Posted on: July 10, 2016

Fafhred

Games: 324 Reviews: 8

Good but story too short

I just finished playing the story line (at version 1.08); I have a number of comments: - Saving options misleading and inconsistent: The Main menu (outside a game) has a so called 'Manage saves' options. This is a misnomer, the only thing it allows you is to delete an existing game: 1 game, 1 save, no manual saving at any time. The information messages appearing now and then tell you incorrectly that it saves automatically when you dock any station, but actually it does when you dock, leave a station, or exit the game at any other point by its own exit option. Due to the above I exited my first game in a no-win situation, with the intention to reload from the last station, to find out that I could only reload from the same point; I ended up deleting this game and starting a fresh one. The ONLY option in such situation is to deliberately get your ship destroyed WITHOUT exiting, at which point you do resume from the last station you docked at. - Escort missions are buggy: They require you to go into 'Paired warp' mode, where you get no control; if you accidentally break the paired warp mode for any reason, the mission fails. I have seen the paired warp mode broken by the game itself a few times, for instance when one of the ships is forcibly dropped out of warp but not the other; I found that this can happen either way, and will frequntly occur when the escorted ship starts or get through an asteroid field or one of the many disturbance areas. In one case, my ship was in paired warp mode, still stuck in an asteroid field and unable to find its way out (kept hitting asteroids due to some bad pathfinding) while the other ship was already out of it and making tracks without mine. The escorted ship will sometimes drop out of warp to turn 90 degrees and go attacking a group of hostiles it did not need to (seen once in the story escort). - The story line is disappointingly short: It has few stages, each only need you to get enough combined defences and firepower to survive it; one of the last stages is an Escort mission mentionned above, which starts at random location on a certain map (I had to retry it several times in a row, until one attempt started in free space and had only 1 interruption without any other ship in sight). Once the story ended (you get a dialog with your aunt), you end up in a free mode with just the random base missions; I finished the story itself with just the bigger trade ship (Heavy class), only moved after that to the biggest ones (Very Heavy). - The game is replayable: I will replay it at some point in the future, using a different ship then the one I used this time; surviavl strategy depends a lot on the ship itself and its equipment. You start the game being hostile to various faction, but in theory you could take carefully chosen mercenary missions to fix those status; I might try that soon anyway as it will require a lot more patience than the standard mode. - The team is apparently still working on the game: There was an update through GOG a few days ago, but I found no information regarding the content of that update. In theory, a new story plot could be added (starting some after the first one); I have however no information concerning the team's intentions on that regard.

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Posted on: August 4, 2016

ostrowulf

Verified owner

Games: 41 Reviews: 1

Well worth the money.

Just finished the main story line. Going to continue playing the sandbox of it for a while yet I figure. Great sound track, as almost everyone seems to say, which is actually a disappointment, as I was hoping there would be a soundtrack download with this. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers, and the price of the game is by far low enough to justify not having that. Controls are easy, I did not use the tutorial, which likely added to my learning curve a little, but it was still pretty quick. While it is quite enjoyable and pretty immersive, it is not too serious of a game. I would almost put it as a third person shooter meets Gratuitous Space battles with a bit of RPG lite. I still have a few types of ships to play with (namely the really big ones) but so far the ships have mostly been fun, and you have a lot of options with how to run them, and how to play the game. I went straight up gun for hire, while my brother in law is going complete merchant. The trade system is some what similar to Mount and Blade style, with some illegal stuff in it, you actually can get in a little trouble for having them, but can make a mint on the smuggling market (not like Skyrim where skooma is supposedly some big bad drug, that no one cares if you have). Also the markets have things happen like celebrations, market gluts, and trade embargoes (which you can run the blockade while being shot at) which change prices dramatically. Pretty much the only game I have seen where I care to check the news now and again, and it is not all about your adventures. If you want to be outside the law, but smuggling is not your thing, you can be a pirate, and do missions for one of the pirate factions. Most of the downs sides are that it could do with more depth (characters, factions, etc). I would like it if stations actually changed hands, as they will come under siege, and there are wars. But then after some ships get blown up, everyone just goes home. I think a bit of Mount and Blade style border changes would add a lot. However, as a light fun game that just took up WAY too many of my hours lately, it is well worth the money.

