Rebelstar Tactical Command

[Tabonga | 2,314]

This is a somewhat obscure game for the GBA.  It is a small squad based game where you pick weapons for your characters (most of them are only available in limited quantities) and fight a variety of different types of aliens who like to hide behind things and take pot shots at you. The game is moderately challenging (mostly in figuring out how to use the terrain to avoid being potted by said aliens).  It is not terribly deep nor long but serves the need if you are looking for some "light" time filler game play.  It has one kind of neat game play idea - if one of your squad gets potted they will come back  next battle - but any equipment they had stays on the battlefield - so it behooves you to send someone else to pillage the corpse.  One of the game mechanics is that the more equipment you are carrying the fewer action/movement points you have available so there is a cost to retrieving the booty. 

One big drawback is that there is virtually no replay value - there seem to be no secrets, the characters all have a  slight specialty with the weapons - so you wind up giving them the same weapons.  The aliens pretty much act the same way each time. 

Not a terribly great game but not greatly terrible either.  

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by Tabonga

[noiseredux | 232]

just discovered this club, and glad to see appreciation for Rebelstar: Tactical Command. I played this back in the day and had a blast with it. The draw for me was that it was created by Julian Gallop, creator of the original X-COM series. And while I'm pleased as punch that XCOM 2 is finally making its way to Switch, there was a time when Rebelstar was the closest thing I had to a portable X-COM game.

As a heads up, Gallop also made a pseudo-sequel to this game in the form of Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars on 3DS. It's.... not as good as Rebelstar to be honest. But it's still an interesting game, and again, served as another sorta replacement for portable XCOM at one time.

[Tabonga | 2,314]

It certainly tends to be an overlooked game.   I think I read a blurb about it in Nintendo Power shortly before it was released.