Rebel Galaxy

First and foremost: this is an arcade game in spaace!, not a space sim. All large ship float on the plane of the solar system, and engages other ships, mostly, in broadside battles. This makes it a bit difficult to target strikecraft zipping above and below with your main guns, but not overly annoying. The gameplay is fun, reactive and rewarding. I always felt that my actions had consequences, that my guns did something in a battle, and that my tactics helped or doomed me. For instance, you can choose artillery-style main guns and pick off enemies from a distance. Mount them on a fast ship, and you can divide your enemies and destroy them individually. Ships and upgrades feel different and powerful: you can actually switch from broadside-based fighting to a turret-based style with the help of different ships. Holding the vulnerable back of slow enemies and using mining lasers and ion cannon turrets to blow up the reactor makes me feel smrt! and all tactical like. Due to how fun battles are, collecting money for ships and upgrades doesn't feel like a grind, but like a reward in itself. Add to it a great soundtrack (and the option to add your own music), which starts and stops at appropriately atmospheric moments, this game is a continuous bundle of joy.

Everything about this game is great -- combat, navigation, trading, exploration, factions, graphics, music are all excellent and make this game worth buying. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying this game. Unfortunately, by the time you hit the third or forth system, the game starts to become a grind if you spend too much time taking missions, mining, and/or trading. You'll probably already have the best ship fairly early on, and though there are better weapons and systems to buy as the game progresses, they're just better versions of weapons and systems you probably already have. I'd recommend trying to focus more on completing story quests rather trying to amass credits and exploring every sector of each system, and hopefully you'll be able to finish the game before it starts to feel repetitive.

This is my first review - and I write it, so that others don't make the same mistake like me. The game looks nice, the soundtrack is awesome, personally I'm always happy when I can play with starships. However, you can only move your ship in the horizontal plane. Basicly, you turn left or right, and you do this a lot because your starship is designed like a friggin sailing ship from Nelson: the cannons are on both sides... Yes, really, you have to exchange broadsides. This could be still fun, if you could aim. Alas, you can't. This is done automaticly. So, yes, basicly, you only fly left and right. :( Buy only if you like to make money as a merchant.

TLDR - More of a 3.5 than 4. This is a simplified space sim, the kind of game to ease people into the genre. Great music, little depth ------ I don't remember when I bought it, but I know I must've paid around 17 BRL (~4 USD). After sitting on my list for ages, I've finally gave this game a shot. * I cannot stress how GOOD the soundtrack is - Western Rock through and through; * Navigation is 2D. You can't go "up" or "down", only enemy fighters do that; * Combat is "naval", it's just about turning your ship around to get broadside shots and distributing damage to your shields. Turrets auto fire while in broadside; * Cargo space is super limited, as are commodities for sale - at least judging from the ships available in the first sector, max cargo space you'll have is 47; * Commodities' prices fluctuate, as several events might happen in the system, some of which you can interfere, like a war between 2 stations. I like this, as it makes the universe feel alive. Also, days pass while you're flying, though there doesn't seem to be any way to keep track of that; * Most missions are "go there, kill pirates" with a different reason to do so; * Default keybinds make little sense. "E" is a key that does almost everything: increase engine power, activate warp drive, grab cargo, receive incoming calls. Why? The game was probably made with the PS4 in mind first, but even there it'd be horrible to press "X" to do all those things * UI in general leaves a lot to be desired. There's no speedometer while flying. Can't go to options from inside a space station, you have to exit it to open the menu. The only way to see your standing with the local factions is by opening the command wheel while in flight I'm 6 hours in and haven't jumped out of the first system yet, so I can't really comment on the story.

For me this game is a dream come true - playing a space game with this Firefly feel to it. Even if that game would have been bad I would have bought it for the incredibly good soundtrack. For the price of € 6.69 on the current sale it's a steal and a must buy.