As much as I (used to) love roguelites, I really only had one thing in my mind when I was playing through, and enjoying, the original Everspace. This game really ought to be an RPG and not a linear roguelite type thing. I was obviously quite excited that the sequel was going to be what I hoped for, and then disappointed to find that they were going to spend several years in early access, and then excited again when I finally started the finished game and realized that this is more or less exactly the game I was hoping for, and that it is very good.
The original game was a roguelite where you jumped from map to map, in which you could do some dogfighting, explore for loot and sometimes perform a little map-specific tasks for some bonuses. This sequel takes that and builds upon it by retaining the level structure while also building an open world around it. So, to be clear, this isn't a "true" open world game and the game is divided into individual maps with quests, side quests, hidden loot and even races in them, but also a zoomed out map of the whole solar system (of which there are five) that you can fly around freely. However, to be clear; flying around freely between systems really mostly only looks and feels cool and doesn't serve much gameplay purpose as you cannot perform combat or find loot in open space. It's really just a travel route that makes you feel like you're zipping through a system.
Once inside one of the individual maps, it's a full-fledged 3D environment where you can fly around freely and perform quests and find secrets that are often very sneakily hidden. You even fly into houses and tunnels, and there is everything from asteroid fields to massive space stations to mining colonies on the surface of planets and so on, all of which are flown around freely and have little things hidden everywhere, both in the form of having them hidden in a sneaky and hard-to-see crevice and in the form of having little puzzles. Tons of little puzzles. Pushing buttons (with your guns) in sequence, pulling items around using the tractor beam, figuring out what piece goes where.
But most important is, of course, the core, which in this case is the flight and combat controls, and they are nothing short of excellent. On a PS5 controller, at least, this game plays like a dream and I often found myself having to remind myself that I'm actually enjoying how very smooth of an experience this game mostly is. The controls are so perfect that it's easy to forget them and take them for granted, and that's what I had to remind myself about as I was at times getting a little bored of the unfortunately repetitive combat. Just as I was getting a little frustrated with a certain task, I realized that it was actually enjoyable because everything about controlling this game just works. There's nothing about the core controls that feel sloppy, poorly designed or in any other way bad to me and a game's controls are at their very best when you kind of forget about them and have to remind yourself of how good they actually are. Even though I will be getting into negative points later in the review, the core of the game is so very good that I was always entertained and I did actually enjoy myself even if I felt frustrated with something on a more surface level.
The second biggest thing for me is the exploration, which this game offers so much of that it actually became exhausting in the end. There are something like 50 individual maps to explore, and the smallest ones have about 5 secrets to find while the bigger ones have upwards of 25. There is so much to see and do in this game, and all of it is delivered with remarkable and very striking visuals. This game looks damn good, and the controls and visuals combined lead to a very enticing and addictive exploration experience as you try to find secret loot while slowly sneaking through asteroids or blasting full speed through a mechanical tunnel that twists and winds as you boost through it, like you're playing a (good) Star Wars movie. You'll see things you wouldn't believe, like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. There is so much cool space shit to see that every new map is exciting and impressively beautiful and even the maps that end up being the worst to play are still an impressive experience as you load into the map. Even more impressive is that the game does load you into an area from the direction you entered it, as in you don't always enter a map from the same angle, but the maps still look incredible from any viewpoint.
Other than that, this is your typical space freelancer type game, except maybe on a more slimmed scale and with more of a focus on dogfighting action. You partake in a story campaign of intergalactic warfare, perform side quests for a wide (but perhaps shallow) variety of characters, act like a trader who buys materials that are cheap in one system and sell them in a system where they're expensive, recruit companions and work on upgrading or replacing your ship (as there are about 10 or so different ship types). Pretty typical RPG fare, except in space and with striking visuals and a great feeling of being the kid in The Last Starfighter, blasting away at outlaw fools and earning XP while doing it. There's also a surprisingly deep crafting system, where materials feel like they matter and where many things can be crafted. Those space crystals you mined earlier will be useful for crafting that one item you need to upgrade a companion perk. Oh, and yeah, some of the companion perks as so satisfying and good that I don't think I would've completed this game if it wasn't for at the very least the companion that has perks that help with finding secrets and making sure you've cleared a map completely.
