Rebel Galaxy (Freelancer + Firefly), created by ex-Runic Games devs

[Silverforce11]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/290300/

Just out today. I love this genre so its right up my alley.

It feels like Freelancer due to the 3rd person view of your ship and simplified gameplay (more arcade spacesim). Rather than Elite or X3 which is much more hardcore spacesims.

I actually like the Privateer and Freelancer approach to spacesims, since the more complex ones I lacked patience to get into.

Combat is smooth, punchy, broadside mechanic on 2D plane in 3D space. Randomly generated missions like in the old-school Privateer. Some random encounters during flight keeps it interesting.

Surprisingly cheap price ($19.99 with 10% launch discount) for such a polished high quality game.

Developed by two core people, ex-Runic Games devs who worked on Diablo 1, 2 and Torch Light series.

 

[Blue_Max]

This caught my eye today too... I hope you can do multiplayer on a friends-only setup though - no strangers coming in and griefing.

 

[Elcs]

No MP planned.

Despite my love for it it's certainly consolised, often to the point of mouse and camera awkwardness.

Combat is quite unique and plays like nothing really before it.

Worth the cash but be prepared that you might want to grab your controller.

Oh, I also sustain 60fps at 1440p with all settings maxed out and top game AA/AF settings on... and that's on DX11 and my i5 2500k/7950.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I loved the games mentioned that this is like (both here and in reviews) so I grabbed it. *Tosses on the pile*.

 

[ControlD]

I picked this up as well but haven't had a chance to play yet.

If it plays better with a controller I am OK with that. Might be fun to play this on the TV.

 

[Red Storm]

Will definitely check this out!

 

[drnickriviera]

Seems good so far. One of the few times when i haven't disabled the music. Taken a bit to get used to 2D space combat. Maxed out graphics on my C2D and 750Ti, not many times i've been able to do that

 

[shortylickens]

I love Freelancer and nobody has made a proper successor, so I may check this out.

 

[shortylickens]

Alright, its got its up. And its got its downs.


A little harder to navigate around the space system, but when you have a story mission available the navigation doesnt railroad you into it. You can take side missions without harassment.

Also, you can take multiple side missions at once. VERY nice feature. And the difficulty anticipated for a mission seems pretty darn accurate too.

Commodity selling is kind of a pain. All the listed prices are old. More often than not by the time you deliver you'll see you are no longer getting a profit. Sometimes even a major loss.
(Havent tried mining yet.)

Its nice that you can run around and randomly bump into people. You can get info for free, trade, or even pirate them. Or if they have hostiles you can help and they are actually someone generous with the reward. Also if they aren't too far away you can find them on the map.

Enemies frequently drop ordnance after a fight so now its not a huge money dump to use missiles frequently. Nor are you completely disarmed after a rough fight.

The deflector shields are kind of a hassle to use (manual) but they do protect you fairly well. Especially good if you decide to flee battle.

The Scanner is very useful, especially after you learn that its almost impossible to defeat a ship in the next larger class. The Pulse ability is so damn nice its a wonder I havent seen it before in other games.

Gamepad control is kinda clunky but I heard the mouse is a joke so dont bother.

I like that turrets can be set to auto fire and that their AI is customizable. But I really need one of two features. Either auto-firing broadside weapons, or auto-maneuvering on the ship so I can shoot manually without crashing into things. One or the other would be so helpful.

Please note, it is possible to use your ship as a ramming weapon, but you need specific equipment to do it properly.

LOADS of cool ships and gear. My only complaint is theres no way to customize the paint scheme, and most of them look alike with the same coloring.


Will report more, later.

 

[Red Storm]

I put some of my TF2 gear up for sale so that I can get this game sooner rather than later. lol my love for space games makes me impatient.

 

[Sabrewings]

I put some of my TF2 gear up for sale so that I can get this game sooner rather than later. lol my love for space games makes me impatient.

Indeed, it's an exciting time. This, Star Citizen, Infinity Battlescape, Rogue System, Everspace, E, NMS, Rodina, and more that don't come to mind. Lots of options for a genre that was considered on its death bed.

This in particular has been in my Steam wishlist for a while. Maybe after my current class I'll get in on it.

 

[shortylickens]

OK, so I think I've got a feel for it.

