Star Renegades

Flawed masterpiece. Very flawed.
Star Renegades's core gameplay is extremely solid. In particular, its turn-based timing system is quite innovative. You chain your attacks on a timeline, with the opportunity to kick the enemies attack out of the turn, and to reliably trigger critical strikes when targeting an enemy who will attack after you. This is a deep, engaging system with plenty of synergistic mechanics to back it up, and despite having played a lot of turn-based roguelites, I've not seen anything quite like it until Star Renegades.
That being said, this system is still plagued with occasional but devastating bugs. Chief among them is the unreliability of the shown timeline of attacks. Most of the time, it is perfectly accurate. But when an enemy isn't delayed from attacking (or killed), despite the game promising it will be, your run can end right there. All you need to lose a fight is one devastating attack you didn't mitigate because it wasn't supposed to happen.
Mechanics aside, there is another really serious problem which is the overall tone of the game, and its abysmal writing. Star Renegades welcomes you with a nice animated intro. Then the game itself shows itself, with gorgeous art that, much like the gameplay, is remarkably unique. And, completely at odds with everything else, the story (if you can even call it that) tries its utmost to be as derivative as humanly possible, and constantly makes fun of itself, yet without actually managing to be funny. Every single character is written as a boring caricature of some sci-fi archetype, no matter how convoluted. (like, there is a cackling star-destroying villain that has no business being in your team, but he is, with zero explanation) It's like someone in the dev team decided to utterly desecrate the work of everyone else by turning the game into a very shallow parody of itself.
If I had to guess, it's probably the same person who decided to then shoehorn Darkest Dungeon's camping system and Shadow of Mordor's nemesis system into the game. Neither has any business being here and nor brings anything of value. But because they are there, you will have to spend tedious time navigating menus and hands of cards to get critical information or measly bonuses instead of actually playing the game.
If you can tolerate all of this, you will find Star Renegades to still be a worthwhile experience in itself, with a great variety of available strategies. Special mention to the difficulty scale, which actually challenges you and makes you refine your gameplay and ponder every decision until you achieve real, tangible mastery of it all.

This thumbs up is a tentative 'maybe'.
The game is charming, especially the pixel art is nice to look at and the writing is not bad at all. But while Roguelike + Tactical RPG sounds enticing at first, it quickly turns into a slog, as many other reviewers have already pointed out. Progression is slow and runs take a VERY long time, which is a fundamental miscalculation.
This genre combination also leads to some other problems. While encounter design is more often than not well balanced, sometimes it just throws a curveball at you and you simply die. This is made worse by the inclusion of this "Shadow of War"-esque Nemesis system in the background, which, just like Shadow of War, is able to generate enemies which flat out just negate your entire build and strategy. In SoW this is fine, you can run away, do something else, or use the linear progression the game offers to become stronger. In Star Renegades, this RNG makes you lose a hours long run for no fault of your own.
There are simply too many RNG layers, the metagame is at the same time restrictive and grindy while also gatekeeping most of the fun Class variety and new items. The game forces you to make tough choices with your limited resources between Single target damage, AoE, different attack types, backrank and frontline reach attacks and more, but during many runs also expects you to have ALL of the capabilities ready to solve the combat puzzles. This restricts party compositions and leads to the afromentioned curveballs where if you encounter something that you simply could not prepare for, you will die a frustrating death.
And all of these negative points are sad due to how solid the general framework is. The deterministic combat system is fun, the classes and abilites are cool, the party banter is witty, the world is interesting and story is servicable. Massive Damage Inc. needs to revisit this formula, as I believe that they do have a talent for this sort of gameplay, they simply need to build on their experiences and feedback to turn this game into a snappy, well balanced Tactical Combat gem, or salvage the combat system and bring it into something more RPG-like, as other reviewers have said.
I bought this for 5 € and it was well worth it. I cannot recommend it for the full asking price, as the underlaying RNG layers make any effort of having fun into essentially gambling. On sale it is a fun and interesting project that I can recommend to at least try out.

