Dimension-hopping tactical roguelite science fiction action! That’s what you’re promised with Star Renegades, the latest game from Massive Damage and publisher Raw Fury and that’s exactly what you get! Really, what more can you ask for? Now, sure, the roguelite/roguelike genre has been done to death, but let’s be honest, there’s still lots of life left here and this is definitely a new spin on the concept!
In Star Renegades, you play a group of heroes vastly outnumbered by an enemy force called the Imperium. The game throws you right in with three starting characters, a Valkyrie named Wynn for close combat, Nodo the saboteur, and an Archon called Xurx (it’s not you, none of these classes mean anything at first). Each has their own distinct personality and you slowly get to know them line by line over the course of the first couple of levels. Then, you generally die. Game over. This is shocking, a bit stressful, and overall, attention-grabbing. The first time I lost my crew, I actually closed out the game, tried to reset and start over, but Massive Damage thought of this old-school hack and has an autosave built in. Nice try, loser! So you die, and then we find out what’s really going on here. Turns out that the Imperium are dimension hopping evildoers attacking the solar system and even if you lose, you can control a little robot that skips over to the next plane of existence and starts the whole process over again with the same characters. Somehow, he can also carry over progress in the form of weapon and character unlocks as well, so as you play through a loop of strategic death, you slowly get more powerful. Very slowly.
Gameplay is a lot slower-paced that some players might enjoy here. Combat is turn based but requires a degree of thought to balance out hit strengths, stun attacks, and break damage which keeps enemies from attacking that turn. Honestly, the combat is refreshing and engaging and is one of the better turn-based battle systems out there, even if the screen is a bit busy. Select your attacks, destroy the enemy, and slowly gain levels, abilities, and strength. And then die again. And then repeat the exact same levels again. And again. And again. Unlike many other roguelites, Star Renegades is not procedurally generated. Let me say that again for those of you in the back. Star Renegades is not procedurally generated. You end up playing the same levels over and over and over again and they’re pretty much in the same exact order as they were last time. Needless to say (and yet here I am saying it), this becomes a tad repetitive. Enemies and their positions change, sure, as do the random drops in the levels, but overall, things are pretty static in Star Renegades. And that means that if you don’t do well, or don’t get the right mix of weapons and armor, you’re probably going to die. By the way, those random weapon drops in the levels? Don’t hit the button twice. There’s a load lag for the contents of chests and if you hit the confirm button to open them, then hit it again, you select the first item, no matter what it is, instantly. Incredibly frustrating.
Now, there’s a setting to speed up combat, but be warned. Speeding up combat without turning off the screen shake is literally nausea inducing. I’m a guy that has no issue with 3D games, no issue with VR glasses, no problems with visuals in gaming. But this made me instantly sick. I couldn’t even look at the screen with accelerated shake at all. And acceleration is an absolute necessity while you’re constantly grinding the loop. There’s just too much animation and the game becomes even more tedious faster. That’s not to say Star Renegades isn’t awesome, because it is, but it has some flaws. We’ll get to those in a moment though.
First, let’s look at the characters. In addition to your starting characters, you meet fellow freedom fighters (say that one five times fast) fighting foes along the way. In between fights, you trade cards with other members of your party, building relationships that can even blossom into romances…and breeding. Yup, you can have kids in Star Renegades and then train those kids to fight too. If you survive. Which you won’t. But if you did, and you manage to max out the relationship bar, it does unlock progeny classes as well, so give it a go. In addition to the naughty bits, resting also is the only way you can heal health damage. There are characters that can restore your shields, but they’re weak at combat, so if you miscalculate or start to try and fight above your weight class to get ahead, chances are good that you’re screwed. One character dies, or two, they come back at 1 hit point. And then you have to keep fighting or camp, losing valuable HP gaining combat in order to foster survival. It’s a weird design that’s incredibly frustrating. Sure, it contributes to the loop mechanic, but when I know I’m doomed to fail, I just give up and reset anyway, so why make it so hard? Even on easy, Star Renegades becomes a grind pretty fast and one that it’s tough to make progress in as the difficulty ramps up pretty fast after the first Behemoth.