Basically Freelancer for consoles. Which means its prettier, but they also simplified a lot. Its difficult to control your capital ship AND accurately fire weapons. So far I havent seen any broadside guns or modifications that let me auto target and fire them.

Turrets are good, but even the best are of limited use against the larger vessels. Apparently there are torpedos but I have not yet found them.

Theres fewer star system than Freelancer had, but much more stuff to do within each system.

Random missions are surprisingly good, and many have multiple methods of completion.
Pro Tip: Do NOT take on a delivery mission unless THEY give you the items. Running all over space trying to track down the last one or two of a commodity is incredibly tedious.

Mining is way too slow to be a useful method of making money. Occasionally you will find some secret info that leads to a good mining opportunity, but thats the only time you'll want to bother with it.

Mercenaries are not a good bargain for the money. But if you're desperate to complete a certain mission and dont want to grind away for a bigger ship and more guns, they can be helpful.

Be prepared for lots of grinding if you wanna move up a vessel. Much like Freelancer you get very little cash for simple missions and tough missions have a good chance of wasting you. If you dont pick up ordnance after a fight its actually possible to lose money while using missiles. I recommend saving them for story missions.

If a story mission has multiple parts you can still stop off at stations for repairs or rearming. It wont break the quest.

For some reason you cannot change settings from the menu, you have to load up a game first.

So far are no long cutscenes nor unskippable cutscenes. And the story moves along quite well. Much less annoying than all the long movies in Freelancer.

 

[Silverforce11]

OK, so I think I've got a feel for it.

Basically Freelancer for consoles. Which means its prettier, but they also simplified a lot.

To be fair, Freelancer wasn't that complex or deep to start with, certainly not the vanilla release (but it had lots of mods). It felt more like Privateer with a face-lift.

So RG is in a sense, Freelancer with a face-lift.

 

[Elcs]

As the game is about broadsides I highly doubt you'll ever find an auto-firer mechanism for it unless someone mods one in. The only thing I dislike about broadsides is that I am only ever going to be able to aim and fire one at a time, leaving a large bank of weapons doing nothing.

I actually took down a Dreadnought in about 65 seconds in my Heavy Frigate. Granted, it was a non-story mission with certain parameters that were essential to success. That earned me 73k credits.

Money isn't too hard to earn but it does feel like the console focus has made trading much harder than necessary by not providing useful information or even allowing access to the map whilst docked. Best way tends to be Distress Signals, earning bounty from killing nasty people, the traders will give you some cash and loot too then you Hail the traders and sell them goods for generally more than you'd get in 95% of stations.... then if you're a mean SoB you can destroy them and pick up both their loot and the stuff you sold to them.

One random mission that appeared netted me over 750k credits but it was certainly not fun with all of my hull plating gone and down to around 25% by the time I limped into a station. Multiple destroyers at every waypoint and swarms of fighters made life "fun".

For me, turrets deal more damage to capital ships than my broadsides do. Currently my Heavy Frigate is taking out Destroyers quite handily and because Destroyers can rather wreck my shields if I show my broadside too much it's the Ion Turrets and Particle Lasers that blast them to smithereens.

Turret targeting options are also next to useless. Ideally my Ion Turrets and Particle Lasers would blast Capital ships whilst my Pulse Turrets take out fighters... then once one of those categories is dead, the others pitch in..... Doesn't work like that. It's capital ships or fighters or everything. If all of your turrets were set to take out Cap ships and there were none, they'd not fire at all.

Mercs - Hire a merc as soon as you can. They're not great but they do take a little bit of heat off you and they do kill stuff. Considering you're piloting a capital ship and they'll only ever be in a fighter their use is limited but they're pretty tough to kill and will last a long time.

I'm thinking that I'll be in Mk4 gear before I manage to grab my next ship.

 

[shortylickens]

I dont like having to reconfigure my turrets multiple times during battle. As such I've set them to attack whatever I've locked. It seems to be the best overall system. Also, I found that particle lasers will shred fighters damn near instantly. I picked all laser turrets and the long range proton broadsides so I can now just focus on destroying capital ships.

I also found that even without ramming deflectors I can still crush fighters with my hull quite easily and at a minimum of damage to myself.

Repair bots work slowly but are still worth it. You save a crapload of money when docking for repairs and they can also mean the difference between life and death in a long, agonizing battle.

