...and my incoherent review of. I believe this was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Freelancer. Sadly, I don't remember any details about Freelancer. That said I've got about 38 hours into Rebel Galaxy and generally enjoyed it.
Mechanics:
2D Flight - Fighters can fly up and down, and sometimes it would probably be easier to go over or under that large asteroid but you can't. With other games I have neglected my altitude control and ended up well away from the plane of activity, so I don't see the 2D nature of this game as a negative.
Save system - No manual save, saves when you dock and when you exit the game. If you have not docked for a while, the game will suggest that you dock. While not the awful thing I thought it would be, I have lost minor progress after exploding to hostile ship and, more recently, slamming into a moon at high speed.
Controls - I'm not real big on WASD controls, but I managed. A and D are for turning and the most important, W is boost by default and also important to speed up to manuever (crossing the T, outrunning missiles, running away, chasing down, etc). Keeping an eye on the minimap and using the mouse to rotate your view to see where you're going and not stare down your target can be helpful at times.
Weapons Systems - Broadsides, Secondaries, and Turrets are the three types of weapons. Broadsides and Turrets can be selected and aimed manually. Default selection is broadside. Secondaries are fired by pressing a key and are unaimed. I'm not really capable of switching between broadsides and turrets in combat, and I doubt I'd do better than the auto-targeting you can set the turrets to. Which is a nice feature I looked at but didn't use.
Factions - Gain and lose faction reputation by doing missions and blowing up their ships. I'm unaware of any benefits of gaining reputation ranks aside from Mercenaries and Traders Guilds, both of which will allow purchase of different ships and subsystems.
Gameplay:Trading - Unless you find an Unknown Signal, trade information is limited to your last visit to that station. The internet says that you can update information by talking to traders but I've not tried that. Bartenders will tell you a station that allegedly is buying a good at a higher price. The one time I tried that the price had fallen by the time I got there (or wasn't particularly high to begin with). I have had some difficulty finding a station that was selling above the "System Average". I don't know if the system average is an accurate figure that changes or is static.
Mining - I've tried it a little after beating the main storyline and upgrading all of my dreadnought's turrets to mining lasers. The stats still say I've mined 0 asteroids. Perhaps because I don't have the mining subsystem.
Missions - Some variety of missions, picking up drops, delivering/acquiring cargo, rescues, seek and destroy, and escort. I may have missed one or two but these are the basic types of missions. They'll vary on which faction reputation will go up and down but are otherwise mostly the same. Rescues can be quite difficult as the ship(s) your supposed to save blow up regardless of your efforts and thus fail.
Bounties - Some you can detect by scanning, but I've not been able to tell which of the hostile ships have a bounty, when there's more than one group. Otherwise pay bartenders to tell you coordinates for local bounties. Appears to be a sliding scale based on what you're worth but not exorbitant.
Pirate Lords - These will show up on the system map and news boards, basically a big well known bounty with an accordingly larger amount of firepower.
Thus:Save System -
- adds a bit of a need for caution, which I think works well. The galaxy can be a dangerous place.
Weapons -
- seems to be fine, maybe someone more skilled might enjoy it more or find it too clunky.
Controls -
- generally fine, with the map though sometimes you can't zoom out to see the whole system but you can move through the mission points to see where they are. More zoom would have been better.
Reputation -
- aside from the Rank 3 broadside subsytem I lusted over from the Mercenaries Guild, I'm not sure there's much point. Maybe I missed it.
Trading/Mining -
- seems more trouble than it's worth
Bounties/Pirate Lords -
- I like blowing up ships for money
Missions -
- a bit repetitive but generally enjoyable.
Main Story -
- I think I finished it in 30 hours or so, though much of that time was spent scrabbling around for money. I did enjoy the story though for what there was of it.
Replayability -
- I don't really have any urge to try to restart the grind for cash. I did keep playing to get all of my ships parts to Tier 6.
Value -
- but I got it for free with purchase on GOG's summer sale.
New SMAC quizzes available.
