Rebel Galaxy is a sandbox space adventure where the main gameplay loop is to complete missions, earn credits, upgrade your ship and repeat. Fights are generally enjoyable and have a decent level of tactics to learn and utilize. This is the heart of the game and it does it well. The game takes place on a 2D plane so it is more akin to the old seadogs games in terms of ship combat. It emphasizes utilizing broadsides to be effective and, while it feels like an old colonial naval system, it adds enough weapons and gadgets to give it some flair. The music is very well done and the game leans into it heavily to set the tone. The game itself is a very much a bluesy space-western making you feel like you are by yourself in a cruel galaxy where anything can go wrong. The story is decent but lacking and predictable. Most of the characters have little to no development and simply act as placeholders to usher the player from mission to mission. There is a bit of choice involved inside of the dialogue. Ultimately, this is just flavor and while it can have a limited affect on gameplay, it doesn't seem to change the story much. In terms of complaints, I have a few. On the technical side, the game suffered several crashes which were solved through validating files. Not a big deal, but I had to do this 4 times throughout my playtime. Exploration and gameplay can get dull after a while. You quickly discover that you run into the same encounters pretty regularly. The warp system can get annoying with all the constant stops as you are trying to run missions. The enemy curve is confusing at times. The game often can't decide if enemies level based on system, or your ship. Endgame upgrades have little payoff. You spend millions of credits to finally have a big ship just to realize there is nothing left to do in the game but run side missions with no purpose. Overall it is a solid title 3.5/5. It would have been cool to include a new game+ or hard mode.