Despite my interest in it, I put off getting this game for a long time because I had always heard that it's punishingly difficult, unfair, and full of bugs. Finally got it and WOW, it's so good and easily exceeded all of my expectations! Yes it's tough, but I like a tough roguelite. It does take some time to learn the game and the tutorial is not great, but there are excellent guides out there and once you understand how everything works (especially time manipulation) the game really starts to flow and becomes a lot of fun. If you have any interest at all I'd recommend giving it a try!

A goal in every roguelike game is to feel like you've "broken" the game due to a variety of factors, planned and unplanned, coming together as best as you can cobble them, into something that's hopefully very powerful. Star Renegades achieves this feeling of power, and of breaking the game, but it feels a bit different. It's not all-out balls to the wall slugfest as you steamroll enemies (although as you get stronger you can certainly make short work of basic fights) but rather a cerebral exertion that falls into a rhythm and feels a bit like a dance. Break that guy's timeline so this person can use this skill safely so that next turn you can set up an AOE break. Tank this hit with defend so that other people on your team are free to stack staggers culminating in your sniper landing a killshot on that guy for maximum damage. That's a very real thing by the way. Some games reward an aggressive approach. This is not one of them. Defending, tanking, taunting and redirecting or avoiding damage via breaks are all very important, and arguably more important than doing the most damage possible, every turn. It captures a similar feeling to Into The Breach, where you turn what initially looks disastrous into a much better scenario with methodical applications of staggers and statuses.
Speaking of statuses, this game will not hold your hand. There is a lot to learn, and often it takes being decimated by a specific status or skill to understand exactly how to prioritize it in terms of what to allow and what to stave off. Enemies have modifiers that they will never announce, and require you to look at them individually or just find out the hard way. Case in point, some enemies are immune to taunt. Which never matters, until you go to taunt them and spend the action and their target does not change. Oops. Despite all this, succeeding often makes me feel like I'm just that much smarter than the computer, which is a fun feeling.
The music is actually pretty catchy, certainly not invasive or annoying. The graphics, despite being intentionally pixelated, are quite gorgeous in the level of detail and the multiple layers of it that several battlefields display at the same time. Some of the animations are questionable, but this game does not take itself seriously and that shows the moment you make it past the main menu. There is a little jank in your movement, requring oddly precise clicks to navigate some terrain with a mouse, but with a controller there is an added element of the game just possibly deciding "You live in that direction now" and endlessly going there until you force quit. Probably the only recurring bug I've encountered, but it's always between battles and only ever irritating when you've just claimed new gear, as the gear is randomized every instance, not predetermined in a seed - so that awesome sword you got might be a lame implant next time. A minor gripe but one that's worth mentioning.
The writing is silly and the story is just there to justify the roguelike nature of the game. Conversations between squadmates overflow with tongue in cheek humour and are decent for worldbuilding, but by the time you've played for 100 hours you've seen everything there is to see about that random question mark beside that building. The only conversations I have yet to discover are specific interactions between characters as you progress their relationships. Oh right, that's a thing too. You spend 3 days on a planet picking your way across it and trying to be as efficient as possible in the gains you make, but between them are nights at the campfire. There is a mild element of deckbuilding, where you have limited actions, affection points, and various temporary (or in rare cases permanent) effects that will benefit you for X following battles. As you advance these relationships, each character brings their own unique stat modifier (the guy who's best at staggers gives whoever he's close with more staggers, the shield-based tank gives more base shield...etc) and later combine effects into a 1-off "combo" that is a fusion of one or more of each character's abilities. Get them closer, and certain combinations will produce offspring that are unique in their stats and ability orrders/choices. There's a lot left to unlock for me even now, in that sense.
Finally...we need to address the length. Each campaign, if you will, can go several hours easily. It's not fair to call it a run, because a run lasts an hour. These are mini campaigns. Personally I don't mind this design but I know that it won't be for everyone - the typical roguelike is expected to be somewhere between 30 and 90 minutes a run, at the outside. This can and will double that. Now you know.
All this to say...it's a game I can't put down. And with what I have left to unlock, and the Entropy levels left to beat, even if I move to other games...I'll be back to this one.

