Rebel Galaxy

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.

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.

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.

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!

In short Rebel Galaxy is essentially Privateer or Freelancer with a capital ship with movement restrictions in the 2D plane. Visually it looks like a well polished AAA game and really plays nice with a controller from the couch. The soundseffects are generally great too and as for the music it has some licensed modern country rock songs and while a good soundtrack overall the lack of different songs made me turn it off after a couple of hours. Double Damage did a good job designing the spacecraft, at least the larger ships look interesting as I never got a good look of the smaller fighter sized craft. Visiting space stations is very reminiscent of Privateer. It has all the amenities as ship and part dealers, commodities, bar, mission board, etc. It's lacking in the variety department though, it has a couple of dozen solar systems but there is nothing to differentiate between any of them, they look and play all the same. As for things to do, you have the main story line, which is not only very short, lengthened by the fact you need better equipment every time you progress, the story is also a bit generic, it's not bad but let's just say it won't win any prizes for it. Other than that the only thing you can do is the missions on the mission board. That's because trading isn't really an option, as these huge ships you fly have tiny cargo holds and space stations don't have a lot in stock. The other option is piracy but that just swaps fighting militia for pirates instead. And that is a bit of the crux with Rebel Galaxy that it is a bit too streamlined, there is no crew management, no real variety of locations, people and factions that matter and lacks any depth of tactical game play like carrying fighter aircraft for example. Still, I had a good time playing it for the first couple of hours, after that boredom crept up.