Star Renegades

Imagine combining the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor with Darkest Dungeon's resting and exploration, Battle Chaser's combat, and Fire Emblem style relationships.
All wrapped up in a roguelike.

I'll be looking at this game from the perspective of an SRPG vet, including Fire Emblem, DD, XCOM, etc.
-VISUALS-
This game is a treat.
There really is no other way to say it, I'm not sure pixel art and pixel art animation has ever been done better. The subtle 3D effects on certain aspects just makes it all the better. The environments, both out of battle and in it, are stunning every time. The animations are overall very pleasant with some nice weight accentuated by the screen shake and camera movement.
Really no complaints here at all, there's even a speed up option by holding down space a la Monster Train.
-STORY/LORE-
It's fine, for what it is. Vague, and doesn't go too far, but certainly helps frame it and is interesting enough. Writing is fine, lots of one liners which may or may not land depending on your humor. I found them overall cheesy enough to laugh at the tongue-in-cheek nature of them, but it certainly won't be for everyone. Overall most likely the weakest aspect of the game.
-GAMEPLAY AND LOOP-
The real meat and potatoes. Star Renegade uses a timeline system, wherein you can manipulate enemy turns (up to a limit) in order to force them further and further back. The system itself is well implemented and easy to grasp thanks to a solid tutorial. If I had any complaints, it's honestly that the system is far too easily abusable depending on the composition. Balance will never be perfect in games like these, the Vestal is still a thing in Darkest Dungeon, but on my 2nd run ever I was able to lock the final boss of the game for about 8 turns in a row thanks to a combination of stuns (which are admittedly infrequent) and delays.
I'm not sure there's an easy fix, and there are 2 harder difficulties that I will be exploring which may crank up enemy stats enough to where this isn't as big of a deal, however unless the time delays are tuned in higher difficulties I doubt this will be the case as otherwise it is just raw stats. (NOTE: I wrote in an edit down below but the higher difficulties can and will kick your teeth in, this is not an easy game by any means. Do not be fooled by your first few runs.)
Being able to choose starting party composition (3/5 of your final squad) is a really nice boon, it keeps some randomness while allowing experimentation. I have not unlocked all characters at the time of writing (some require extensive relationship building, of which I've done one and am satisfied with both the system and the resulting character). The camping portion where this build up happens feels intuitive and easy to grasp, once again very Darkest Dungeon-esque with limited "points" to spend on skills. While the balance is very questionable for some of these, the overall impact was enjoyable and weighing building bonds for better passive bonuses vs. immediate camping buffs was the most enjoyable aspect.
Enemy design, visually, is incredible and the fights themselves are fun as well. Some fights are very much out of the power curve balance wise (2nd planet final boss comes to mind as a major spike that is hard to deal with, whereas the final boss just isn't enough of a threat when you bring certain strategies that I will withhold from this review to let you figure out that on your own). Overall a good time, nothing especially annoying, although enemies do tend to behave in a very similar way. Part of the learning curve for other games is prioritizing certain enemies who buff others, or debilitate you, and there is not nearly as much of that going on. Focus firing is still good, but who you focus fire more often than I would like comes down to "he hits harder so I hit him first".
Items are also mostly just okay, nothing really intriguing here but nothing offensive either. I would really enjoy seeing more specialized items that retool a character in some way, maybe towards the end showing items that are character specific that alter playstyles. Hero perks do this already somewhat, but mostly just reinforce what the character is already good at. Having an item radically alter a support class to be damage oriented in a drastic way would really help spice up runs.
-MUSIC-
I've seen some complaints about the music and I simply cannot agree, while I don't think it's a stand out in the way Darkest Dungeon is, the music is nonetheless excellent at setting the tone and does not get repetitive. Certainly not the best the genre has to offer but by no means the worst, and won't make you want to turn it off as I regularly have in many other games after some time.
-CONCLUSION-
Overall, even as a veteran of the genre, I think Star Renegades separates itself through a combination of visuals that are unique and striking, along with gameplay that has a good bit of depth to it. The ability to freely mix and match the majority of your party is a huge boon to making repeat runs interesting. Every character I've played with has been fun in their own way, and figuring out what characters synergize well is as always a joy in games like this. There are some notable flaws, namely in balancing variety of items/monsters, but those are long term, 50-100+ hour problems, not ones that will grate on you for your first, fifth, or tenth playthrough.
If you've read all this, thank you! I hope you enjoy the game as much as I do. I'll certainly be playing more and will edit my review accordingly if anything major changes.
EDIT: The higher difficulties are indeed quite hard. There's more teeth to this than I thought, definitely do not write this off as a cake walk. I really put my foot in my mouth with this one.

