Combat goes beyond jank and into the realm of generally pretty rubbish. Before this, the game had a fair amount of janky charm. Here Comes The JankĬombat is where Galaxy Squad truly lost me. Most of the time, however, you get thrown into combat. Do you rescue slaves from their traders, or do you take the bribe? Do you murder some nobody floating around minding their own business, or do you give him a hand? Sometimes there is no narrative, sometimes you just bump into a resource sink or space station. These could be narratively clunky moral decisions that have little impact, but a bunch of head-canon implications. The map is split into all manner of randomly generated nodes and galactic pathways that lead to randomly generated encounters. You can’t linger in any one corner of the galaxy for long, so picking and choosing your route, and what quests you want to complete, becomes increasingly important. This aura of death, similar to FTL, is what drives you forward. Gameplay-wise this manifests as an ever-expanding danger zone that will eventually cover the whole galactic map you are trying to explore. The main story has you, a band of criminals, trying to escape the Federation – essentially the galactic government who also just so happen to be a band of legally sound criminals. It’s clear the developers aren’t native English speakers, and there are grammatical and structural errors in just about every sentence. Whilst the act of doing quests is a bit bland mechanically – most being fetch related – there is some real charm put into the writing. Galaxy Squad also has near-endless sidequests, such as finding space gubbins to fix a robot prostitute’s previously dented fleshlight, if you catch my drift. Many missions offer branching story paths, and this leads to a handful of potential endings. The plot is split across roughly six missions and takes about two hours to complete. It may not seem like it at first, but Galaxy Squad has a focus on story that few games in the Roguelike genre have. Once you’ve done all that and picked your difficulty, the game begins. Ships have clearly defined strengths and weaknesses and bonuses range from starting with a fist full of dollars or being hardened veterans. Most notably picking your ship and your starting bonus. Before you even get to see 13 Kathy Smack-o’s running around a futuristic metropolis, you need to do some more pregame stuff. It’s rather difficult to grow attached to your band of misfits when every misfit looks like your band, you know? In the opening cutscene of the game, I could have sworn I saw at least two of my formerly unique characters just chilling in the background – one of them even died. Honestly, the biggest issue with Galaxy Squad’s character creation is the fact the game seems to use this same system to generate the majority of its NPC’s. I fully expect her to star in a mid-nineties 3D Realms Build Engine FPS. Not going to lie, Kathy Smack-o is one of the greatest video game protagonist names of all time. Whilst undeniably an attachment barrier, one of my squaddies was named Kathy Smack-o. There are enough options here to make a pretty cool band of cats, but I was unable to figure out how to change names. You have three characters to customise, and three classes to choose from. Galaxy Squad opens up with a visually appealing, yet unfortunately basic character creation screen. Tummy woobles or not, however, Galaxy Squad is all ambition with very little dedication to execution. The premise itself isn’t necessarily unique, but it’s uncommon enough to get tingles. It wears its inspirations like a badge of honour, and damn, as a concept it had me rather giddy. Galaxy Squad barges into the room with a big ‘ol sticky note on its chest with nothing more than ‘FTL x XCOM’ hastily scrawled upon its manilla form. Disclaimer – A review code for Galaxy Squad was provided by Big Way Games.
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