Beyond Galaxyland review: A gripping world with underwhelming gameplay

Beyond Galaxyland creates a fantastic world and tells a great story, but the gameplay drags the experience down

Beyond Galaxyland / United Label

Beyond Galaxyland isn’t the first game to ask, “What if Star Wars was a Final Fantasy game?” but it is the flashiest in recent memory. Things start off like any good story with a destined hero does; with an ordinary teenage boy called Doug living an uneventful life on Earth. After encountering a strangely mutated human and chasing his guinea pig down the road, he finds a mysterious portal.

On the other side, he learns that the Earth is long dead and he is one of the lucky few who has been saved from a tragedy known only as “The End”, entering into a new space-age society that promises to be a utopia for the recused humans, but naturally, is anything but.

I lead with this because Beyond Galaxyland’s story is by far its strongest aspect. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Star Wars or similar sci-fi worlds, but Beyond Galaxyland managed to grab me with this concept and the galaxy you explore. It’s the kind of concept where, as soon as someone tells you the Earth is dead, you immediately distrust them and start anticipating every twist the story might hold, which drives you to keep pushing forward.

Beyond Galaxyland / United Label

On top of that, it nails the character writing, which is very important in a party-based RPG. Every time I meet someone new I quickly find a reason to invest in their story, and the ones that join the party all stand out in unique ways. Combine that with great world-building in each and every location you explore, all of which pop with bright colors that make the most of the pixel art style, and you’ve got the kind of story where you want to keep playing just to see what’s around every corner.

It’s a good job that the narrative drove me to keep playing too, as I was underwhelmed by the gameplay.

The battles use Final Fantasy 7’s ATB system, where everyone has timers between their turns that progress at different speeds, and when a character’s timer fills the battle pauses so you can take their turn, and from here things get more complicated as the game tries to do too many things at once.

Beyond Galaxyland / United Label

First, you have your basic attack which can fire off multiple times depending on how many “turn points” a character has. Successfully landing basic attacks builds up AP, which you can use for your character’s special abilities, however, if an attack misses then you lose AP instead, making it a risk/reward system. The problem is, making the most basic attacks unreliable means even very easy battles can turn south through no fault of the player, which is frustrating when it happens.

While flawed, this would work as a battle system on its own, but for some reason, Beyond Galaxyland is also a creature collector. When exploring the wilds, any creature you face can be caught and assigned to a party member, who can then spend SP to use that creature’s unique abilities – which level up and unlock separately to the party.

This system is fine, I don’t hate it, but it feels wholly unnecessary, and the fact that it’s just one part of a bigger combat system means there isn’t adequate depth. That’s true of every aspect of combat, and I would’ve rather had a simpler but deeper system than this shotgun blast of too many ideas.

Beyond Galaxyland / United Label

Exploring dungeons isn’t especially engaging either. They’re filled with various puzzles that do make you think a bit but aren’t fun to actually walk around and solve. The first main dungeon in the game has a section where you just have to walk back and forth down a long hallway, constantly hitting a ball so that it will follow you to where it needs to go to solve the puzzle. 

The level designers seemed to focus too much on inserting the puzzles in there, without much thought about how fun it would be to navigate them because I frequently found myself bored while wandering massive empty rooms – pretty rooms, but empty ones nonetheless.

The result is a game that I want to love, but I can’t look past its most glaring issues. Beyond Galaxyland is definitely worth trying because I really enjoyed the story, but the lackluster gameplay drags it down to the point where eventually my drive to see how the narrative plays out was overwhelmed by the fact that I simply wasn’t having any fun.

Score: 6/10

Version tested: PC (Steam)