Video Review (3 Mins)
Written Review
Star Renegades has a great core combat system, with a variety of characters to spice up your runs.
The game is turn-based, and at the beginning of every round, you can see all your enemies' actions laid out on a timeline. Different attacks have different speeds that will determine when everyone carries out their moves. However, the game rewards you for attacking earlier.
If you manage to hit an enemy before they do their action, you will crit them, which on top of extra damage can come with other bonuses like stuns, or armor breaks, depending on what attack you used.
On top of that, you can push their action further down the timeline, which then gives ANOTHER one of your characters an opportunity to crit them, and possibly even push them further down the timeline.
Enemies build up a resistance to being pushed at some point, but if you manage to use the right attacks to push them far enough before that happens, you will "break" them, which means their turn will be skipped until next round.
This allows for such fun and strategic play. Attacks can be devastating in this game, especially from bosses or larger groups, so pushing enemies down the timeline can save your characters one round, while you quickly regen your shields or prepare a strong attack for next round.
There are a ton of status effects, weaknesses and strengths that different enemies have, and you can see it all when you inspect them.
In between combat, you are plopped into an overworld with randomly generated encounters. You can only visit a handful of them per day, so you need to plan your route efficiently. Some tiles might have loot, while others may have a strong mini-boss.
Killing enemies rewards you with DNA that you can upgrade your characters with. They get base stat increases, while allowing them to equip higher end gear, and earning them new moves or cards to use during camps.
Setting up a camp is what you do once you've depleted your moves for the day. Your characters sit around the fire, and prepare for the next day.
Here, you can use character cards on their companions. This can sometimes heal them, or give them buffs for the next battle. On top of that, it'll increase the relationship points between the two characters. As that happens, they earn permanent buffs, gain a combined attack, or even unlock a new progeny character for you to use.
Once you're done with the camp segment, you play out 2 more days before you have to fight the big bad boss for that specific planet.
Bosses come with randomized traits, including things like weaknesses to specific attacks, or becoming enraged if you break their armor, for example.
After you've completed one planet, you have a brief respite where you can use earned credits to purchase equipment from the store, and get to recruit new characters to your squad.
And that's the basic rhythm of the game.
Although there isn't a huge focus on story, it's present, and characters chatter all the time. Most of it is jokey, and got a chuckle out of me, while sometimes they sprinkle a bit of lore.
The main premise is that the bad guys are going from dimension to dimension, wiping out everyone. If you succeed or fail a run, your next run will take place in the next dimension in the crosshairs of the evil imperium.
As for the aesthetic, it speaks for itself, but it truly gorgeous. The pixel art is awesome, but the lighting is really what seals the deal. It makes everything pop out and just look stunning. The sound adds "oomph" too, with satisfying attacks sounding explosive.
Finally, the music is incredibly catchy and helps accompany the atmosphere.
Overall, I love the game. My only real issue is that UI can be a pain sometimes. Seeing enemy effects isn't as easy as it should be, being hidden behind two button presses, but that stops being a problem after you've learned the symbols more or less.
The rest of the game is very well crafted though. The gameplay is satisfying, and discovering new characters is exciting.
I highly recommend it!
Check out my Steam Curator for the best games on Steam!

