pit.

While its RPG aspirations may be overshadowed by your need to constantly source the basics like ammo and health, The Pit--with its random elements and permadeath--is justified in its boast of replayability, even if it is only out of necessity. [May 2013, p.61]

Quotation forthcoming.

An interesting choice if you long for a proper challenge, and you don't mind there's no feast to your eyes. However, if rogue genre says nothing to you, take a different road. [Issue#232]

The latest entry in the Sword of the Stars series is a flawed dungeon-crawler, with uninspiring 16 bit style graphics and questionable game-design choices. Kerberos' challenge is not fair, even for the die hard fans of the genre: if you want to have some fun, play FTL: Faster Than Light instead.