 

[Silverforce11]

Funny you guys mention how easy fighters are..

It should be extremely dangerous for a capital to be hunted by a wolf pack of strike crafts but nope, not in Rebel Galaxy, they are like flies, you swat them instantly.

 

[Elcs]

I dont like having to reconfigure my turrets multiple times during battle. As such I've set them to attack whatever I've locked. It seems to be the best overall system. Also, I found that particle lasers will shred fighters damn near instantly. I picked all laser turrets and the long range proton broadsides so I can now just focus on destroying capital ships.

I also found that even without ramming deflectors I can still crush fighters with my hull quite easily and at a minimum of damage to myself.

Repair bots work slowly but are still worth it. You save a crapload of money when docking for repairs and they can also mean the difference between life and death in a long, agonizing battle.

I found setting to anything other than Any Craft was counter productive.

Fighters only (never attacks Cap ships) or vice versa
Locked only - half of your turrets could be useless as the ones on the far side cannot fire through your hull to hit anything.

Without a priority list it looks neat when in fact it's a tacked on, poorly thought out option.

Considering I spend 100k in 3 fights on repairs with my Heavy Frigate I'll be buying repair bots the next chance I can. I stepped up into a Destroyer and have about 25k to my name right now.

Bought 42 Tachyon Salt for 1.5k-6k a pop. Sold it to a trader for 845k and watched as pirates killed it and stole some of my salt back Being friendly with a pirate faction AND traders is funny and useful.

 

[shortylickens]

Funny you guys mention how easy fighters are..

It should be extremely dangerous for a capital to be hunted by a wolf pack of strike crafts but nope, not in Rebel Galaxy, they are like flies, you swat them instantly.

If they have torpedos, yes, they could kill you easily. But most of them have slow, weak missiles and if you run out of deflectors then your shield will probably be able to handle them.

I think the game is a little closer to Homeworld than Freespace. Large ships with multiple auto-tracking guns can sweep thru small flimsy vessels. And maybe thats how it should be.


My main issue is that all enemy ships seem to have unlimited missiles and that really irritates me.

 

[Mondozei]

I loved Freelancer. The campaign was really good but I played the MP for 5 years minimum. It was a simple game on the surface but there was a lot of complexity if you played on a role-playing server like I did. It had the perfect mix of go-at-it alone adventurism and clanplay.

I'd be interested in this game if it had MP, but so far no plans on MP from what I can tell. If they ever change that, I'll go in.

Meanwhile, are there any other games like FL? Amazing to me that nobody has even tried making a spiritual successor or whatnot. SC is definitely not that anymore, it has become a multi-everything game(even a FPS module now), a giant beast of all things.

 

[Elcs]

I loved Freelancer. The campaign was really good but I played the MP for 5 years minimum. It was a simple game on the surface but there was a lot of complexity if you played on a role-playing server like I did. It had the perfect mix of go-at-it alone adventurism and clanplay.

I'd be interested in this game if it had MP, but so far no plans on MP from what I can tell. If they ever change that, I'll go in.

Meanwhile, are there any other games like FL? Amazing to me that nobody has even tried making a spiritual successor or whatnot. SC is definitely not that anymore, it has become a multi-everything game(even a FPS module now), a giant beast of all things.

Haven't seen anything come along. If there is, I'd hope for something deeper and more complex, probably with actual large ships.

 

[fourdegrees11]

33% off on steam sale. Just put a solid 8 hours into this the last couple days, really enjoying it! Game feels very polished for being so cheap, and the music is actually pretty good.

 

[jlee]

I am surprised I haven't heard about this yet - I love space games, but haven't played any in a while.

 

[Silverforce11]

33% off on steam sale. Just put a solid 8 hours into this the last couple days, really enjoying it! Game feels very polished for being so cheap, and the music is actually pretty good.

It's good, very polished and few bugs. I did enjoy it, however, the way it's designed to be a story driven linear experience, I don't feel the urge to replay it.

Strange, when I did enjoy Freelancer and replayed that as well as Privateer 1 & 2. Which are also linear story driven spacesims.

 

[Zanovar]

Looks awesome.i have a backlog.this game is next for me

 

[Annisman*]

Put 50+ hours into this game last month, pick it up its great.