Star Renegades

A very solid rogue-lite with some of the most intriguing turn-based combat I've seen done with menus and rulers. The intricate balance of causing attack delays, stripping shields and armor, doing raw damage, and canceling enemy bonuses keeps the fighting interesting even after doing it for run after run after run. The characters are all quirky and feel very different to use, and although I like some more than others none of them felt remotely useless. The story is pretty engaging, and the artwork is edgy and fun. That said, I do have some nits to pick: -Dialogue: The thing about quirky characters is that this is a roguelike, meaning I play it over and over, meaning I have to hear the same very unique lines a dozen times. Some of the the same lines are even delivered by different player-controlled characters. This game needs more writing, in raw quantities. -Item rarity: There is no actual, conceptual item rarity, guys. Item quality is determined by level, but because it's linked to their (fake) rarity, items of a similar level will have the same (fake) rarity too. This means that you encounter "common" level 1 items at the very beginning, and ironically that means you see much fewer of them than "legendary" level 10 items by the end of a run, because you're at level 10 much longer than level 1. This is weird and unnecessary. -Progeny: This is a neat idea but feels underbaked. I assumed that I needed to have my characters fall in love to unlock new characters, but when I first accomplished this it just unlocked some recolors of old characters. I tried using them and their abilities were not very different from the parent version, and their dialogue was exactly the same. Kind of felt like a waste of time. Then later I actually DID unlock a new character, which actually felt interesting and fun and the devs should really have stuck with this. -Canceling buffs/debuffs: Can I do it or not? I see a bunch of little blue icons above my enemies and red enemies above myself. The abilities that say they can fix this don't seem to actually do so. Maybe I'm missing something. That's everything bad I have to say about Star Renegades. I had a lot of fun with this title and I'm sure you will too!