Battle of Rebels (2025): The Review

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://www.keymailer.co

Overview

Right now, Battle of Rebels is hard to recommend at any price. Even at $40 or $5, it feels unfinished, plagued by technical problems, a lack of ultra-wide support, and an empty 2v2 scene that leaves it without real staying power. If you’re even a little curious, add it to your wishlist and wait for major patches and a steep discount, because in its current state, it’s just not worth your time or money.

Score: 2 out of 10

The Positives ✅

There’s at least something under the rubble here. When Battle of Rebels decides to function for more than five minutes at a time, you can actually glimpse the game it’s trying to be. Its visual style pops with a clean, stylized flair that leans more comic book than photorealistic. Levels are lit with bold contrasts and distinctive silhouettes that make enemies stand out clearly in the chaos, and the effects work, from the glowing muzzle flashes to the over-the-top explosions, nails that flashy arcade energy. It’s fast-paced, visually punchy, and the kind of shooter that, on paper, could’ve been a fun throwback.

The foundation is there, and that’s what makes this so frustrating. Beneath all the bugs and broken systems sits an idea that could absolutely work: small-scale, frantic 2v2 firefights that blend twitch reflexes with a bit of strategy. It’s stripped-down and direct, which could’ve made it a nice indie alternative to the big-budget multiplayer shooters dominating the market. And to the developers’ credit, they’ve already acknowledged the problems and promised updates. If they can actually stabilize the experience, polish the campaign, and fill in some much-needed content gaps, there’s a chance this thing could grow into a half-decent mid-tier shooter.

The Negatives ⚠️

Unfortunately, “could be” doesn’t count when your game barely functions. Battle of Rebels is a technical mess, full stop. Within minutes of launching, I ran into broken inputs, glitchy movement, and multiple instances where keys would just stop responding altogether. One second you’re sprinting toward an objective, the next your character is frozen mid-animation like the game decided you don’t exist anymore. Add in frequent crashes, hard faults, and actions that simply refuse to register, and it stops being a shooter and starts being an endurance test.

It doesn’t help that the experience is unbelievably hollow. The so-called campaign clocks in at five levels, each riddled with bugs, some literally unfinishable, and the “multiplayer” is a ghost town. The only online option is 2v2 cross-platform matches, but after multiple searches, I couldn’t find a single live game. You can’t team up if there’s no one to play with, and that completely kills any replay value. Even trying to admire the visuals becomes an exercise in pain when the ultra-wide support is broken; HUD elements stretch and distort like funhouse mirrors, forcing constant readjustments just to make the screen readable.

Then there’s the price. $39.99 on Steam and Switch, $34.99 on PlayStation, for five levels and broken servers. That’s not just steep, that’s audacious. This game is barely holding itself together technically, and yet it’s priced like a finished indie premium release. The potential is irrelevant when you can’t even complete half the content without falling through the floor. Right now, Battle of Rebels isn’t just buggy, it’s barely a game.

The Experience 🎮

Playing Battle of Rebels feels less like a game and more like beta-testing something you accidentally paid for. Every moment of enjoyment, every hint of the kinetic shooter it could’ve been, gets immediately undercut by a new glitch, a missing input, or an unfinishable objective. It’s exhausting. You spend more time in the settings menu than on the battlefield, tweaking controls, resetting visuals, or reloading checkpoints that may or may not work. It’s the kind of experience where you start asking yourself, “Am I playing the game, or is the game playing me?”

And that’s the tragedy, because deep down, there’s a good concept trapped under all the rubble. The art direction is lively, the core combat loop (when it works) can be genuinely fun, and the smaller-scale arenas could’ve been a blast with friends. But as it stands, the game collapses under its own technical weight. It’s not ready, and it shouldn’t cost what it does.

If you’re curious, keep it on your wishlist and wait... a long time. With the right patches, there’s a chance Battle of Rebels might one day crawl out of this wreckage and become something respectable. But right now? It’s a $40 stress test disguised as a shooter, and no amount of artistic charm can hide that.