Rebel Galaxy

This game has some of the greatest music that I've heard used it genuniley does make the game as good as it is. Without the music I probably wouldn't have started playing. But the music in combination with being a space pirate and the amazing visuals really makes the game great

I put off buying the game because the lack of a true 3-D universe in some reviews made me think the game was a platform shooter, but it went on sale and I bought it cheap just to see why some people liked it so much. In a word, it oozes a serious Firefly/Privateer/Sundog vibe. I love interacting with the NPCs, flying around with Fireflyesque country music in the background, and blasting space pirates to bits (when I'm not running away from one's about to blow me to bits). While your ship doesn't move in true 3D everything else does, so you get a pretty good 3D experience. Unlike most RPGs, your ship doesn't start out capable of overpower hordes of cellar rats. It's a capable ship, but you can run into ships that way outclass you early in the game, making you turn tail and run. So you have to pay attention, make money, and continously upgrade your ship. The only negative so far has beent he lack of documention. The interface takes some getting used to and the game will give you missions that require you to buy special upgrades for your ship (minig lasers...all around super weapon, who knew?) and buying your first upgraded ship isn't very obvious (seriously, I sold back the thing like 5 times before I went online to find out what was going on...lol).

Rebel Galaxy is a pretty good game , if you're looking for a Privateer/Freelamcer kinda experience it's worth a go. The soundtrack is solid, graphics decent. The action is satisfying enough for most of the game. Occasionally the "locked into 2d plane" can be annoying since NPC ships can sometimes fly above or below you in a way that makes them hard to target but overall isn't to huge a detraction. Where the game does suffer is that it stagnates a bit in the late game and lacks variety in areas like weapons. Afetr a while you will settle into a combat pattern where you will fire off your broadsides, blowing away the enemy and battles can feel pretty much the same from one to the next. Also really there are a small number of weapons, while you get upgrades that do a bit more damage in the end it kinda levels out so really just pick one of the categories and stick with it (like beams or one of the projectile weapons)

This game really captures the feel of being a Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds (in fact some people have used Star Wars or Firefly music for their custom soundtrack). If you follow the single-player campaign straight through, it won't take very long to get to the last mission. But the fun is in taking your time building up your favorite ship (I think Mark 6 is the highest you can go) and taking down pirates. I didn't play as a pirate myself but you could probably do that too and take down the "good guys". It's sort of like a dumbed down Elite or a slightly better version of Freelancer. I used the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack myself because you're basically a space cowboy sort of character. You're not flying a one-man fighter but a cruiser or corvette type ship with multiple weapons hardpoints. And the control scheme is intuitive once you learn it. It's probably one of the best implementations of space travel and combat that I've seen--though it's true that you're only able to move on a 2-dimensional plane. Surprisingly realistic alien linguistics add some spice to what gets to be repetitive bounty hunts. Still, I recommend it for anyone who feels like shooting down a fleet of starfighters in the middle of an asteroid field with a fully equippped dreadnought...

Only 2 stars, here's why... First off, there are many annoying aspects that come with playing what could be an excellent game. You are only able to operate on a horizontal plane, no moving up or down. Not a problem until you need to target something above or below you. This is especially annoying when mining asteroids and they are located well below your weapons ability to target them correctly. Second, the game offers you difficulty levels for missions, but those levels are often SEVERELY innacurate. You will think you are going into an easy fight and find yourself warping into a spot where you are immediately surrounded and blasted to dust. The game bases your difficulty on upgrades you apply to your ship, but not all upgrades are relevant to certain types of missions and can be quite misleading and frustrating since there is no open save. Third, NO OPEN SAVE! Saves are done automatically when you dock with a space station. So you are forced to go out of your way to dock with nearby space stations before heading towards a quest marker. If you forget and hit a mission mark after having jumped through 2 or 3 different systems and find yourself dead... well, you're going to have to warp through all of that space, initiate your jumps again and this can get very tedious. Worse, you make it to your location, dock at astation before heading to that nearby mission marker and find the encounter is MUCH more difficult than the "easy" rating the game claimed it would be. Now you spend 3 tries dying and end up deleting the mission in utter frustration. Escort missions are the worst in this regard as you will face so many enemies that in many cases no matter how vigilant you are, the squishy guy you are escorting is going to get mobbed and explode. The game does look good and the comabt was fun for me when it didn't feel like the Kobiashi Maru. Unfortunately, many times it felt JUST like that. Overall, a fun game with a few glaring flaws that waste your time.