Rebel Galaxy Outlaw Review

One of my favourite games growing up that I never owned was Star Wars: X-Wing. Just being able to use the joystick and pretend I was a fighter pilot in the Rebel Alliance was one of the greatest joys I had as a kid. Using this as a basis, I will have to say that Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is an excellent successor but not without some drawbacks.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a space Western-styled space trading and combat simulation single-player game developed and published by a five-person studio Double Damage Games and is a prequel to Rebel Galaxy.

As I played the game, I felt like I was in the Firefly universe in that the main character is a smuggler and pilots a spaceship. I had to find ways to make money through various missions or I would play the market of buying and selling items for transportation. Different spaceports want different items and the economy would fluctuate with dynamic supply and demand. The missions were given to me by various factions. However, the factions did not all get along which meant that if I chose to help one faction, another became my enemy. Sometimes, during a mission or just simply travelling from one place to another, I might have gotten ambushed by bandits. This was where game truly shined.

The space combats felt like World War II aerial dogfights. Double Damage Games from the start had said that Rebel Galaxy Outlaw will not have accurate space physics and to be honest, it worked. I loved being able to fly around and chase down enemy ships. The explosions were always satisfying to watch, especially if it was a ship that was annoying the hell out of me for quite some time.

Not only was there space combats, but there were also mini games that I could play at the various space ports such as pool, darts and more. For these mini games, you play against AIs and can wager credits or ship parts. The games were quite addicting and I may have spent the first hour or two of playing Rebel Galaxy Outlaw just playing pool. What was also nice was that the music playing in the background. The soundtrack for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is over 21 hours long. Not only that, but Double Damage Games also provided an option for streamers to select “streamer friendly soundtrack” so that they would not have to worry about accidentally playing unlicensed music in their streams.

The graphics in this game varied greatly for me. I loved the intro video which felt like I was watching an anime. But once the game started, the graphics did not feel like it matched well with what I saw in the video. The 3D models took a bit to get used to. Once I was in space, I again felt like I was playing Star Wars: X-Wing as the graphics felt a bit outdated. Weirdly though, this actually did not bother me too much. In part it was due to the voice actors who did a great job in bringing life to the characters. The enemies were not sprouting the same lines over and over again and my allies did not constantly bug me to save them.

Now, while I did gush over Rebel Galaxy Outlaw for a bit, there are quite a few drawbacks to the game. For one, I spent the first hour or so having absolutely no idea what I was doing or how anything worked. There was no tutorial per se. In fact, their trailer video was actually a 40 minutes long introductory video or a “getting started” video. As a casual gamer, I am not going to spend 40 minutes watching a video just to get started on a game. No, I’m the type of gamer that will open up a game and just hop into it. But with Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, I could not do that. There was so much going on and nothing in the game was really telling me how to play. I would press random things and do random things to see what would happen. It could be frustrating when I accidentally hit the wrong button and ended up somewhere I did not want to be in or accidentally spend all my credits on the wrong part for my ship. That being said, I did still enjoy the game immensely and will probably go watch that video now.

The controls for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw also can be frustrating. For one, Double Damage Games recommends that players use a controller and not a mouse and keyboard. Fortunately, I did have a controller I could use with my computer. I did try to use a mouse and keyboard and instantly regretted it. There is just way too much going on and too many buttons to press to fly the ship accurately and smoothly. But using a controller was still frustrating in some aspects. When I was playing pool, the joystick was overly sensitive and I had a hard time controlling the power I wanted to put into my strikes. I tried to find a way to adjust the sensitivity but that also affected the sensitivity of when I was flying. So I just stuck with the overly sensitive controls in the mini games and hoped for the best.

Overall, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is an addicting game to play. With so much going on both in the background and in the foreground, I can see myself playing this for days and coming back to it again years later. There are so many different ways to play the game and different paths to take to make money. If anyone is a fan of space or flight simulator battles, this is a game they should get. However, just be warned that controls are really awkward without a game controller and that the game itself can be very confusing unless one watches the 40 minutes long “getting started” video on YouTube.