Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

they should've stuck with the mechanics and style from the first game

"Privateer, but modernized by an indie studio in 2020." is the shortest and pretty dang accurate way to describe this game. And, fairly likely, it is enough to filter most people on whether they might love this game or not. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw brings some improvements to the table, like a more modern interface that is adapted to gamepads, or a "radio" system fairly similar to GTA, in which you can pick your soundtrack style and listen to some amusing parody ads while you play the game. Those soundtracks use a lot of amazing, licensed tracks by very good artists, and while a lot of them are rock or country to fit the (very StarCraft) "space rednecks" vibe of the Rebel Galaxy world, there should be at least one radio station that fits your taste, and, if not, the game even allows you to set up your own playlist, which is pretty neat. But, for both better and worse, the innovations are in the end, relatively limited when compared to Privateer. It was very clear that the goal of Double Damage studios was to offer "a new take on that cult classic, with better graphics and a bunch of quality of life features", and while that is a proposition that may be right up your alley, it means some questionable aspects of the old game are still in there, like the mission objectives and scenarios lacking variety (by being mostly procedural content), the slow and grindy beginning of the game, or the story being slow and "smaller scale" than in epic space operas (although, that last one can be seen as a quality by some). The small thing that annoyed me the most, and is probably worth mentioning, is the weird way the game evaluates the difficulty of the missions. At the start of the game, I thought it felt appropriate, with "Average threat" missions feeling that way. But in the late game, "average threat" missions can mean crazy hard missions that only the best players have any hope of beating. I realized, eventually, that the evaluation criteria weren't the same depending on mission type. For instance, an "average threat" mission in the "War" category is absolutely insane, whereas an "average danger" rating in the "Target:Destroyer" category isn't nearly as bad. Still, it is an annoying aspect of the game that has led to me experiencing lots of pointless deaths in the mid and late game, and the game would clearly have been improved by tailoring those evaluations to a more average/okay flight sim player (like me and the majority of the potential audience), rather than base those on what absolute experts would think about the difficulty of those missions. But still, I very much had a lot of fun with this space sim game and I definitely recommend it to people who enjoy the genre. Rebel galaxy Outlaw can get a bit repetitive, but if you avoid playing too many hours of it at once that aspect is very much mitigated. You can hop in, play a few missions and/or progress the story a bit, upgrade your ship, and then stop and come back later for a new session, when you feel like shooting some starships again. Maybe, for you, something isn't a "good game" unless it's so "good and addictive" that you can't ever drop the controller for 8 hours straight. I don't see things that way but I can understand some people want this. ...And, unfortunately, I don't think this game is the best candidate for that, as its procedural nature becomes a bit obvious and tedious when you take too much of a "dose" at once. But considering Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is often offered for less than 5 bucks on sale, now, it doesn't cost much at all to give it a shot anyway. And, who knows, maybe, unlike me, you are the type who can grind in that game for 8 hours straight in spite of the procedural generation thing. By this point, it doesn't cost much for you to try!

Should of stuck to the first games combat mechanics and expanded/improved them instead of switching from controlling battleships and cruisers to exclusively fighter class ships and dog fights. Ship selection is abysmal with almost half the amount of ships to choose from and upgrade as the first game. All in all a major disappointment as someone who very much enjoyed the first title.

[b]Rating:[/b] ★★★ - Okay [b]Time Played:[/b] 2.3 hours [b]Difficulty:[/b] Normal [b]Gameplay:[/b] - Arcade flight model has six-degrees-of-freedom which predecessor 'Rebel Galaxy' doesn't. But with the auto-lock on, it trivialised combat and focuses more on what you have. - Ship customisation and trading systems are shallow compared to what Elite Dangerous and Everspace 2 now offer, and both of those games do the combat loop with more depth and longevity. - If you've already played either Everspace 2 or Elite dangerous, this will feel like a step backward in everything except tone and presentation. [b]Story\Dialogue:[/b] - Wing Commander/Privateer-like, leans hard into pulpy space-western banter and voiced NPCs at bars and stations. - Dialogue is serviceable, not memorable. It's there to move you between missions. [b]Graphics\Music:[/b] - The OST is genuinely excellent, licensed rock and outlaw-country tracks that give the game more personality than the gameplay does. - Art style and cockpit/station visuals are the game's other real strength: warm, retro-futurist, distinct from the sterile sci-fi look most space games default to. - Ironically the best thing this game does is make you want to play a better space sim with this soundtrack running in the background. [b]Before you Buy:[/b] - If you buy\own Elite Dangerous or Everspace 2 already, honestly just play those. This doesn't out-mechanic either one. - If you do end up buying it, go in expecting a grindy arcade experience, not a sim. Treat it like a play every now and again game. - Play it for the music and the vibe. I'm honestly going to keep the soundtrack to play with the other games. - The UI requires your PC to be scaled to 100% DPI. Otherwise you may have a bad time with squashed or stretched text.

[h1] DO NOT BUY THIS GAME [/h1] Seriously. I know why you're here. You're probably thinking, "This is the exact game I've been looking for, it can't be THAT bad can it?" Yes. Yes, it can. This game is lifeless. It's decent flight controls and a promising component system hamstrung by a bafflingly horrible setting. I was stubborn. I wanted to like this game so badly. After an excruciating 6 hours of gameplay, I was able to buy the first new ship, thinking that it would maybe make the game finally enjoyable and [b] I WAS SO WRONG. [/b] Enemies will still either instantly die or tear through your ship with no indication which will happen before it does. Your character will make a quip about how easy a bounty will be immediately after saying they think the fight will be too hard. I get the feeling that it's supposed to be a diegetic difficulty indicator, but the developers didn't play the game for the 15 minutes needed to see that it doesn't work. Stations and locations have no personality. Everything is vaguely western and the stations that have an economy listed as "shady dealings" won't buy your stolen cargo, but will sell you a commodity that's just called "stolen goods". The police will scan you for explosives (that you can't sell anywhere) and then open fire because a fully armed missile system is a-okay, but a crate of dynamite I guess isn't. [i]Seriously, I know it's on sale, I know that if it was good it would be SO GOOD. But it isn't. At $6, I still feel ripped off. The developers literally quit the industry out of shame after publishing this game and it wasn't for no reason.[/i]

Not at all like the first game. I abandoned it despite those Privateer vibes. Couldn't make it work for me. Third try now I finally got it and the soundtrack got me.

An overall fun experience but I don't blame the negative reviews. You absolutely must play with a controller as mouse and keyboard are terrible.

Worse than its predecessor in every way. The controls are awful. There's no tutorial. The menus are horrifically designed. The entire game is just repetitive RNG grinding. Enemies spawn every 5 seconds. Literally everywhere you go there's new enemies. This isn't fun for a second.