A lot of good things going for it counteracted by some negative things. Hopefully the devs can build on this good base to perfect the game.
+ POSITIVES
+ a lot of customization. equip different weapons, devices, armor on up to 5 different heroes, and you can level heroes up to level 10, each level unlocking skills or temporary buffs.
+ replayability with different heroes, and if you increase their relationship from previous runs they create progeny heroes
+ cool persistent lives of enemies and heroes. if you die to an enemy unit ending your run, the game promoted the enemy and you meet it next run. I've only beat it once, but cool to unlock heroes and their progeny (lol)
+ tactics matter and you're heavily punished for incorrect plays. deciding order of attacks on timeline, inspecting enemy traits, weaknesses, strengths goes a long way, selecting the correct skills and targetting the correct enemies is important
+ each hero has multiple skills that are useful in different situations.
- NEGATIVES
-UI is overcrowded. overlapping hero models made it harder to select heros, determine where enemy attacks were targetted, and it got worse later in the game with more heroes on your team and more enemies
- no explanation of any statuses and effects of items, skills, units and what they do. they dont have a complete wiki for the game either
- item shops could be improved. they give you 3 options. at least one of the items have throwaway stats (e.g. sword that goes on heavy attack hero, buffing light attacks). items are usually higher level than current hero levels, which makes you stockpile DNA (and delay levelling) until you find item chest so you can see the item you want to buy then level that hero. what should be enjoyable is sometimes annoying
- camping system didn't feel fleshed out, camping cards give temporary buffs, but you also want to send cards to and from specific heroes to improve relationships. sometimes i felt just spamming cards to build the relationship instead of caring for which buffs they are; the only cards i really cared about targetting was healing cards
-map movement was clunky, often get stuck on autopathing around map
I would recommend it if you enjoy these types of rogue-lite RPG games, its inspired by games like Darkest Dungeon. If you like to replay roguelites, I'm sure you'll get your moneys worth unlocking (I heard) 40+ heroes/progeny. But if you're on the fence and only buy one game a year, might pass for now based on price and see how much they update (they mentioned future free DLC, but lets see).

First playthrough completed in a little under 7 hours. Here's my thoughts so far!
Pros:
Charming retro visuals and soundtrack!
In addition to the rogue-like element of having to restart a playthrough when your party wipes, there’s additional replayability in the form of the bosses and overlords
Interesting dialogue between characters that change gradually change as they become more fond of one another over the course of a playthrough
Intuitive turn-based combat with an emphasis on order of attack- Your attacks will automatically CRIT (dealing additional damage and often devastating effects) against enemies that you strike before they can hit you
Wide variety of characters and compositions that can make every playthrough feel different
Cons:
Despite the variety in characters as stated above, combat gives a serious edge to striking before your adversaries can attack. Spamming stuns and attacks that can stagger will allow your team to constantly crit, almost to the point of trivializing basic encounters and even some boss fights
The gameplay loop can be tiresome and the only thing that changes between worlds are the enemies and scenery. It would be great to see environmental effects or something similar that could provide strategic benefits or detriments depending on if you play around it!
Items and gear mainly give stat buffs or cause status effects, with little individuality even between the various weapon types. It’d be nice to see items that can change the role of a given character to spice up a run.
Overall, I’m rather neutral in opinion towards Star Renegade. If you love rogue-likes, turn-based combat, or save-the-galaxy-from-impending-doom science fiction, It’s worth the 25$ price tag... but if you’re not a big fan of the genre then you might be a little disappointed. I recommend watching a bit of gamplay and if you’re not entertained with the combat, then pass on this game, though hopefully you're here for the former reasons- in which case get it!

A turn based RPG with amazing pixel art and an incredible soundtrack. The battle system is fun, yet challenging and the overall game has a lot of things to be unlocked, so many, many hours of playtime are ahead of the player. And even though it seems easy at first, the game as a surprising depth and playing on the hardest difficulty will require some high level strategy.
An average playthrough will take 4-5 hours (if you are used to the game), so perfect length for a gaming session. And finally: look at all those pixels!

I have been waiting for this to release for so long. The devs made Halcyon 6 which is an amazing game. One of the best if not, the best in my opinion for its genre mix.
So onto Star Renegades.
It is a beautiful looking game.
Music is excellent. Gameplay mechanics are fun!
Story not sure yet. Dialogue is decent so far.
After a little more play time the story gets better after the tutorial and so does the dialogue.
Also of note the fight animations look great, some little details in each like Nodo's pistol twirling :D
It's gives me old school turn based RPG vibes but with faster combat. Also a new twist with the combo, crit and break system.
Solid game.