Star Shift Rebellion Reviews

Another great entry in the star shift universe

Fair warning, while it's a fun game, it's VERY short for traditional RPG fans. It's also a bit harder than what you may be used to in the early game, even on normal difficulty. Not unreasonably so, but it definitely doesn't hold your hand or pull any punches because it's the beginning of the game. Star Shift Origins was a tech demo, conceptually. Even shorter than this, and actually a little easy. Star Shift Rebellion is proof of concept for this dev team. And it's a darn good concept. It isn't going to revolutionize RPGs, but it's got enough old school in its DNA to be familiar, while inject enough fun and interesting takes on a lot of staples in the genre to make it new and exciting. There are no glaring issues of any kind (or at least none I came across), and while the story is a LITTLE Saturday Cartoons villain-y, it's pretty adult in it's presentation. People do die, and graphically, and not just to be edgy. There are some things I think could do with some improvement, but overall I have no actual complaints, and nothing I noticed needed any MAJOR rebalancing... EXCEPT: giving the MC "Brain Drain" on the class that can automatically regen their version of MP is ACTUALLY broken. And while it takes a heavy investment on another character, having 2 of them that can rocket through skill trees is actually a little absurd. The good: +Story +Leveling (very non-standard approach, love it) +Combat +Soundtrack +Art Cons: -Full access to every possible piece of equipment (except the LITERAL endgame weapons) from the very first "town" with an INCREDIBLY fast and easy way to make the money to buy everything actually makes the game very easy. Paired with the ridiculously fast "leveling" you can do with the MC and you can actually cheese the game super hard without meaning to. -Explanations are pretty much non-existent. If you're a RPG veteran, other than minor adjustments to systems you're familiar with but are called something else, there's no major hurdles to get over. However, this is NOT for players new to the genre. -Gear is not very well explained, and since it takes pretty hefty "exp" investments to make a character specialize in a weapon, you can absolutely waste points. And past a certain point, combat encounters are hard limited, so you can easily mess that up. It's not going to "ruin" a character, but it does feel wasteful when clearer indicators on what stats do what could easily make that avoidable. -Short. I mean REALLY short. Origins, this teams "first" title in this... trilogy? was shorter, but, again, for vets of the genre, this is going to feel like a set up than an actual game. I don't think this is a negative in that it's BAD, just that it's definitely going to be something that, understandably, would keep some people from spending the money on it. -The "strategy" layer. It's not bad, but it's INCREDIBLY easy, and I was NOT expecting that. It makes sense, it'd be a shame to be stuck in one of those combats when you actually can't affect anything about them outside of what orders you give in the combat itself, but I don't know if it's possible to fail all but 1 of them, and that 1 it would still be difficult to fail it. I tend to enjoy games that mix genres, but because it feels like it's only included for story elements AND to be able to claim it's MORE than just an RPG, I think it would be better to remove those elements and focus that time and effort on the RPG part of the game... OR make those elements more integral to the game by using some kind of systems that either tie back to the other parts so there's payoff in some respects (story choices give you more or less units, or stronger/weaker ones, etc.). It doesn't actively hurt the game in any way, but it definitely feels like it's ancillary rather than essential. I know I laid out some pretty long criticisms, but they're HYPER specific, and despite the fact that I have criticisms to make, I really don't think anything I'm giving feedback on harms the game in ANY way other than diverting attention and focus away from the other elements. Which I think are actually very well done, again, considering the fact that it's an indie dev team. I enjoyed Origins and was happy to leave a positive review. I enjoyed Rebellion and am happy to leave a positive review. And I'm eagerly looking forward to the 3rd title and expect more of the same.

Similar to the previous installment, the game is a fun, engaging, classic JRPG flavor but with a decent sci fi story and an interesting combat system. I appreciated that the 'dungeons' in this installment were shorter and more sweet. JRPG combat is a chore at the best of times, and this knew when to move things along. That said, I felt that some things could have been improved: You spend more time shopping to outfit your 7 member party that the game almost feels like it's a shopping simulator. Why can't you see what equipment your charaters have while comparing what the vendor is selling is a mystery. Yes it shows you how the stats would change, but I can't remember if party member #5 of group 2 has an antimatter rifle or a graviton pistol without backing out to look. Repeat this for 10-12 pieces of equipment for each party member and it becomes more than an inconvenience. For all the time you spend shopping, this would have been a significant quality of life improvement. Would recommend, looking forward to next installment.

