Star Renegades is an impressive game that is easy to start and will keep you playing with its strategic depth.
As the holiday season rolls through, we get to see some unique games pass over our email/desk. Those games are sometimes tough to ‘get through’ when facing a sea of titles, but then there are games like Massive Damage’s tactical RPG Star Renegades that gives our brains a break during this stressful time of the year.
Star Renegades is a tactical turn-based rogue-like RPG that keeps the strategy thick throughout the gameplay. You play as an orphaned warrior named Wynn that has to put together a force of fighters spanning multiple dimensions to help take down bad guys/aliens/robots that are generated randomly (but in a good way). It’s a Guardians of the Galaxy type feel to the story, where you get a dose of serious with a side of humor, which makes it very attention attachable.
Story aside, the gameplay is quite addictive and gorgeous in the game’s design areas. The gameplay is fast and furious when it comes to getting the actual battles going. You move your group in tactical fashion across huge maps, breaching into enemy territory, and starting fights with multiple mid-level enemies or single powerful ones. The gameplay turns into a traditional RPG structure when fights begin, where you choose if you want to attack, defend, or gather up points to pull off larger attacks. Most of what you do is automated, which means that you can choose your attack/defense, click the enemy you want to perform an attack on, and get the action going without much fuss. The action is dictated by previous choices before you begin the battle. This means that the gameplay goes quickly and doesn’t require much from you, which is a godsend of sorts for those looking for a game to jump into immediately. Win or lose, the game gets you to the action quickly and without much fuss, as the premise of the game spans different planets/dimensions in order to take down a multitude of baddies. Though it may not look like it, it does have a tiered set of enemies to fight, which can go quite quickly, or poorly depending on your strategic approach.
The strategical feel to the game is insanely good. You have to plan and you have to make sure you’re switching between defense and offense appropriately. You can’t just go into a fight and constantly pour on the offense. I tried that many times and died many times (the game starts over when you die, so be careful). There is a meter over the fight, which gives you the order of operation for allies/enemies. It resets with each round and the order of who attacks/defends switches as the fight gets longer. What’s neat about this meter is that you can push enemies further down the attack order with certain offensive moves, even go as far as to stun them off the meter. It’s a nice indicator for what strategy you need to use during fights.
While those scratch the surface of strategy for Star Renegades, the real beef of this burrito comes wrapped in several layers – camping cards, leveling up, and acquired items.
The camping cards are just what you think they might be — cards. Each card contains a certain attribute or perk for the player (like health, extra quickness, etc.) and each is gathered and distributed during camp hours (when it’s night) when your team is relaxing…at a camp. Anyway, the cards are what you would find in any ordinary card game that you’ve played on a PC, though you’re not fighting another person with cards, you’re merely improving your characters because of them. The cards only last as long as you’re alive or as long as you’re on the planet you’re fighting on. Once both change, so does the cards. The cards are interesting, random, and useful for the most part. They do add a bit of intrigue to the gameplay but aren’t as devastating for enemies until you really get high up in level.
Leveling is another way to improve your strategic skills. As you progress in the game, you gather DNA from victorious fights, which equal out to eventual leveling up. Once you get enough DNA to level, you then have to choose who gets leveled up out of the three initial players in your party. This means that it’s easy to overpower or under-power your team, depending on how you’re playing the level up part of the game. I found myself incredibly under-powered most of my playthrough in the game, which was on me. I would usually level one character up more than others, which meant that I would have a great offense once each round, instead of an even offense most of the round. An even offense doesn’t mean victory, though, so that’s not the perfect strategy. Reading the room and powering necessary characters up at certain times helps to make the strategy a bit more balanced throughout the game. That said, the game gives you the freedom to choose how you want to play things out — good or bad.
Another factor in strategically planning out how you’re going to play the game is finding items during gameplay. Occasionally, you will find weapons, armor, or food during your journey on the map you’re traveling. How you use those and when you use them offers up additional strategy for the game. For weapons and armor, much like leveling, you have to choose who each case goes to during gameplay. This means that if Wynn has the chance to snag a flame sword (the sword is her main weapon) or the cyborg with you needs a new gun, you have to decide who gets what, as only one character can obtain an item from a case. In addition to that choice, you have to choose whether to stash it for later or equip it immediately; both have different results as well. Related, snagging food and additional items of interest on the battlefield equal out to even more strategy.
Strategy! Strategy! Strategy! Yes, that’s what drives the game.
If all of the above wasn’t enough, the game also allows you to travel your own path on maps. There are different paths you can take to bring down enemies and they aren’t linear. What this ultimately means is that you can run into powerful enemies before you’re ready to face them, which I did quite often. They aren’t impossible to take down, but if you’re not properly leveled or if you don’t have the right items, the battles can become frustrating. The game gives you a chance and tries its best to put you in winnable situations, but it’s not perfect in its execution.
Everything combined, the game provides your brain with plenty to think about underneath the somewhat shallow (respectfully) top-soil. That’s what you want out of this turn-based Rogue-like RPG. You want more, but you never want to feel like you need a PhD to understand it. These are the type of games you can come back to over and over again, which is certainly something I will be doing later on this holiday season with Star Renegades.
Before wrapping this up, I have to give huge props to the game’s presentation. The art style is pixelated and feels very Dragon Force mid-90s, which I adore. The action sequences are over-the-top in the best of ways, and the music…good GOD…the music is an electronic, bass-driven masterpiece. Related to the music, I’m not sure I enjoyed a set of sound effects before as much as I did with this game. I know, I know, that is a ridiculous statement, but they’re well done and add to the atmosphere of the game. Anyway, the presentation is a treat during the fights and the maps are equally well done with a forced depth of field to make the scenery very pleasant and visually active.
Star Renegades is an impressive game that is easy to start and will keep you playing with its strategic depth.
