Star Renegades review

Reviewed on: PC

Parallel universes, giant robots, aliens, and planets one step from being destroyed, and only you can save them. That is just the icing on the wonderful cake you find in Star Renegades, a turn-based RPG with rogue-like elements that surprised me a lot.

Star Renegades tells the story of a group of renegades fighting an intergalactic evil that wants to dominate all realities of the multiverse. Each attacked universe is a small campaign that lasts about 5 hours, at the end of which you have points you can invest in improving your units, getting stronger equipment, among other bonuses, which will make your next campaign a little different. I think it is great when a game implements rogue-like mechanics into the story, and Star Renegades does it masterfully.

Most of your time with Star Renegades is spent in battle, and it happens turn by turn and in a “deterministic” way, as the game itself defines it. That means there is no randomness in the game: there are no chances of missing or hitting, chances of critical attacks, etc. All the numbers for health, resistance, damage and other effects caused by attacks are right there. The game goes further: it clearly shows you the attacks each enemy will make that turn, so your responsibility is to respond accordingly.

It may seem that this makes the game easy or dull, but in practice that is not what happens. Your team is made up, at the start, of three characters, growing to up to six over the course of the campaign, and each character has different classes, with several possible attacks and abilities.

Facing the various types of damage, the various effects, and each enemy’s weaknesses and resistances would already be quite hard, but the whole combat system revolves around a “timeline”: fast moves happen earlier and slow ones come later on this line. That means that if you know an enemy will land a fast hit and you attacked with a slower one, the mistake was yours, and whenever someone attacks a target that has not yet acted that turn, the attack is more powerful. Manipulating this timeline becomes your main mission during combat, since your attacks can change the position of the opponent’s abilities. It is a complex system, full of details I don’t even have time to write here, but which the game explains very well in its quick tutorials.
Outside of combat, the renegades can acquire new weapons by finding alien technology chests, and gather around a campfire to swap stories about the latest battles, which raises the level of camaraderie between the characters and unlocks new combos, super-powerful special attacks used by two characters at the same time and which can be used only once per battle. Star Renegades flows very well from one battle to another, keeping the game interesting.

Star Renegades is not only an interesting RPG with a cool premise and an excellent combat system, but also a beautiful game. The pixel art combined with the many colorful and fluid visual effects reminded me a lot of one of the most beautiful games of recent years: Octopath Traveler. On the audiovisual side, just like in gameplay, Star Renegades does not disappoint.

Star Renegades is, therefore, phenomenal, standing out as a great turn-based RPG. Its difficulty is just right, and each victory or defeat will be completely thanks to your skill at the game, for better or worse. In addition, with each campaign lasting about five hours and the game urging you to always start a new campaign to use the new advantages acquired at the end of the last one, Star Renegades is the kind of game that, if you enjoy the genre, will keep you busy for dozens or even hundreds of hours. And the game is on Game Pass, so download it right now and see for yourself.