Playing A Game Rebel Galaxy PC

Rebel Galaxy is a jack of many trades, and - thankfully - a master of one. Maybe two.

There is an attachment curve, at first, trying to figure out what the "deal" is in Rebel Galaxy. As an open-world nonlinear sandbox, there are a bunch of activities you can do... but most of them aren't very fun.

  • Mining asteroids is shitty; rewards are rare, and very small when you get them.
  • Doing trade runs is cool when it works, but it usually doesn't, because prices fluctuate so unpredictably. (Also, trading profits don't scale with upgrade costs as the game goes on.)
  • Flying around the galaxy is boring. As nice as the game is to look at, space is preeeeetty empty. The limited set of random events, like distress beacons, gets repetitive real fast.
  • Combat is occasionally thrilling, even though so many weapons fire automatically; but in a typical encounter, either you handily outclass your foes or they handily outclass you. Most battles are over before they've started.
  • The randomized or semi-scripted optional missions are a key source of income, but are rarely very interesting -- generally either "Kill all the dudes at this place" or "Go do this thing, oh wait there are dudes there?, guess you need to kill them."
  • And the story missions aren't much better; they add voice-acted dialog, but it just isn't written all that well. The premise is somewhat hackneyed and the way it plays out is dull and predictable.

But if you stick with Rebel Galaxy, you might find what I would say is its core loop: getting blown up by some asshole ship, grinding mission rewards out of spite, buying a bigger ship, and smiling as you blow up that asshole ship in return.

Everything else about the game I would call adequate, on average. But the sense of growth and accomplishment you get from taking high-paying missions, then using that cash to buy deadlier lasers, tougher shields, or a ship bristling with even more cannons -- this was my primary motive for spending 25+ hours flying around the galaxy.

Also, the soundtrack is pretty good. Not exactly my favorite music, but very thematic, and catchy.

I would say that some of Rebel Galaxy's shortcomings could be addressed pretty easily: if the upgrade costs were rebalanced so they didn't outscale mining and trading; if core ship health wasn't so small that unbalanced fights end immediately; if the almost-completely-broken "Pair Warp" feature didn't make escort missions a total write-off. And I do wish that the story was better, overall.

But nevertheless, the upgrade chase and the space-truckin' soundtrack worked well enough for me.

Better than: Space Run
Not as good as: Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut
Maybe better, maybe worse than: Escape Velocity Nova, but hard to compare them a decade apart

Progress: Finished the main story, bought a Blackgate

Rating: Good