Rebel Galaxy

You´re gonna like this game if you like "Cowboy Bebop" or "Firefly". There is also a second game. Rebel galaxy outlaw which is even better and with mod support.

The simplicity of spaceflight in this game is simple, yet frustrating. Not being able to fly fully on the x/y axis and not being able to maneuver in any other ways. Its a double edged sword on that though so if you want functional yet simplictic, this is 4 you. But if you're looking more for flight sim ... this would be a no. The storyline making this into a sort of "space western" with the music and dialoge was a nice feel. I do recommend that the devs make a flight sim version 4 the fighter junkies

I was really enjoying this game until it crashed and all my save games disappeared. I don't much feel like starting again right now. However, I put a couple dozen hours in at least and it is a fun blend of all the good bits of Privateer, Freelancer, and even Space Trader, the old Palm Pilot game I used to play on work trips. It's locked on to a two-dimensional plane for flight and combat, so you can't fly as fancy as in other similar games, but this has allowed them to make the combat more fun. But combat does get boring aftter a while, when it boils down to seeing whose shields will hold out longer while you spam your most powerful attacks at capital ships. You can avoid this by picking more interesting missions. Things that would make it amazing would be better save game management and better faction management and options (e.g. in similar games you could pay someone in a bar to boost your rank with different factions, if you didn't want to grind missions to gain rep for days and days. And better management of how you detect and pick up cargo would be nice, right now it's tedious to scour the battlefield after every fight to see if someone dropped something better than soy paste. It's a lot of fun, but the save games disappearing means I'll put this on the shelf for a while. Play at your own risk.

I think this game got some unfair reviews recently, so here's a different perspective. Since 2003, I'd been looking for the next Freelancer (sadly still unavailable on GOG as of Sept. 2019) and I found it with Rebel Galaxy. As the title says, it's the perfect marriage of Freelancer and Sid Meier's Pirates! Like Freelancer, you play a space drifter who takes on a job to make a quick buck and then ends up in a situation way, WAY over his/her head. Like Pirates!, you start out with a tiny ship and progress to bigger, heavier, and better armed ships--and all combat is via broadsides. You've heard that right. This isn't a dogfighting simulation like Freelancer, Freespace, or X-Wing. Your ship and all other ships bigger than a corvette move on a 2D plane, whereas small fighters and gunships can move up and down a bit but you can't pilot them. Don't worry, you get used to it quickly. And like both games, you can make money by trading, mining/treasure hunting (in junk fields!), piracy, and doing missions for various factions. There is a story to follow but you can completely ignore it if if you want and just keep earning more money so you can buy bigger ships and weapons. The best part of the game in my opinion is the space western atmosphere. This ain't no space opera--there are no shiny futuristic cities, sleek cruisers, and paragons of virtue here. All ships and space stations look like rusty, hulky 18-wheelers and pickup trucks of the future, all characters are a bit seedy (you can even bribe the space cops while you're smuggling contraband!), and danger lurks everywhere. As other reviewers mentioned, the simply excellent outlaw blues/country soundtrack adds a whole other dimension to the game. Yes, OK, the story is nothing to write home about, the aliens and characters are well done, but not mind blowing, and the missions are a bit repetitive. But hey, I think you won't mind any of that when you're blasting fools to Blues Saraceno's "Bad Man". A great indie gem!!

Taken at surface value, Rebel Galaxy should be excellent: A space shooter based around Assassin's-Creed-like ship combat and light trading mechanics. However, the limitations of the game's indie background become apparent early on; outside of the decent-but-bare-bones story, the gameplay flow is procedurally-generated, giving the game a generic vibe even before finishing the campaign. Don't get me wrong, it plays fantastically, I just wish there was more to the game world.