Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw sticks close to the DNA of the first game, except now I’m flying a small fighter and moving in full 3D: on paper, that sounds like an upgrade. And to be fair, there are improvements: planets look better, and you can actually land on them or dock at stations, which adds a bit more flavour to the universe. But once the novelty wears off, you realise it’s the same core loop… just dressed differently. And yes, this game is still heavily grind-based, not skill-based. Because skill is apparently optional. On regular mode, the game practically plays itself: lock onto an enemy, and your ship starts auto-tracking like it’s got a mind of its own. Add auto-aim into the mix, and dogfights become less about piloting and more about holding buttons and watching things explode. It’s oddly unsatisfying, like winning a race where the car drove itself. Turn off the assists? Good luck, suddenly enemies become elite aces, and with the mouse controls behaving like they’re having a nervous breakdown, hitting anything is an achievement. In the end, both Rebel Galaxy games sit comfortably in “not great” territory, but at least the first one embraced its arcade silliness. This one feels lost: it’s not a proper space sim, not a satisfying space shooter, and the identity crisis shows. Between the grind, the awkward controls, and the overbearing assists, it never quite figures out what it wants to be. While I give it a 5/10 (same as the previous entry), I do not recommend the 2nd instalment of the series.

"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!

This is Privateer. If that doesn't mean anything to you, this may not be the game for you. But if you're an old man like me who played Privateer back in 1993 then this is exactly what you're looking for. This game is a love letter to that earlier masterpiece, and they do it justice.

[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]

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.

Currently not for me, the controls feel wonky, the graphics don't bother me but they are weak, you don't really know what to do in the beginning and are supposed to grind the first couple of hours, no thanks.

I do really like the game, the start is rough, the first ship is bad and the controls are a little wonky at first until you play an hour or so but after that the campaign and secondary missions are really nice, the bounties you can do to ear money are not boring and you can choose to do trades or fight. You can play on the pirate faction too. Very recomended game

Fun game. Reminds me of all the hours I put into the '90s flight sims back in the day, like some of the Microprose ones. The thing I think this game did wrong was making it possible to NOT have fun. The "easy" or "normal" difficulty settings remove a lot of the actual gameplay by assuming you can't figure it out or want your hand held. I think the only sin this game commits is not trusting itself to be fun or that the right players would find it.

[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.