Rebel Galaxy Reviews
Rebel Galaxy is a robust trek through the stars, even if it is bogged down by a heavy reliance on repetition and a weak narrative. A host of systems that are all built to generate organic emergent moments, no matter what your play style, make Rebel Galaxy one of this year's biggest surprises.
There is one untarnished, shining star in this cold and lonely place though. The soundtrack. The rockabilly tunes are just too damn good
Yet, despite my many complaints, Rebel Galaxy did put a smile on my face. It's an ambitious little game that regrettably tries too hard to grab something out of its reach, but what it does get its hands on is excellent. The combat is spectacular, the atmosphere is charming (prolonged exposure to the soundtrack aside) and while there isn't as much depth to the game's systems as it would like you to believe, they are fun to poke and prod at when you get tired of blasting people with your lasers. Rebel Galaxy is the kind of game I'd want save for a rainy day when all I want to do is set my brain on auto-pilot and lose a few hours watching pretty colors and dreaming about being Han Solo.
There's a lot to do in Rebel Galaxy, it's just a shame that it's all too often the same things to do.
It doesn't really do a lot more than what Elite achieved over 30 years ago, but this is a fun and accessible, if rather repetitive, space trading game.
If basing it on the combat alone, Rebel Galaxy fares high. Story and the like need consideration, though, and they are lacking. It's like having a fancy car with a low tank; fun while it lasts until it sputters down and out (due to the grind), and it takes a tediously and pointlessly long time to get up and going again, by which point the fun may have worn off.
It’s a game very much devoted to the idea that space will be the future equivalent to the Wild West, and while Rebel Galaxy lacks inspiration in anything other than combat, it can’t be denied that it focuses on its strengths.
It makes a good transition from PC to console, but Rebel Galaxy was far too vapid and uninspired to be a really stand out game in the first place. While that means it's not terrible, it's also a complete waste of what the far reaches of outer space offers for creative narrative, and this is deeply disappointing.
At face value, Rebel Galaxy is an entertaining arcade slugging match with controls simple enough to be picked up by newer players and customisation options appealing to the completionist. With its bombastic cowboy rock soundtrack and Wild West aesthetic, it's certain to provide a few hours of interesting content. However, the longer you play, the more the cracks appear, with the whole thing eventually becoming a grind with more than a fair share of bugs helping the game to feel overly unforgiving and unfair. Time will tell if these issues get fixed but for the moment, Rebel Galaxy is several light years from where it truly wants to be.
Rebel Galaxy's rendition of space is full of possibilities - but they're all a little too dull and repetitive for it to really work.
[T]he state of your ship is what keeps you going. You fight more to earn more to buy more. In this way it is a very transparent game. But also a repetitive one, and overall, a mixed bag. I know a game is not capturing me when, as a reviewer, I keep checking my "hours played" stat on Steam to see if I can fairly say: "OK, that's enough". Still, I recognise there are always those who want more space sauce, who won't mind fighting on a 2D plane, and who will be much more possessed by upgrading their own "Wobblenaut".