Fun fact: I conflated this game with Sea of Stars, another style-over-substance RPG (though this one seems more substantive mechanically), and this conflation was reinforced when the very first NPC that I was given the option to interact with on my own volition was just doing a gag that was identical to a gag done in the Messenger. At least in the Messenger, there is a subversion at the end and the overall dialogue has an arc to it (though I could not have more contempt for the moral of the scene). In Star Renegades, it's just random utterances with no resolution.

"Random utterances with no resolution" is basically what the entire game is. Just a bunch of awkward Marvel quips that, at best, demonstrate one of up to two personality traits that a given character has, but sometimes not even that. As others have noted, when you are looking at environmental objects, sometimes I guess you don't have a good party configuration or else there is some RNG involved, because you'll end up with one character talking to themself incoherently. Even when you get a "dialogue," it's still usually incoherent. Let's not even talk about the story, because there mostly isn't one, and half of what is there is just the characters throwing out keywords that mean nothing and the other half is the most cookie-cutter shadow of a skeleton of a stereotypical plot you can imagine.

That terribly executed dialogue about the environment must be really important to the devs though, because it's literally the only thing justifying (?) the point-and-click navigation which is probably the most absurd feature of the game. It serves no real utility, but it takes up time and has pathfinding that is legitimately worse than some 90s adventure games. There is nothing you get from this that you could not get from a more streamlined interface. What's worse, the default passive on the party causes items to randomly spawn in already cleared areas at night, just in case you didn't get enough of clicking around for scraps.

People keep saying, even in the negative reviews, that the art direction is good. It is not. The art is pretty good, albeit too focused on uninteresting features like rim lighting because I guess that's how you wow peopel? The art direction, however, is not great. The "HD 2D" thing that they seemed to have helped lead the charge for (terrible name for something that is neither HD nor 2D, by the way) is a hazardous way to design things when normal 2D works just fine. It leads to numerous instances of severe clipping in both the overworld and even in combat. What's the benefit? Having an annoying, swooping camera? The things people will sacrifice to be "cinematic," I guess.

Oh yeah, and the devs went to the WoW school of costume design. Interpret that how you will.

I partially disagree that the UI is bad. Yeah, the wording on debuffs on items can be a bit ambiguous, but the timeline system and the rest of it are fine. In the tutorial, I think you get ample warning that the predictions are very incomplete, though it calls the combat system "deterministic" when it seems to actually mean "transparent" and does not exactly accomplish either (as there are attacks that target randomly). The most annoying of all is that the game just seems to not want you to click on sprites, because of the stupid swaying camera making it annoying to get the hitbox of a specific over-crowded sprite, and the bug they apparently just never fixed in Inspect Mode that makes you unable to click on enemies.

The camping system is just a worse version of Darkest Dungeon that has less player agency. The bootleg Nemesis system seems to be 100% meaningless. The Fire-Emblem-style human breeding system is still creepy, despite being very pared down from what you see in FE, and seems really arbitrary in general.

The art is the high point and I thought the gameplay was alright, however repetitive the encounters were. It just does not leave it as being worth it to try over and over again to unlock even the main cast.

That's a no from me dawg. Aesthetic is neat, but animations take too long and the fast-forward feature makes the screen fuzz in a nauseating/unpleasant way, and I'm not even sensitive. The movement is complete butt, almost every UI choice makes me actively angry, and rather than build on what other rougelikes have done they did something different, but worse in their map traversal. Rather than look pretty, the world map is confusing, choices are unclear, and things flash and change color with no rhyme or reason. The UI makes every little thing a misery and a slog, and as such I cannot recommend at all.

Its an interesting rogue-like but I can't in good faith recommend this game. The turn based combat was fun and the unlocks per run were satisfying. And learning the mechanics were fun as well. What was not fun was the last mission with the freaking defenseless bot.... The fact that it does nothing but be a damage sponge that will kill your entire party is horrible game design. This game is riddled with strange game design choices. Not having perma death was a strange choice. Movement is pointless. A much more simpler movement design would be similar to Slay the Spire. The current movement is tedious. And the fact that you need to fast forward through animations is again tedious. This game shines half way through. But honestly it doesn't really bring new to the table. If you don't like sci-fi or roguelikes just pass. Losing two runs in a row due to that bot killed any love I have for this game.