Short review after doing the game on 3 runs (finished extreme): a rogue-lite multi run turn based RPG with a classic side view battle system.

Pros:
- Decent pixel art style both for the environments and characters
- Main attraction of the game are the multiple rogue-lite runs you will do, after you complete the campaign you can start again at a higher difficulty. This is not a normal new game plus like in other RPG as here all of the game systems support this (you unlock new characters, one new area and boss, weapons/items, perks, progression system, skills per run that you can use in your new runs)
- Great turn based combat system utilizing a break, critical and stagger system (certain attacks break enemy characters which means they forfeit their turn, critical attacks get extra damage and abilities and stagger delays the enemy attacks, using these systems is beneficial and mandatory in later runs)
- Decent amount of enemies and bosses (you will not be fighting many per run, about 100 however all of the fights are strategic and long)
- Good weapon/itemization system allowing for many builds

Cons:
- Lackluster main story and barely and side content
- Too few different regions makes multiple runs fell the same, not enough variety
- The path system of your party in the world areas is broken and dumb

For a classic turn based RPG fan this game will not do much because of its poor story, side content and world exploration however for a turn based battle and rogue-lite fan this game will tick all the right boxes because there are not many of these kind of games out there so i can recommend this game to them.

Pretty decent roguelike overall. The characters are interesting and varied, the story is really cool, the world building is rad. The battle system is tight and well done. And the progeny system is a cool way to unlock new characters. Definitely recommend if it goes on sale, I've been having a good time.
The game feels good overall but it's clear it didn't quite have enough time to cook. It's full of bugs, balancing issues, difficulty is too brutal considering the levels of rng, certain areas and bosses are pointless and it's painfully slow at times. Needs a lot more QoL changes but it's clear the devs have moved on.
Examples:
- There is a bug every time you come back from looking around the map that has a chance to softlock the entire game.
- Abomination (optional boss) gives nothing upon defeat, in fact that whole planet should be avoided entirely.
- Most synergies just aren't viable.
- Combo skills are underwhelming and basically not worth using.
- Buffs that come up extremely often don't do anything for all but like 2 characters maybe (regen shields+++) and places where they should work, they don't.
- RNG is your biggest enemy and there's no sort of refresh system if you get screwed on rewards.
- Unlocks are underwhelming and the equipment all kind of feels mostly the same
- Predictions are wrong a lot of the time and don't account for a lot of moves
- Mechanics are poorly explained in descriptions and don't display anything in predictions
This is one of those games that really suffers from the dev mentality of limiting what you can do generally. You're kind of meant to grasp at little peanuts of efficiency and power while you struggle every step of the way. And while that keeps the difficulty high no matter what you're strategy is, it also just kind of makes everything feel underwhelming and same-y. And in a game that's heavily reliant on luck, your runs can just get tanked for nothing basically. Which is made even worse by just how long a single run can take.
Either way, great game. Needs a complete overhaul on equipment buffs / general balancing. Refresh mechanic of some kind. General QoL with skipping repeated dialogue and speeding gameplay up. And I feel like they really missed an opportunity on the progeny. I was stoked to find out why bandit+robot = four-armed assassin but there's literally nothing to explain it. Did they adopt her? Train her? Surrogate? No clue

Picked this game up on a whim but it's fantastic. Great concept, really cool art style and a decent story on top. Basically I do not really have anything negative to say. If had to, I'd say the movement can be a bit wonky and the night time loot collecting is a bit of time waster. But really really minor points in an otherwise 9/10 game!