Rebellion Gaia

Allow me to preface this review by mentioning that I have done some studies of game development and game design and while I'm nowhere close to an expert on these subjects, my knowledge of them will be informing this review. When checking the amount of hours I've spent in this game, you will notice that they're quite low, and there are a multitude of reasons for this, which I will try to point out in a coherent manner below. ====Voice acting==== While I haven't heard that many lines read by the voice actors in the game, the mixed quality of the voice acting has already been starting to show. An example of less than optimal acting can be heard at the very beginning of the story when General Berwick talks to Ole. When a mysterious portal suddenly appears in the room, Berwick asks casually (!) [i]"What's happening, Ole?"[/i], rather than asking the question in a confused or slightly frightened fashion, which would be more appropriate in this context. It is likely that the developer didn't include how (in which emotion) he wants his lines read, leading to the emotions in the voice not matching the situation in the game. This is just one example, and I have heard many other sub-optimal performances throughout my progression so far. Another thing that's strange as well is that quite a few interactions in the game are partially voiced. So a character might be heard saying his first three lines, but the rest of his speech will be exclusively in text. To my knowledge, the common approach in this type of game is to have major story events be fully voiced, while general gameplay is purely text based, but I haven't seen this hybrid approach in other games, and I find it somewhat off-putting. Some other voice acting, for example the one from opponents such as the zombies or the guards is pretty good though. ====Mechanics==== Overall, Rebellion Gaia is a normal turn-based RPG with a less than optimal implementation. First, crew health and status effects are persistent, meaning that they do not reset after battle, and can only be reset by either finding a healer in a town and pay a fee OR returning to the very first area of the game, which has a spot where the crew can rest and heal without a fee. The issue with this is that it incentivizes boring backtracking to the town/healing spot in order to heal the crew and not waste potions (which are quite expensive, especially when needing to heal multiple status effects at once). Now you could argue that it is the player's fault to do the boring backtracking, but one of the important things to remember for a game designer is that: [i]"Players can optimize the fun out of a game"[/i] Therefore placing incentives correctly to avoid this behavior is important and very much within the responsibility of the designer. Also, considering the high price of potions, I don't know whether it is even possible to play the game without using this strategy. There would be multiple ways to fix these issues, such as adding resting places to every area to avoid the player having to leave it to heal, or removing the persistence of health and status effects entirely and healing the crew automatically after every battle. Second, another area of concern is that the amount, strength, and health of enemies is apparently not randomized in many cases, leading to a scenario where when you encounter a group of ghouls for instance, they always appear in a group of 4, with the same abilities and same health. In that case, as soon as you've worked out a strategy to defeat them, you will simply repeat that strategy every single time you encounter them as nothing has changed, making the battles tedious and boring. Randomizing these values (within limits of course) would require the player to think about the strategy every time when entering a battle, even when it's against the same type of enemy. Third, unskippable battle animations. The animations in games like these are interesting for the first 5 minutes, after which the player would generally like to skip them to speed up the battle, especially when taking my second point above into consideration. Making the player wait every single time the enemies are throwing their same attacks is unnecessarily tedious and will frustrate many players. The combination of the above mechanics is really why I stopped playing the game. I entered into an area with overpowered zombies, which can be defeated quite easily when at full health, but as your health is reduced significantly after only a few battles, it seems to be necessary to either return to a healing area constantly or bring a significant amount of expensive potions, some of which aren't even sold in the only town in the area. At this point I really don't know what the game wants me to do. Either I'm supposed to do what I'm doing now, which would be boring and tedious, or I'm not and the game failed to tell me how I'm supposed to walk through this area with random zombies regularly attacking me (more on lack of instruction below). ====Characters/Story==== I would argue that the story and characters are so far the weakest element of the game, which is quite a big deal considering that RPGs generally rely on their powerful storyline to keep the player hooked. First up, I find that the characters in the game do not behave in a believable manner. For instance, at the beginning of the game the protagonist is found after the airship he was in had crashed. He claims that he cannot remember anything that had happened, only finding few clues at the crash site. Yet a random stranger that found the protagonist is perfectly willing to invite him into his home accompany him on his adventures shortly after. [i]"Random stranger in combat gear that crashed in a military airship and claims to have suffered significant trauma to his head, yeah come right into my home, what could possibly go wrong?"[/i] Further members are added to the player's crew in a similar fashion. Meet the person, exchange 5 sentences, you're part of my crew now. No backstory (or minimal backstory), no emotional investment on either side, nothing. This shallowness of the in-game characters also extends to another area that NPC's would often times be responsible for, which is instructing the player in how to play the game. For example, when you're trying to kill some pig-dude, the name of which I've forgotten, to claim on a bounty, you require a rope in order to make it through to the part of a cave that he is located in. Normally an NPC would inform the player about the requirement for the rope before his departure from the town to save him time, but in this instance no such instruction is given, leading the player to have to walk all the way back to the town just to buy said rope and go back to the cave afterwards if he didn't buy it as a precaution earlier. ====Bugs==== Finally, I've been able to locate a few bugs in the game. One of which is particularly obvious and annoying, which is that when walking through an area, the screen will randomly flash red without any apparent reason. If there is a reason for this, the player should be told and if not, this should be removed. Such a bug really shouldn't exist in a release version, in fact it shouldn't even make it past the alpha stage. ====Addendum==== I hope this review has been helpful, as I tried to be specific about the areas that I take issue with, so that they could potentially be addressed. After all this I want to add that I don't take issue with having spend the money I have spent on it, as a large part goes to support independent journalists and commentators, but if it wouldn't have been for that I would've requested a refund before the 2 hour mark as this game doesn't seem to me to be in a condition that it should've been released in. It appears unfinished, bugged, and badly designed.

The voice acting in this game is hilarious, for one reason or another! I was especially impressed with the in-battle voice acting, which is something I've never really seen in mainstream RPGs. It caught me by surprise. One of my favorite moments happened while the team was fighting zombies. During the battle, these zombies didn't shout out "Braaaains!" like a typical zombie would. No, they were shouting out for... something else! (I won't spoil what it was, though! Fight them yourself and find out! It just might surprise you!) I love the fact that this game brings together so many of my favorite online independent thinkers, and it's nice to get a chance to support them. I've only dipped my toes into the game so far, but I like what I've seen. I'm three hours in, and I've only collected 6 of the 108 Freedom Rings! Seems like there's plenty to see and do here!

It's quite amusing so far hearing voice actors who I either know or know of. It's for a worthy cause.

I'm enjoying this game so far. It's surprisingly funny (try watching the TV!) and the game-play is engaging because it's not too easy and you actually have to think a bit about what you're doing. I recommend paying close attention to the dialogue because 3 hours in and I have yet to see any kind of quest tracker. I would recommend this to any fellow truth seekers out there, it's a decent game and you're supporting a good cause.

Good story and voice acting. Lots to discover. Many details. Great graphics.

Awesome game, loved it! The story is really epic, as well as the characters and their voice actors. Sure, it is a little rough around the edges here and there, but you can feel the love it was made with. And the satire in the dialogues and scenarios is absolutely genius!

Coolest RPG since Final Fantasy! Keep fighting for truth!

Yeah, this is great. You can catch the RONA in this game. Lol. I love the content

This is the best RPG since final fantasy 7 and it's genius stepson spiritual successor. Took a solid 70 hours to beat it and I enjoyed every minute. Full of red pills, humor and good storytelling. A gem. A real treasure.

Great game. The Story sucks you right in to the universe from the beginning. The soundscape is next level and makes the game. I love the voice actors they are great. 10/10 for quirkyness