Galaxy Squad is a turn-based tactics game that blends the random events of FTL into the gameplay fundamentals of XCOM, topping both off with an aesthetically pleasing low-poly visual style and a story campaign that doesn’t waste your time. All of the mechanics at play here are intuitive and well balanced, which won’t be a surprise to anyone who’s followed the game since its original Early Access run; the developer of Galaxy Squad went utterly mad with the patching, solving problems with a speed and ferocity that puts other devs to shame, and that dedication shows through now that the game has been officially released. That’s not to say that there aren’t any issues here, because the universe/mission randomization appears to prioritize certain missions and area types that quickly become repetitive, and a lot of the English text could stand to go through a proofreading pass, but my love for the gameplay and pacing burns so brightly that it’s easy to overlook a couple of stray scuff marks.

Galaxy Squad has significant story branching and lots of awkward phrasing

When you first begin Galaxy Squad, the only mode available to you is the story campaign; additional items, character classes, and gameplay modes have to be manually unlocked with “Glory,” the persistent currency you earn by defeating enemies and finishing lots of missions. As such, the story mode is going to be everyone’s first stop, and it serves as a decent tutorial. There are two separate types of missions in Galaxy Squad‘s story campaign—randomized side missions and story missions that are set in stone. Randomly generated missions tend to be of the “save my child from pirates” or “kill someone so that I can escape” variety. You’re bound to see these repeating by your second playthrough, and they don’t act as side stories so much as jobs that you’re meant to have no emotional connection to. Strangely enough, NPCs also lack emotional connections to the subjects of their missions, and it’s not uncommon to tell someone that their friend is dead and have them respond with a “thanks so much!”

Story missions, on the other hand, contain a couple of branching points where you have to choose one course of action over another, and these choices can lead to significant changes in the story. There are four different arcs depending on the choices that you make in crucial situations, and they can result in losing a party member, dying at the end to the friends of angry space ghosts (no, seriously), or your party redeeming themselves after a life of crime and selfishness.

You play as a group of villains, though that’s arguably too simplistic of a classification in a world where the supposed good guys are arguably even worse. You’re mercenaries who are hired to steal a package from the “Federation,” a faction who owns the police and thus appears to be the de facto government in Galaxy Squad, by a wealthy character named Crian whose demeanor and means suggest some kind of crime boss. When the package itself cautions you about the dangers of delivering it and suggests a detour, you can choose whether to heed its warning or try to finish the job. Regardless of which path you take, though, you remain mercenaries in the side missions: if the hive mind faction and police faction are locked in combat when you arrive at a map node, you can choose to fire on both and loot their crispy remains without ever having to step foot in combat, which is certainly more efficient than waiting to challenge the victor like a good sport.

Most “yellow node” main missions are mandatory combat encounters that can’t be circumvented in the same way, but there are only 5-6 of them per playthrough. You’re also being chased by the Federation, represented by a red line that inches forward every time you move to a new node and results in a difficult encounter if it overtakes you, and this ensures that a playthrough lasts only 2 or so hours at most. This adds up as you explore the different story branches and their radically different outcomes, though, and before long you’ll have seen most of what the story has to offer and obtained enough Glory to unlock just about everything. The writing in general suffers from countless typos and a general sense that English wasn’t the developer’s first language, and the flippancy of mission-givers is so jarring that you’ll eventually stop reading the mission text before accepting jobs, but Galaxy Squad‘s solid pacing and story branches ensure that it’s replayable while never outlasting its welcome.

This is one of the few times I’ve seen randomization enhance an experience

Borrowing elements from 2012’s successful XCOM reboot is hardly unusual for a strategy game, and even incorporating node-based movement and FTL-style random events has been done before (in 2018’s Depth of Extinction, specifically). Still, I’d argue that Galaxy Squad combines all of these elements better than other such games; I’ve seen people complain that the game’s difficulty is both too forgiving and too punishing, which is usually a sign that it’s right in the sweet spot for most people. Personally, I found it a bit on the easy side until I maxed out the difficulty and rushed to the end while only half-prepared, but turn-based tactics games are easily my strongest genre, and there are certain class/skill/weapon combinations that can trivialize many encounters by doing 100-200 points of damage to enemies per turn. Of course, that presupposes that you’ll encounter certain weapons, which isn’t always a given. Everything in Galaxy Squad but the main story and your starting characters is randomized.

The makeup of the universe is random, the side missions are random, the recruitable characters are random, the items in shops are random, and even the events that can affect your resources in unexpected ways when you reach a new node are random. Ordinarily, I find a high degree of randomness to be grating, but it adds a welcome sense of tension to Galaxy Squad by ensuring that you won’t always find what you need. Improvising by focusing your build around the things you can control and hoping to find something more useful on your way to the next mission is more enjoyable than you’d expect, and this helps subsequent playthroughs to feel distinct.

