Rebel Galaxy

Rebel Galaxy is not terribly deep, and this is not merely a pun on its navigation. You won't find the likes of X3's intricacies, or Freespace 2's excellent plot, or 3D flight at all, but what is there I would describe as a fun Han Solo or Firefly simulator in partial 3D with a distinctive Southern US twang. Dropping you into a distinctly rusty end of space, the relatively thin plot is a convenient excuse for you to make a great deal of money and convert that into better equipment, larger ships, and more pretty explosions. The combat is satisfying if not sophisticated, and not since Freespace 2 have I had as much fun with beam lasers and cannon fire glittering inbetween the stars. Each outpost within each system is its own little political microcosm which produces and imports certain goods, but can vary due to being at war, or in famine, or in a tech boom etc. You can gain reputation with factions around the systems by doing missions for them, or just interfering as you see fit. Respond to a distress call, help out a trader under attack, and Citizenry will gain some reputation and the trader will give you some money. You can trade with that trader directly or you can go the route of the pirate, demand they hand over their cargo, or destroy a relief ship on the way to a famine-stricken world and thereby inflate food prices higher. The choice is yours & as a playground, Rebel Galaxy is quite interesting if a little static for those looking for true sandboxes. Great if shallow fun for a few days. Some finishing tips: Hull and equipment in it are unlinked; you can finish the game in a corvette or a dreadnaught; just a matter of how much firepower you have in turrets vs speed. Missions are where the money and rep is; just beware escort and protect missions that might intersect unfortunately with the game universe's varying behaviour. Get Rank 8 with Merchants Guild to get EMP ablation. If you hate the music, you can hook custom soundtracks (but I loved the themes).

video review: https://ugetube.com/watch/rebel-galaxy-one-minute-game-review_PMgzSvlYfE2C2i9.html great soundtrack (in the Rebel Galaxy\music folder), but at the start of the game you're pretty weak compared to everyone else in the game. Do simple missions, mining, and avoid combat to start. Reminds me of Tradewars from the BBS days. We loved it so much my kids bought it onsale to use on their computer too.

Picked it up on sale and definitely worth a try. Scratches that space trucker / naval combat itch pretty good. A lot less tedious to get into than Elite Dangerous, but missing that sense of scale. It's better than it's sequel Rebel Galaxy Outlaw in my opinion, which is just a different kind of game rather than an improvement on this one's formula.

Saw it on sale here - surpassed my expectations! Think of it as a mix between Pirates and Starlancer/Freelancer (but playing with large ships!) Good points: Addictive gameplay - I find myself playing 'just one more mission' - bounty rewards and progression are well-paced. Ship upgrades are meaningful and 'just' the right price - you work hard for them but it feels so satisfying to go back to previously challenging areas and breeze through the enemies. Open world gameplay - you can ignore the main storyline. If you find a sudden difficulty spike too challenging there are always easier side quests to do to lvl up. They have a very handy and intuitive 'threat level' indicator which tells you if you are too underpowered for an area. Combat strategy is deep and satisfying. Unlike some other space-sims which are very 'twitchy' and require joystick to play, you don't need to be quick for this one. Instead with slower moving capital ships, you quickly learn the importance of positioning and timing when to attack and when to shield up. You can customise behaviour of weapon turrets for more strategic depth. Decent voice acting - all the NPC spoken lines are voice-acted. HUGE world map - there are 10+ star systems in the sector map, and its been taking me 5hours+ to level up enough to feel comfortable in the next more difficult system. Bad points: Gameplay does get repetitive and 'grindy' after a while. All locations look similar. Original soundtrack is not to my taste and got annoying quickly. (Thankfully there's a handy custom music function which allows you to import your own mp3/ogg files - it's even classified into ambient/combat/idle etc sections so the music is context-dependent. I managed to enjoy the game so much more after replacing the soundtrack with something more orchestral and epic - try looking for soundtracks from RPGs - music from 'Spellforce' surprisingly works well despite the different genre, other ideas would be music from Freespace 1 or 2.)

Pros: - Departs from the standard sci-fi feel of spacey music to give you something more rustic that really sells the more dirty, Firefly-like, piratey setting - The concept of naval style combat is a pleasant diversion from the more forward firing fighter style combat that's prevalent in the genre - Voice acting is good and covers pretty much all interactions - Ship designs are nice and diverse Cons: - The story is just lame. It does little more than sending you to a few different systems and blow something up. There are incredibly few stages to the whole story and each part feels really insubstantial. - Broadsides end up not being all that important. Every ship comes with turrets as well and even though they are only firing at half power when you are manning the broadsides, they still tend to outperform the broadsides in DPS. Granted the broadsides do pack a punch and you absolutely need them for any of the tougher enemies but it dilutes the combat style. - Combat difficulty spikes around halfway through and then plummets as you reach the biggest ships. - The progression from to more powerful ships and (more importantly) equipment is a very slow grind because you'll always be stuck doing "mild" or "very mild" missions until you're basically done with the game. This drags out the playtime beyond pleasant levels - The upgrades you get from the main quest are laughably inconsequential. When starting out I expected an artefact hunt and upgrade tree like in Dark Star One but you only get a handful of meh improvements. - The world is significantly smaller than Freelancer or Dark Star One. I a weird way this game feels too long and not long enough at the same time. There's fun to be had especially thanks to the superb battle music. But it doesn't reach the greatness of more iconic spaceship shooters.