Rogue Eclipse Review: Gorgeous Dogfights, Threadbare Everything Else

Rogue Eclipse arrived on Steam in August 2026 pitching itself as a fusion of Armored Core loadout tinkering, Ace Combat-style arcade dogfighting, and roguelite run structure, all wrapped in a striking, Middle Eastern and Asian-influenced art style that owes a visible debt to Homeworld. Solo-leaning studio HUSKRAFTS built the flight model well enough that reviewer after reviewer reaches for the same comparisons — Star Fox, Rogue Squadron, Wing Commander — and means it as a compliment. The trouble is that the flight model is doing almost all of the work. Everything wrapped around it, from the upgrade screen to the control options to the content itself, reads across dozens of Steam reviews as unfinished, and a fair number of players say so explicitly: this plays like early access that got a full-release price tag instead.

A Flight Model That Earns Its Comparisons

The one thing almost nobody disputes is that flying feels good. One of the more detailed reviews in the sample, written by a self-identified beta tester who says they tried to stay objective, describes pitch and yaw as snappy on analog sticks, with a drift mechanic on the left trigger that lets you circle larger cruisers or match their acceleration — "pretty satisfying once you get the hang of it." Another reviewer calls it a combination of Armored Core and Star Fox that "feels very slick," and a third invokes Top Gun and Luke Skywalker within the same two sentences. Even several of the negative reviews concede the core flight is the game's strongest asset; the complaints tend to start the moment players look past the stick-and-throttle feel toward everything the flight model is supposed to be in service of.

Progression That Doesn't Visibly Progress

The single most repeated complaint in the review sample is that Rogue Eclipse's roguelite progression barely registers. Multiple reviewers describe receiving unlock notifications that change nothing in the ship-component selection menu, upgrades that amount to "+2.5% top speed, +10% weapon range," and runs that reset players before they can meaningfully snowball. One long, detailed negative review calls the upgrades "inconsequential" outright and says the game "resets you before you're even able to snowball at all." For a genre built almost entirely on the dopamine of visible, escalating builds, that's a structural problem rather than a balance nitpick, and it shows up in review after review regardless of how positive the writer otherwise is about the flying itself.

Controls That Fight the Player as Much as the Enemy

A cluster of reviews single out the control scheme as a serious usability failure. Several note there's no remapping option at all, and one reviewer flags that keyboard-and-mouse isn't even a visible option in the settings menu, despite the flight itself apparently working fine on mouse and keyboard once players stumble into it. Another describes the default binding scheme as requiring "next level motor skills" to boost, brake, and roll simultaneously using both shoulder buttons and triggers, and says none of the available presets accommodate a more intuitive layout. For a game whose core appeal is precision dogfighting, forcing players to fight an unconfigurable control scheme before they can even enjoy that precision is a self-inflicted wound, and it's one of the more fixable complaints in the sample if HUSKRAFTS chooses to prioritise it.

Difficulty That Reviewers Describe as Erratic Rather Than Tuned

Several reviewers, including at least one long-time Ace Combat veteran who says they've cleared that series' hardest difficulties, report that Rogue Eclipse's difficulty curve feels unfair rather than challenging. That reviewer describes enemies seeming to "develop aimbots from god" a couple of levels into a run, with upgrades scaling too slowly to keep pace and shortcuts back to a boss proving safer than playing a full run start to finish. Collision detection on boss encounters draws a specific complaint too, with one reviewer describing hitboxes on a late boss's pillars as "flappy bird levels of infuriating." None of this reads as players simply struggling with a hard game — the recurring language is about inconsistency and unfairness, which is a harder problem to forgive than raw difficulty.

Content Variety Undercuts the Roguelite Structure

A roguelite lives or dies on runs feeling meaningfully different from each other, and that's where Rogue Eclipse draws some of its harshest reviews. One reviewer who was given a free copy calls the game "a proof of concept rather than a full-fledged game," pointing specifically to a lack of zone and enemy variety that means players see the same content repeatedly. Another reviewer, more sympathetic overall, still notes there's "nothing else here" beyond the basics — rudimentary roguelite systems, very few unlocks, and enemies with modular components that "basically has no impact" on how encounters play out. For a genre that depends on variety to sustain replay value, this is arguably the review sample's most consistent structural criticism, echoed by both harsh and gentle reviewers alike.

Presentation Carries More Weight Than It Should Have To

Where the game consistently earns praise is in its audiovisual package. Reviewers describe the soundtrack as "a pulse-pounding, bassy mix of electronic synth, rock and distinctive Middle-Eastern/Asian influences," single out a guitar riff during the first boss fight, and praise voice acting as sounding authentic to the setting. Visually, the Unreal-powered particle effects, explosions, and contrasting nebula backdrops draw repeated compliments, and performance is reportedly strong even at high settings, with a dedicated Steam Deck preset for lower-spec hardware. It's a genuinely appealing package on a surface level, and it's doing real work to carry the game's reputation while the systems underneath catch up — but presentation alone can't substitute for the progression and content depth a roguelite needs to hold attention past the first few hours.

A Publisher-Backed Release That Plays Like Early Access

More than one reviewer makes a version of the same argument: this should have launched in Early Access, and didn't. One especially candid review lays blame specifically at the publisher's door, arguing that "another year of development, with or without early access, could have been enough to make this game deliver on the scope its systems promise," and calling the current release "a very strong foundation for a largely hollow experience." That's a notable thing to see said about a game published in partnership with Outersloth, Innersloth's small-studio publishing arm best known for backing focused, well-scoped indie titles — the mismatch between a recognisable publisher name and a release this visibly unfinished is exactly the kind of context that shapes how forgiving the audience is willing to be.

Final Verdict

Rogue Eclipse is a genuinely good flight model wearing the unfinished shell of a roguelite. The dogfighting itself earns every Star Fox and Ace Combat comparison thrown at it, and the art direction and score are good enough to carry a demo reel on their own. But a roguelite needs meaningful progression and content variety to justify repeat runs, and reviewer after reviewer describes both as barely present at launch, on top of a control scheme that doesn't let players fix its own worst usability problems. At full price, this is hard to recommend to anyone but genre die-hards willing to treat it as an early-access purchase in all but name. If HUSKRAFTS keeps patching — and the developer's visible responsiveness is one of the few things reviewers consistently credit — Rogue Eclipse could grow into the game its flight model already promises. It just isn't that game yet.