I'm nowhere close to done with this yet but let me just say that if you're a fan of SNES era JRPG's, Tactics based RPGs, SRPGs, Ukranian RPG's (the spicy kind lol), rebel insurgencies fighting against authoritarian genocidal regimes (this really escalated quickly didn't it?), then this is criminally under-priced for the value proposition. My only 'complaint' with it so far is not even a real complaint worth sharing, a certain frequently used word choice that's jarring to me is all, so i'm not even going to give that complaint a chance to breathe on it's own here. Buy the game. if you're getting it at time of writing this i'd almost say wait til it's full price again because at a full price of $7.99 i couldn't even go see Dune Part 2 right now.

i never expected this to be soooo good. don't usually leave reviews but man i had to for this one.

[h1]Not Those Orcs[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] The good news is that there is some more individual characterization for some of the Scrap Springs Division party members, since many of them suffered due to the ESA's tyranny. It's a good way to handle both the macro story of the ESA and the micro story of individual characters, and motivates the player to fight the ESA even harder. Chronus-13's interactions with the party are weird, since it doesn't seem to mind at all about being ostracized by everyone and it generally acts as a medium for Zeron to communicate with everyone else. This might be intentional, since Krax likely didn't want it to develop too much free will and run off with the important Molarian data. Personally, I would have found it more interesting if Chronus did have more agency and question which side it wants to remain loyal to, since it is essentially treated as a tool even by the good guys. It would add a lot more weight to [spoiler]its digital death in the ending of the game[/spoiler]. As for the macro plot, we get more context about how Carol Everson [spoiler]got blamed for the Raxion II incident, and how Novus went along with the ESA in framing her. We also get to see how the ESA propaganda works due to the news networks framing the story to suit the country's agenda, which is eerily similar to the real life war on terror. Personally, I think the news segments are a good way to show what each country or faction expects their citizens to believe. It's also a good callback to the optional NBN event in Origins, where the player themselves could have been easily suckered by the pro-Novus documentary[/spoiler]. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game is mechanically very similar to Origins. However, there are some new additions that greatly affect the balance. * First of all, there are both one-time and respawning enemies, and taking advantage of the latter means the player can reach the party's power ceiling much more efficiently. * Shops now have an accessory that can grant a passive speed buff with a power penalty, with the latter not actually mattering due to how power cost scales to max power anyways. This is an excellent placeholder until the user can learn the temporal acceleration passive from their own skill tree. * There are now robot party members, who use an entirely different skill tree. They cannot benefit from the brain drain series of skills nor can they use the more broken non-robot equipment, but their ceiling is incredibly high due to their threadripping skill tree, which can grant them three actions a turn. They do have some weaknesses though, since they require specialized synthetic healing methods and they are very weak to electricity by default. Like before, every humanoid character has very similar skill trees, though due to the higher enemy power ceiling, it becomes even more obvious that the Technician class is the best one. They have power/charge regen as well as passives for power attack, making them excellent at pretty much every role in the game, though their best role is to refill the party's power/charge as required. While their OPness is somewhat acceptable in this game, in the main "Suikoden"-like game, they will definitely need to be nerfed to prevent the player from just running through the game with a party full of infinitely recharging Technicians. The only non-Technician class that stands out is the Combatant, since they have group buffs that surpass the generic support drones. As for enemies, the first dungeon of this game is more beginner friendly than Origins, since it's smaller, has mob sizes of 1, and has a boss with an easy alternate win condition, which makes it doable on normal. Afterwards, you get access to the shop to properly prepare for the real challenges of the game. However, enemies also require you to learn the electric and antimatter damage types, since many of them will easily tank Matcon Scythe attack spam. Fortunately, if you have the brain drain series of skills, you can easily farm enough knowledge points to learn every damage type you might need. One thing that really tips the scales in the favor of the player is that shops have almost all available equipment tiers available from the start, instead of unlocking progressively. This means if you farm enough money through criminal skills or Blackjack gambling, you can make a fully decked out team before the first true boss of the game and clobber them even on very hard. Shops for humanoid equipment are also fairly frequent, though robot shops are much rarer for some reason, so make sure to take full advantage of the latter before making any story progress. The only things truly locked behind story progress are [spoiler]the far futuristic weapons in Time's Eclipse, but you probably don't need them for beating the final boss[/spoiler]. As for the infamous Doppelganger armor, I think something like this should be locked behind challenging late game sidequests, since it seems like something that is too strong to simply be buyable from the start. Additionally, the temporal acceleration passive should be similarly difficult to obtain, since increasing the characters' speed in an ATB game gives a huge advantage. Combining these two can completely break the game in half due to the player gaining a massive turn advantage even on the highest difficulty. Tactics battles are mostly the same as before, though I do find some maps easier to deal with than others due to the available space to maneuver in. One thing I did notice is that for some battles, you have more control over your units' starting positions than others, which can be bad if the game starts off your allied units facing away from the enemy. Also, like before, tactics battles do not have the same extremely high preparation ceiling as regular battles, so I stuck to normal mode with these. One new addition are cyberspace battles, which are basically regular battles but with a more limited skill tree and item loadout. This time, the skill trees have even less individuality and a fairly low ceiling, so I stuck with normal mode for these. [h2]Verdict[/h2] [i]ORC: We have supply issues because of the ESA's crackdown. Also ORC: We sell almost every tier of equipment in the game. Have fun.[/i] 7.5/10 The story is much better than in Origins and you get a better sense of what's at stake for those who fight against the ESA. I do wish Chronus-13 was more fleshed out, since it feels like the story couldn't decide if they wanted it to be a tool like the fully robotic party members or if they wanted Chronus-13 to truly be a main character. As for the gameplay, the way shop progress is handled, or lack thereof, makes it hard to find the balance between being underpowered like in Origins's first dungeon or grossly overpowered like my fully equipped team. Maybe it's better to treat this as a preview of the main game's potential power ceiling.

