Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (2020)

• Playtime: 3h17m

• Played: 2025

• Expectation: Positive because i liked Rebel Galaxy (3 stars).

Intro

RGO is a space sim. You fly around between space stations and specific areas to trade, fight, mine or quest.

The Good

• No excessive realism.
• Space stations are just a menu instead of making you walk to menu's (i.e. people).
• 8-ball is fun.
• No need to return for generic quest rewards.
• Combat is alright once you've fixed the mouse steering.

The Bad

• Default mouse steering feels like balancing a ball on your nose.
• Relaxing music of previous game replaced with awful noise.
• All travel is fast travel, unlike some similar games like X3TC.
• Starting cargo hold is tiny (10 items).
• Awful horizontal station menu that doesn't show all options without scrolling.
• No hotkey for inventory, you have to go to a menu and scroll to ditch cargo.
• Same goes for missions, which is extremely annoying because you constantly want to check that.
• Aside from the main quest there only seem to be about 14 side quests.

The Ugly

• Extremely basic generic quests. Most are just a single step.
• Rebel Galaxy was basic but stood out due to broadside combat. Switching to standard fighter combat really shows just how simple this game is compared to similar games.
• Terrible balance. The enemy destroyed me in seconds during a "green" mission, which is supposed to be low-risk.
• Autosaves only, and the game only autosaves when you go to space station, not even when completing a quest.

Conclusion

After 3 hours i had an ok setup. Level 3 armor (versasteel), gauss gun and tracer. Most fights ended without me taking damage. I decided to take two combat missions, both were easy difficulty.

The first one put me up against three fighters and i easily won. The second one put me up against more fighters and a destroyer, a capital ship that i stood no chance against. When i reloaded the game i discovered the useless autosave system meant i would have to redo the first mission as well.

I decided to uninstall the game instead.

The original Rebel Galaxy was about battleships, which I liked. Here we have space jets and dogfights, which I like less. Luckily, there’s auto targeting, that makes the fights slightly easier.

Signs of a serious space game, and not just "aircraft in space": there are turrets on the ships. Surprising that trading is actually a very viable option to get rich quickly. It’s actually easier to earn money as a trader, than by shooting pirates.

Some nice details: sometimes after destroying an enemy ship, you can pick up the ejected pilot. Mostly for fun, as the bounty for pirates is negligible. Also, each ship has a completely unique interface. Very nice indeed.

I like the fact that ships are different, and not every more expensive ship is necessarily better. I liked hauler more than the military fighter, since those turrets can rip enemies to shreds pretty well, while still being able to sell tons of cargo at every port.

There are two annoying issues with the interface of the game. First, there's no good indication of missile lock. But there's no visual cue for that, unless you're looking at the missile, which is usually not the case. And second, count of your own missiles is displayed on the same screen as enemy lock, and the coms are on the same screen as well. So when you lock on enemy, you loose missile count, and when you get a comm, you also loose track of your enemy shields. There's so much space in the cabin they put a second screen there, but it is just the duplicate of the first one. Instead, the comms could be an overlay, like in many other space sims. But no, a single screen is all you've got.

Storywise, it’s a space western. We play as Juno, as she avenges her husband. She even knows who killed him, just not where to find him. Story gets forgotten pretty quickly, though, as you need to spend a lot of time earning cash to buy a better ship, so it won’t get blown in a few seconds. The game grew on me slightly. The story flows nicely, in a GTA-like fashion. To earn some money for our vendetta we pair with a local idiot that was asked to steal a package from his own brother.
The package is for a mafia boss, and it contains EMP missiles, that we use to teach police a lesson. Then a former friend turns up, and asks us to help break leader of their pirate gang out of the prison. Then the new gang leader, Durgan, tries to kill the old gangleader, that we help to break out. But we kill Durgan instead.

What I liked about the fight with Durgan, is that although there are two frigates, you only need to kill Durgan himself, and he pilots just fighter jet, although a though one. But once you kill him, others simply surrender.

Then, it turns out that Juno's husband wasn't killed, just went into hiding, on Juno's mother orders, Tatiana. She's a pirate lady, and wants to divert the traderoutes, so her daughter would inherit a legitimate trading empire. Very kind of her. There's an option to betray her to the police or team up with her. It all ends up with a whimper, though. At one point, everyone is freaked out by Tatiana being able to teleport ships without a jumpgate, something no one knows how to do. But this is never explained. "Final battle" is just routing a bunch of police vessels. And then Juno tells her husband to fuck off, something very inconsequntal, since we've seen this dude for two cutscenes at best. And there's no credit roll, nothing.

Decided to try it and I'm not sure how I feel. While the gameplay is neat, I feel that the game throws a lot of different systems at me without tutorialising almost any of them so I always feel a bit lost. Now I have one mission that forces me to "jump" to another system, but the game never explicitly told me that I needed a special ship component to do so. The thing is that that component costs 20.000 currencies and I only had around 2.000. So I guess I'm supposed to do a bunch of little throwaway missions ("deliver a package", "go scan these coordinates", "go there an kill some dudes") to get the money?

It feels like the worst type of grinding and having to grind for resources less than 2 hours into a game is not auspicious. Any pointers?