Having reached the end, I think I'm ready to review.
Graphics, sound, controls, all excellent. Two dimensional ship control while fighters have three, is frustrating. However, combat is designed for broadside old warship style stuff, which is made much easier by keeping it 2D. Combat can be easy or infuriatingly difficult. It seems there are very few in-between battles. Controls for telling escorts to withdraw would've been a nice addition.
The story; good, but lacking. The main story arc ends up leaving you feeling a little Mass Effect 3. Not sure I even want to play through again. Side story arcs would help in the replayability.
Yes, it's fun. And some of the dialouge is ripped right out of 'Privateer'. BUT, you're stuck on a horizontal plane (which feels so very wrong in a space game) and while upgrading your your ship seems cool, it becomes 'same old same old' after a bit, then you end up with the ultimate destroyer (nothing wrong there) so you trade it in for a lesser ship for some challenge only to find some missions are out of reach. Story, while o.k., is not terribly engaging and pitters out quickly and is easily concluded...leaving you a listless captain playing with the faction and trading systems. Music and sound are top notch, despite repetition they don't become boring. Comparisons to Privateer and Freelancer are expected- but Rebel Galaxy is not those titles. Not even close. Grab yourself a copy to have a decent amount of fun from time to time, not to be immersed in a great story and you'll be satisfied.
I really love this game, but!!
The other reviews in here, are great. So i won´t waste your time on a long one.
But i would like to add, that this game is really, really hard to enjoy without a controller.
The game is plagued by negative mouse acceleration , and forces your mouse look to a crawl, when moving fast. (for example flicking your wrist)
There has been a half attempt to fix this, but has not really worked.
No other fix has been made or talked about since 2015.
Rebel Galaxy is a decent space game. Sadly, only decent. This is a great game in terms of atmosphere, they really nailed a sort of "Firefly"-esque Space Cowboy Opera style. The music is perfect and responsible for some of the best moments of the game. The ship designs are great, which makes it a shame that you can only fly about a fifth of all the ships in the game (2 Factions are completely unavailable and no small fighter craft and a couple of others). The horizontal nature of the game, alongside the "broadside"-style combat takes some getting used to, but is ultimately very similar to things Freelancer did.
Freelancer seems to be an inspiration for this game in many ways. Sadly, this game falls short of the comparison. First comparison: the story is interesting with a couple (2-3, really) really nice characters, but ultimately very short. Second comparison: the game seems to have a market and some trade routes, but actually is wayy to random (random events are more important than station types) and missions are way more valuable. In Freelancer the right trading made you very quickly very rich. Here, it's a slog and only really rewarding in the beginning of the game. When you can get 1 million credits with a mission in later systems, why bother trading for peanuts? Third comparison: Exploration. As this game features randomly generated star systems (I wasn't aware when I got this game), there is no real exploration. You run across cargo containers so often, that it takes the fun out of it, and they are the only real worthwhile reward.
The game is impressive for the fact that two guys created it, its atmosphere is great, the combat is messy and fun but in the end, it was a somewhat shallow experience.
I read the reviews and longed for a Privateer "update" and Rebel Galaxy is it. I've gotten about halfway through the story line which is engaging. It is worth getting even at the price it's at because it continues the Wing Commander/Privateer/Freelancer universe I like so much. Some in notes in no particular order:
- Combat is different but doable. No forward firing guns, everything is a +/-15 degree angle from broadside (90 degree from forward travel). Turrets are different, they are all over most ships can shoot at any angle but are not useful in manual mode except for mining, leave them in auto-aim mode. Secondary weapons need to be replenished so I rarely use them. Deflectors seem a last ditch, manual defense so I never use them since shields and armor are usually sufficient.
- The saving system is the strangest I've ever seen. Saves only entering a station or exiting the game. There are 12 slots (file#'s 0-11) but you cannot switch slots unless you copy files over to another slot outside the game or start new games there. I wrote a Windows batch file residing in the saved game directory (C:UsersuserDocumentsMy GamesDouble Damage GamesRebelGalaxy) to alt-tab out and save the game I'm always playing in slot 2 (file# 1) to another slot 3-12 (file#s 2-11).
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@echo off
:Copy savegame_dat1.zbs to temp directory; overwite old copies of savegame_dat1.zbs.
set TEMPSAVEPATH=%CD%screenshots
copy /y /v "%CD%savegame_dat1.zbs" "%TEMPSAVEPATH%"
:Get the saved game file number to eventually overwrite.
set /p FILENUM="Enter saved game file number to overwrite (from 2 to 11): "
:Loop through 2 to 11
for /L %%G IN (2,1,11) DO (
:If the entered number is one of the legitimate loop numbers (2 to 11), then overwite
if %FILENUM%==%%G (
copy /y /v "%TEMPSAVEPATH%savegame_dat1.zbs" "%CD%savegame_dat%FILENUM%.zbs"
echo Saved game "savegame_dat1.zbs" saved as "savegame_dat%FILENUM%.zbs".
goto END
)
)
echo No files saved. Saved game file number "%FILENUM%" is not a number 2 to 11.
:END
pause
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