Our friend Stewart returns with another retro-review! This time he sets his sights on Star Wars: Rebellion! No, not the new FFG board game, but the classic PC game!
Star Wars: Rebellion
Star Wars: Rebellion or Supremacy (depending on which side of the pond you’re from) was a RTS/4x hybrid released in 1998. Set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, the player would control either the rebellion or Empire in their attempt to free or control the galaxy.
Since discovering it in 2004 I have been attempting to play this game every few years and each time I would try to play it, I would be rebuffed by some crazy management system. However, now writing for The Jodo Cast Retro Review segment I was determined to understand and review a game no-one really knows or cares about!
I downloaded the game from Good Old Games and it ran perfectly. When it comes to really old games, GOG is the best place to get them as they are optimised for modern machines, unlike Steam who will just sell you the raw 1998 version. I also printed off the 170 page manual as a substitute for Nightquil and to gain a better understanding of the game rules…but mostly for the Nightquil (The things I do for this website…). Unfortunately, this reading was pretty much mandatory as the in-game tutorial was terrible.
You’ll spend most of your time looking at a galaxy map similar to CIV or Total War; controlling fleet/troop movements, system diplomacy and construction orders, all of which sounds pretty awesome but unfortunately it’s not. The game is let down in some vital areas which could have been solved very easily. The main complaint I have is the currency system, it’s baffling. Each system contains minerals which can be mined and some systems might already have a few mines present but there is no way you can tell how much currency the mines output or how quickly the minerals will run out, or if they will at all? Who knows! The best thing to do in pretty much any strategy game is maximise your currency output, so I’ll just build the maximum amount of mines right? Well… it’s a bit more difficult than that…
Let’s say I have liberated the back-water planet of Hoth as the mighty Imperials and I wanted to build an outpost so the pesky rebels can’t return. I have taken the planet by force, my fleet of Star Destroyers hang in orbit. I cannot build anything, recruit any units, or even mine any resources. Why? Because the planet does not house a construction yard, therefore I have to build a new construction yard at the nearest construction yard on a different system and transport it through hyperspace to Hoth. Building anything in this game takes an inordinate amount of time and traveling through hyperspace can take weeks, months, even years of in-game time.
So it has been a year but I finally have my construction yard set up, surely I can start constructing mines, defences, etc now? Well the estimated build time on this planet is so long, I shouldn’t even have bothered starting construction as I will have already lost the game by the time it would have been completed. I also have no idea how much each building will cost to construct or if it is advantageous to do so. See where I am going with this?
I think the developer intended for the player to build-up systems that already contain key structures from the beginning of the game, so you would end up with dedicated ‘building fabrication’, ‘fleet manufacture’ and ‘Infantry recruitment’ systems, deploying units through hyperspace from these key locations but the problem is that hyperspace travel is so slow in this game, it is not effective.
There are even more arbitrary system drawbacks that would stop me colonising Hoth which I don’t particularly want to go into such as energy consumption and building limits, as-well as public perception of the Empire, even though there is no population on Hoth.
But it’s not all bad, honest! The best thing about the game is the depth of lore contained within it; hundreds of star systems, 60ish individual characters and an incredible amount of units. This game is just a good history lesson if nothing else. It has its own In-game encyclopaedia which is where I spent most of my time after giving up. Noghri Death Commandos! Who remembers those guys? No-one, but this game has ‘em!
There is a RTS fleet combat segment when two fleets engage on the galaxy map but unfortunately it’s so primitive it’s unplayable. The 1998 3D graphics are so bad, I didn’t include a screenshot to save your eyes.
In conclusion, this game has defeated me again and probably for the last time. I will just look at this review in the future when I feel like playing it again.
I wanted to enjoy this game so badly; A galaxy wide 4x turn based Star Wars game? Who doesn’t want that? It’s just a shame the developer stumbled at a few simple hurdles.
It’s £4/$7 on GOG at the moment so try it out if you want to try and play a failed experiment.
Let me know what you think of Rebellion and which game you would like me to review next in the comments section below.
It is interesting to hear a review on a game that consumed me at different points in my life. I bought a Windows 98 computer for all my old games for $30 off ebay ($36 shipping). It runs beautifully for my purposes since I have tons of old games.
Anyway, Rebellion was one of the games that I came back to every couple years as you did. I can see your frustrations with the management system but I guess in my youth I wasn’t put off by the imprecise nature of it so I let it slide when I revisit the game. I usually just engage the option to allow the AI to control my garrisons as well as my resource buildings. It does a good job distributing and growing your economy on its own – I never felt that micromanaging that piece paid dividends. My focus was more on fleet creation and production efficiency. As you mentioned, it is much easier to ‘build-up’ a system that already has some infrastructure than it is to decide Hoth is going to be a balanced system with mines, construction yards, and troop facilities. This makes you somewhat vulnerable to ‘random’ raids by the opposing faction (all eggs in one basket) so you try to have some redundancy and space them out to reduce the travel time.
Something that you didn’t touch upon in your article was the whole ‘missions’ aspect of the unique characters. You can recruit new personnel and send them to sabotage, kidnap, spy, research, or leadership roles. I found this part of the game quite interesting. Coupled with the importance of strong fleets, it was fun to blockade a system then dismantle its defenses with your characters.
There were certainly issues with the game but it has a special place in my heart.