Star Renegades Review | The Best New Roguelike | Inspired by Final Fantasy X.
As turn based JRPGs mostly fell out of favor over the years, roguelikes have been steadily becoming more and more prominent. Star Renegades feels like a love letter to the former, while skillfully incorporating elements of the latter. Developed by Massive Damage, it’s an ambitious title that calls back to the likes of Final Fantasy X in a mechanical sense, while taking inspiration from Star Wars and Overwatch in its world building and character design.
Though I’m not much of a roguelike enthusiast, my interest was piqued when I noticed how the combat system appeared to borrow the general structure of Final Fantasy X’s combat timeline. After having the opportunity to play Star Renegades, I’m glad to have tried it out as it’s a title that has a lot to offer.
The game starts with a touching animated cutscene that sets the stage for the general conflict of the story. Surprisingly, said cutscene’s tone is notably discordant when placed alongside the rest of the game. Admittedly, had the rest of the game been so solemn and melancholic, it would’ve tonally dragged down the mechanically driven gameplay loop.
As the player will be starting over and over again, it was a wise choice to keep most character interactions lighthearted. The most admirable aspect of the story would have to be how well it contextualizes the roguelike elements of the game. Star Renegades has a story that involves dimension hopping and a consistent alien threat.
Your player character is essentially this hovering robot that jumps from one dimension to another in hopes of defeating alien invaders that are trying to rule over all the realities. Along with that, every defeat is just another dimension the player failed to save.
The elegance of this implementation is neat with regards to just how well it falls into place. Another strong point would have to be the characters. Each of them has their own profession, background, and quirks. I quite like their unique character designs that make them easily identifiable.
Along with that, there’s a relationship and offspring system similar to that of Fire Emblem Awakening, but set up in a roguelike structure. Star Renegades allows players to see how each character interacts with the rest of the cast. However, the dialogue feels restricted on an emotional level.
Sadly, the game has this impervious, cheerful and comedic tone that prevents any potential drama from taking place. Though it would’ve been far too dreary to make it tonally match the opening cutscene, the story could’ve benefited greatly from the occasional sad or serious moment.
The dialogue never carries any weight to it, making it feel like jokey filler. As a result, we never really get to see many facets of the playable cast. Regardless and maybe even luckily, the story takes a backseat to the gameplay. Star Renegades’ greatest asset is its gameplay.
An almost infinitely replayable combat system blesses the game with the kind of strong core gameplay loop required for a good roguelike. When I first started, I approached Star Renegades like your standard JRPG. On my third run, I reached the final boss for the first time and lost.
After a few more failed attempts at taking down the big bad and a little save scumming for scientific purposes I assure you, I realized that no matter how skillfully I played, having a suboptimal team composition or weak equipment makes winning nearly impossible.
At first, this revelation was disheartening, but then I realized that it was the point of the game. It’s worth noting that the final boss is way harder than anything else the game throws at you and for good reason. It’s basically the ultimate test that the rest of the game prepares the player for.
While most of the game needs to be flexible enough for many teams to get through, the final boss can only be taken down with a strong blend of luck, skill, and experimentation thus justifying Star Renegades’ roguelike elements. After realizing this, I was able to enjoy the game to its fullest.
Every run became a team building test drive. Each playable character functions uniquely in a mechanical sense that is reminds me of how Overwatch mechanically differentiates each character based on their roles. The availability of equipment, EXP, armor and shield upgrades, as well as team members are randomized for each playthrough.
Despite all of the luck involved, most of the time, there are decisions the player can make to push their team in the right direction. From picking between new recruits, planning out which enemies to take on, which path to choose, what characters to pair up, and even selecting equipment from treasure chests, the luck factor is tempered with player agency.
Prior to fighting the final boss, your team must liberate three planets from the Imperium Forces. Each planet has a behemoth boss fight after three days of exploration and is blocked off by barriers that can be breached using your robot. However, it only has three charges each day and at the end of the day, there is a nighttime camping session.
This is where the game allows your team members to bond eventually resulting in stat increases, character dialogue, and occasionally, the unlocking of a new character. After each defeat, Star Renegades does the standard roguelike thing where in-game progress carries over in small, subtle ways.
There’s a slow accumulation of upgrades including perks for each character, droid upgrades, as well as unlockable equipment and characters. This creates an engaging macro level incentive for repeat playthroughs and more variables for the player to experiment with.
Admittedly, happening to pair the right characters up in hopes of unlocking their offspring was like shooting in the dark. It would’ve been nice if the game were to somehow hint at who to pair up or something remotely helpful in that regard. Regardless, all of this is to set up the cream of the crop, the tactical, turn based combat system.
It’s crafted in such a way that incentivizes careful strategizing and planning ahead. There’s a lot going on under the hood that players will have to account for when planning out their victory. Team compositions greatly affect how the player will have to approach each battle and even the team’s equipment will alter what the best course of action is.
The more I played through the game, the more it appeared that each enemy encounter was a sort of puzzle contextualized as a fight. The biggest element to account for in Star Renegades’ combat is the timeline. Every attack has its own wind-up and when an attack lands before the target’s move does, a critical effect will occur.
These effects range from extra damage, weakening armor, delaying enemies, and the like. One of the most crucial things a player should do is to delay an enemy so much that their attack never takes place during the current timeline, resulting in what the game calls a “break”.
This essentially causes them to lose a turn thereby providing the player with a tactical edge. Even beyond that, there’s a limit to how many attacks can delay an enemy, which adds further to the complexities. Along with that, this combat system is only possible due to all the information provided to the player.
Star Renegades elegantly presents how each turn will play out without being overly confusing. Admittedly, there were times where the effects were obscured due to an overload of player attacks, but it never detracted much from the experience. The deterministic nature of the combat essentially has the player reacting to what the enemies will do next.
It even tells you how much damage you and your enemies are estimated to deal. If the actions of a turn result in the death of a character, the game kindly labels them with the killshot status. In another way, the planning out of attacks feels like you’re playing a cool new version of Chess.
Star Renegades is an impressive roguelike I didn’t realize I wanted until I finally gave it a shot. It’s a polished title that wears its inspirations on its sleeves and delivers a well crafted gameplay experience from beginning to end. The sharp blend of luck, skill, and perseverance needed to beat the game as well as the superb presentation kept me coming back for more.
Each playthrough rewards the player with subtle improvements along with a greater familiarity with how each character functions on a mechanical level. Without a doubt, Star Renegades is a quality title well worth putting your time into or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify all the time I’ve already spent on it.