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Posted on: November 3, 2016

ZwaanME

Games: 792 Reviews: 6

For a first game, it's pretty good

Rebel Galaxy is the first game of a small developer made up of industry veterans. And it shows, graphics are impressive, controls are smooth and the basic game play is exciting. I've put 60 hours into this over the course of two weeks. I've spent many a late night upgrading and doing missions. The game plays like a cross between Wing Commander: Privateer and the ship portions of Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. Some areas of the game could use improving. Trade is mostly useless, while I did earn money by selling cargo I had picked up during combat, it's nearly impossible to consistently get high prices for your goods. Prices are dynamic and will change while you travel to your destination. So a merchant that previously gave you top dollar for a certain item will pay sub standard prices the next time. So just check whomever will pay the highest amount, right? Sure, you can do that, but chances are that by the time you reach that merchant, he's no longer interested in your wares or is suddenly paying only half of what he was willing to pay when you went on your way towards him. Luckily there are plenty of missions to perform that will pay plenty of money. The other let down is that once you've fully upgraded your ship (probably after finishing the story) you won't find anything worthwhile to do. There are achievements for getting certain popularity ratings with the different fractions, but it takes a lot of time to change these once they're maxed out. There is no way of setting up trade routes (not that it would work, see my first remark), you can't take over or build bases and you can't hire freighters (only a single fighter pilot). There isn't even a captains quarters that you can decorate by buying items with your hard earned cash. So once you've fully upgraded your ship there basically nothing left to do. I was hoping for some DLC that would add some additional challenge or reason to keep playing but that hasn't happened unfortunately.

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Posted on: November 10, 2017

berliad

Verified owner

Games: 22 Reviews: 1

Fantastic little Privateer-style game

I picked up Rebel Galaxy by Double Damage games on a whim when it appeared in a GOG sale. I hadn't heard much about it, but I've long been a fan of the Wing Commander: Privateer and Freelancer games. I love open sandbox "worlds" with space combat, trading, and more. Rebel Galaxy promised to provide that kind of experience, with the added bonus of flying around in capital ships! For the most part, it really delivers. The capital ships you fly are large, imposing hulks of metal that turn slowly and but are loaded with weaponry, shields, and armor. They are just maneuverable enough to make combat interesting; you never feel like you're flying about in a nimble fighter, but you have to pay attention to your positioning in combat. While most ships have a nice assortment of highly-effective turrets that can be levied against both fighters and capital ships (these were almost always set to auto-fire when I played), you also have an array of broadside cannons along each flank (think pirate ships!). Combat becomes a matter of maneuvering to keep your broadside pointed at a consistent flank of the enemy ships so you can whittle down his shields, while simultaneously avoiding his broadside cannons--not to mention the other half-dozen capital ships nearby, along with a dozen fighters all buzzing about. When the heat gets too intense, you can engage an extra layer of deflector shield, and use "afterburner"-style engines to boost out of the thick of trouble. Of course, your opponents have access to similar engines, and often will follow in pursuit. Combat effects--light, sound, etc--all just felt right. As the game progresses, I found myself immersed in epic battles between fleets of craft. I felt like I was in the battle of Endor at times, and that's the mark of a good space combat game, in my view. Combat is most of the game. There is an enjoyable trading economy, with a variety of commodities that could be bought and sold for significant profit throughout most of the game. You spend a lot of time doing a variety of missions. Some of these are simple bounty or courier missions, while others are more interesting: escort, blow up the base, recover a stolen artifact from a ship, etc. These were randomly generated, but it worked well. Like most space games like this, the chronic lawlessness of the systems is staggering--how on early can those pirates afford dreadnaught-class ships anyway? Ah, who cares, it's fun to blow them up. There is a short story campaign to play through as well. While short, it's interesting enough, and the writing and voice acting is solid and sometimes excellent. I finished it before progressing into any of the really big ships, but I'm not far off, and I might play a bit longer with the randomized missions and bounties. Also, I should say a word about the soundtrack. Rather then the generic classical symphony we usually get in space games, they opted to take a big risk and went with a kind of garage band meets southern rock sound. As strange as it sounds, it really works, as the game tries to paint the setting as a sort of wild west in space. I found myself humming many of the games' tunes during the day, and sometimes would pull up the game just because I started thinking about the muscle. Overall, this was easily worth its current $20 price tag. I put a good month into it, and I want more. If they posted a DLC story expansion, I'd grab it in a heartbeat. It sounds like the company is instead developing new games. If they ever decide to do a Rebel Galaxy 2, I will jump at it.

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Posted on: February 9, 2020

Vhalun

Verified owner

Games: 518 Reviews: 11

Its a real gem!

I finally finished the campagin. If you are looking for a game which is a space shooter, where there is a little trading, and piracy (don't expect any deep stuff here) . It's a casual game by heart, than this is for you. What I really liked in this game is the music, it's fantastic really suits for the gameplay, and I find the ships designs quite cool too!

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