What’s a Behemoth you say? Well, after the first level, you get dropped in an area where you have to fight for three days until a giant Imperium Behemoth creature drops to um, enslave and pillage your entire dimension. Lose and you’re done, off to the next dimension. Win, and you liberate the planet, gaining a bunch of new unlocks and weapons. There are only a few Behemoth fights but winning them is challenging, as the tactics shift for each. Think of them as bosses, only they don’t look as cool as regular bosses. They certainly have the life bar of a boss though!
Defeat the Behemoth and you move on to the next area and do it all again. There are plenty of hidden things about, like secret smuggler bases, starships to infiltrate and more, but they only appear when you’ve fulfilled certain expectations such as killing the smuggler guarding the caves. Once inside it’s just more fights, but they’re necessary to build up your XP to take on exponentially stronger foes. Those foes get promoted if you lose too, coming back stronger the next time, an added frustration.
By now you’ve got an idea about the gameplay and combat. The story and dialogue are great, cheeky and hilarious with a touch of bad dad jokes. Just the right mix to keep you engaged between combat scenarios. And visually, Star Renegades is pretty cool too, a vintage style pixel art game with an intense preference for pink and purple. Putting aside the color palette, the designs are cool for characters and enemies, animations are decent, and backgrounds are excellent. The size of your characters on the overworld is a bit small though, especially on the Switch in handheld mode. You’ll also find it incredibly irritating to navigate around the combat overworld, as every time you come to a new section, you have to hit a button and wait for the game to process your selection for a second or two before you can proceed, badly breaking up the flow and slowing the game just that irritatingly tiny bit more. In fact, load times in general are pretty abysmal on the Switch and it’s clear that the game is definitely not optimized well for the system as the graphics aren’t exactly complex. Waiting for load times is irritating these days and Star Renegades definitely falls short of the mark here. Additionally, during the course of this review I experienced three fatal crashes for no apparent reason, booting me entirely out of the game and back to the Switch home menu. No error, nothing, just bloop and poof.
While the visuals are cool, the sound is definitely a mixed bag. Sound design is excellent and the tracks that are in the game are solid. However, they’re a bit shorter than they should be and there definitely aren’t enough tracks, so as you play, the music becomes more and more tedious until eventually, you just turn the sound off entirely because it isn’t all that important. I hate to say that because sound design is such a key component of games, but I found that it really didn’t make a difference here.
It’s hard to say whether Star Renegades will appeal to everyone. The swanky sci-fi plot and irreverent Red Dwarf-style dialogue will definitely appeal to people but the high difficulty curve in combat, long load times for a pixel art game, and repetitive nature of the slower-paced roguelite loop leaves the game a bit wanting. At $24.99, the price point is probably a bit higher than it should be, but honestly, the balance could be tweaked a bit more with updates and maybe should be. As it stands, if there are no updates, tweaks , or optimizations to gameplay, load times, and other issues, it’s probably best to at least wait until there’s a good sale on this one. It’s an unfortunate conclusion, as combat in Star Renegades is absolutely and utterly engaging and the entire background and concept of the game is simply excellent. Star Renegades is a fun game that has real potential but simply fails to maximize that potential the longer you play.
For those of you that are collecting physical releases of indie titles like Star Renegades, keep in mind that Strictly Limited Games is currently taking preorders on physical versions of Star Renegades for both PS4 and Switch. Pricing is 29.99 Euros for the standard edition and 49.99 Euros for the limited, which comes with a soundtrack, artbook , modular diorama, manual, character cards and more! These are limited to a single print run of 2,500 copies each, so don’t miss out!
This review was based on a digital copy of Star Renegades provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and with a Pro controller. Star Renegades is also available for Xbox One and Steam and is coming soon to PS4! All screenshots are of actual gameplay!