Super good! reminds me of phantasy star end of the millennium! needs some more level up aspects and more explore the universe! maybe that's there upcoming game or is this a 4x strategy

Tribute to classic JRPGs, very solid game adding to story of Star Shift Universe. Story holds game well (it is space opera with few interesting twists), battles are fast with a bit uneven spike (I found boss fight easy, compared to some story fights before). Game is quite linear, giving you ca 20 hours of fun. Recommended if you like old fashioned JRPG.

In two minds about this title so far. One one hand the story seems good, the characters are unique and interesting, the world seems engaging and reminds me of stories featured in Gundam, Red Alert, Cowboy Bebop etc. On the other, the game is VERY slow pace. I love games that take their time, unfold slowly or allow you to enjoy a new element one at a time, so this isn't always a bad thing, but when the tactical battles involving vehicles are slower on this PC game than when I run an old Fire emblem game off my phone, there is a problem. It grinds the flow of the game to a halt. I am all for harking back to other titles (Any Final Fantasy fans will be happy here), but that doesn't mean that you can't improve the speed, intuitiveness or restrictions of these old designs. Overall, I would love to delve further into this game, and hopefully will get the chance, but I cant see myself getting invested without some quality of life improvements to help smooth it out. Given how story driven it is, just having an auto button for the conversations for example would help immensely. Will check back on it periodically anyway and see how it develops. Would I recommend this game? It would seriously come down to how much you like playing older games, and how much time you have to play. Maybe there are reasons as to why these design choices were made, or there were restrictions on the developers, both things I can fully understand. If its simply that they wanted the game to feel like it sat amongst some of the classics of the genre though, that shouldn't mean in my opinion that players need to put up with the same issues games were throwing at us 30 years ago.

Pros: - Very well written science fiction story. It's got conspiracy, intrigue, time travel, space politics, tragic backstories, and neat characters. - 7 character party at once in battle [you almost never see that many in rpg games], somehow they've managed to pull it off here. There's also a total of 14 playable characters (or more?) I lost count. - A lot of customization choices with the skill trees, even compared to the previous game, you can specialize your characters any way you want and there's a lot of combinations. - Some tactical battles are thrown in, so it isn't only regular turn based battles either. - Some really cool cut-scenes. - The combat is fun and fast paced, can be challenging at times Cons: - It's kind of short. Around 10-15 hours I'd estimate. It ends just when it feels like it's warming up. We need more Star Shift. And we're in luck, 2024 looks like a Star Shift Marathon year. Looking forward to Freelancers and Legacy.