You’re balancing three basic resources while traveling from node to node: money, energy, and fuel. Money and fuel are straightforward, with the former being earned by finishing side missions, and the latter being used up as you move from node to node. Fuel is cheap, so buying 50-60 units early on can keep it from being a problem for most of the game. Money is often tight, though, forcing you to take on side missions and sell off old items as you earn and find new ones. Energy is where things get truly interesting, however: you can install numerous modules into your ship that create and use up energy, and depending on the type of ship you select at the start, these can have significant effects. Purchasing photon cannons gives you free area-of-effect attacks that can be used during combat, and also opens up the ability to threaten and destroy enemies during map events. Another upgrade makes it possible to accept and turn in completed missions from your ship, eliminating the need to waste time returning to a space station. Eventually, you can even build something that gives your units traits, which are perks that can give them extra damage output or a chance of getting two turns per round in combat.

You have to build generators to support the energy expenditures of these modules, however, and it’s generally best to build three or so generators to ensure that you’re gaining energy each time you move to a new node rather than constantly having to run back to a space station and spend money to recharge. Random events can also reduce the amount of fuel or energy you have available. Of course, not all events are negative, and they sometimes result in additional resources, or even a ship module being built immediately rather than over 4-6 map movements.

Some areas are generated far more frequently than others, though

The only downside to Galaxy Squad‘s random generation is that some events and areas are used significantly more often than others. There are a ton of environments the game could use, but you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time fighting through spaceship interiors that have been randomly generated to be absurdly large while only containing a couple of enemies. It’s in these moments that the pacing takes a hit, and I’d much prefer more underground cave/snowy planet environments. I think the issue here is that side missions more often send you against enemy ships than require that you visit a planet, and since most of the interesting environments exist on planets, you end up seeing far less of them.

The gameplay in Galaxy Squad is XCOM-inspired, with a little extra on top

All of the XCOM staples are here, from—optional—soldier permadeath that results in losing characters if they die during a mission (you have a few turns to revive them or finish the mission, after which they survive if they haven’t bled out yet) to each unit getting two action points to use moving, reloading, using skills, or attacking. Combat maps are also filled with high and low cover that provide avoidance bonuses and only work so long as that cover is between you and the attacking enemy. Galaxy Squad shakes things up, however, including 3×3 glowing tiles that allow you to interact with the stage by stopping your character on them. These can provide experience boosts, extra items, and even grant a character a free positive trait, but disappear after a few turns. There are also points that can create bridges (and cause them to disappear, instantly causing everyone on the bridge to begin bleeding out), trigger turrets, and provide healing buffs. All things considered, it’s an interesting system that adds a welcome layer of risk-versus-reward to every encounter by forcing you to weigh your resource/equipment needs against the immediate risks.

If every party member falls into their critical state, the game is over and your save is deleted. Fortunately, you can restart combat encounters at any time during your turn (but not enemy turns), so if you’ve boxed yourself into a corner, it’s possible to restart the entire fight with a differently randomized level more suited to your preferences. Galaxy Squad only saves after encounters, too, so if you’ve wandered into a fight that you simply can’t win, you can save/quit to the main menu and avoid that particular node. Little things like this and a customizable difficulty that allows you to alter the size of the galaxy, the speed with which the Federation pursues you, and various other elements makes Galaxy Squad incredibly beginner-friendly. If you have no idea how to play a turn-based tactics game, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

That having been said, there are still a few bugs and rough edges to contend with. Line of sight doesn’t always make sense: on some occasions you can shoot through walls, while other times you’ll destroy an enemy’s cover with a grenade only for Galaxy Squad to remain convinced that the cover is still there, blocking your shot. The camera also has a nasty habit of starting each level far away from the action, forcing you to scroll around looking for your characters. The second story mission in particular spawns the camera so far away from its tiny stage that I was convinced for a full day that the level had simply failed to load because of a bug. Finally, I’ve encountered a few instances of energy output getting stuck on certain values. That usually means having a positive energy output regardless of how many ship modules you build, which is a player-friendly bug, but a bug nonetheless.

I love the low-poly art style, but the gray ship corridors are very same-y

Galaxy Squad is capable of being incredibly pretty when it wants to show off, with its low-poly art style requiring the same kind of interpretation as sprite art while emphasizing the galaxy’s colors. The animation can occasionally be stilted during cutscenes, but little touches such as your character’s equipment being reflected on their model go a long way toward signifying quality. Honestly, if anything holds Galaxy Squad‘s visuals back, it’s all of the gray, virtually identical ship corridors that you have to fight your way through before getting to the truly interesting environments. Then there’s the music, which is also incredibly competent, but a little too atmospheric for my tastes. There’s one song that kind of stuck with me, but even that one fades in and out in a strange way. The whole soundtrack reminds me of the pleasant electronic/atmospheric music in oOo: Ascension and various mobile puzzle games that I’ve played. It’s not bad, but you’ll forget almost all of it the second you stop playing.

Story: 2/3, largely because of the great pacing and real story branching Gameplay: 3/3 Visuals: 2/2 Music: 1/2 ★★★★★★★★☆☆ – 8/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

Galaxy Squad Review Screenshots

*A Steam key was provided for the purpose of this Galaxy Squad review

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