However, as much as I loved zipping around the various and visually distinct solar systems, blasting any outlaw fool enough to stand in my ship's way, tinkering with especially the looks of my ship (since the customization options are great), running a few trade routes and just generally inhabiting this game's world, there are a few glaring flaws that prevent me from giving it a perfect score. The big one being the fact that there's just simply too much of everything. There's too much combat and it's just annoying when enemies absolutely refuse to stop spawning when you're just trying to explore a series of asteroids and find some secrets, and the secrets themselves can also be too much in how often they are hidden in the deepest, darkest crevice, at times making me wonder how anyone ever found some of these secrets without internet guides, both of which combining into making me exhausted with the game at times and making me have to stop playing it because my brain was tired from all of the combat and how incredibly difficult that one secret in the last map was to find even with the help of internet guides and videos. At almost 65 hours, the game is just plain too long, since the story isn't good enough to sustain that much game and the just mentioned fact that both combat and exploration can be so much that you end up drained and unexcited to keep playing. For story hounds, the plot of the game is okay, and I do appreciate that it's a direct story sequel that even has an explanation for why the game isn't a roguelite anymore ("cloning was abolished"), but the writing was clearly created by a german guy who is pretty good at english but isn't quite at a native level and the dialogue is often stiff even when it's not meant to be. Also, the cutscenes that are barely animated motion comic style with unfinished-looking concept art-level drawings are really just unfortunate and should've been left on the cutting room floor. Just do dialogue boxes if you can't do better than concept art motion comic. I'd also like to underline, and be very clear, that this is a more lightweight game than I might have made it sound. It does have all of the elements of Freelancer and similar games, but on a smaller scale and the game is overall more action-oriented than some other games in the genre. This game is great, but it's not as deep as some might hope.
In summary, this was the game I wanted, and I'm very happy with it and had an overall great time, even if there was too much of the game I wanted and I felt like the game dragged pretty badly towards the end. The endgame content with rifts and incursions and all isn't especially fun either, and I truly hate the boring design idea of only being allowed 1-3 legendaries (when your ship has something like 15 different equipment slots that you are not allowed to fill with legendaries), but the journey towards the endgame is consistently fantastic and just the near-perfect controls, the visually striking maps, the engaging exploration and a little bit of the cool dogfighting leaves me very satisfied with this game and I really hope that they keep doing what it seems like they've been doing for hte past decade, which is to keep iterating on their space dogfighting game starting from Galaxy on Fire to now. I hope they keep expanding their game code and skills and that their next game is an Everspace 3 that maybe offers a little bit of on-foot controls, because I had a fantastic time with this game and I hope they keep building towards bigger and better with each new game.
The original game was a roguelite where you jumped from map to map, in which you could do some dogfighting, explore for loot and sometimes perform a little map-specific tasks for some bonuses. This sequel takes that and builds upon it by retaining the level structure while also building an open world around it. So, to be clear, this isn't a "true" open world game and the game is divided into individual maps with quests, side quests, hidden loot and even races in them, but also a zoomed out map of the whole solar system (of which there are five) that you can fly around freely. However, to be clear; flying around freely between systems really mostly only looks and feels cool and doesn't serve much gameplay purpose as you cannot perform combat or find loot in open space. It's really just a travel route that makes you feel like you're zipping through a system.
Once inside one of the individual maps, it's a full-fledged 3D environment where you can fly around freely and perform quests and find secrets that are often very sneakily hidden. You even fly into houses and tunnels, and there is everything from asteroid fields to massive space stations to mining colonies on the surface of planets and so on, all of which are flown around freely and have little things hidden everywhere, both in the form of having them hidden in a sneaky and hard-to-see crevice and in the form of having little puzzles. Tons of little puzzles. Pushing buttons (with your guns) in sequence, pulling items around using the tractor beam, figuring out what piece goes where.
But most important is, of course, the core, which in this case is the flight and combat controls, and they are nothing short of excellent. On a PS5 controller, at least, this game plays like a dream and I often found myself having to remind myself that I'm actually enjoying how very smooth of an experience this game mostly is. The controls are so perfect that it's easy to forget them and take them for granted, and that's what I had to remind myself about as I was at times getting a little bored of the unfortunately repetitive combat. Just as I was getting a little frustrated with a certain task, I realized that it was actually enjoyable because everything about controlling this game just works. There's nothing about the core controls that feel sloppy, poorly designed or in any other way bad to me and a game's controls are at their very best when you kind of forget about them and have to remind yourself of how good they actually are. Even though I will be getting into negative points later in the review, the core of the game is so very good that I was always entertained and I did actually enjoy myself even if I felt frustrated with something on a more surface level.
The second biggest thing for me is the exploration, which this game offers so much of that it actually became exhausting in the end. There are something like 50 individual maps to explore, and the smallest ones have about 5 secrets to find while the bigger ones have upwards of 25. There is so much to see and do in this game, and all of it is delivered with remarkable and very striking visuals. This game looks damn good, and the controls and visuals combined lead to a very enticing and addictive exploration experience as you try to find secret loot while slowly sneaking through asteroids or blasting full speed through a mechanical tunnel that twists and winds as you boost through it, like you're playing a (good) Star Wars movie. You'll see things you wouldn't believe, like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. There is so much cool space shit to see that every new map is exciting and impressively beautiful and even the maps that end up being the worst to play are still an impressive experience as you load into the map. Even more impressive is that the game does load you into an area from the direction you entered it, as in you don't always enter a map from the same angle, but the maps still look incredible from any viewpoint.
Other than that, this is your typical space freelancer type game, except maybe on a more slimmed scale and with more of a focus on dogfighting action. You partake in a story campaign of intergalactic warfare, perform side quests for a wide (but perhaps shallow) variety of characters, act like a trader who buys materials that are cheap in one system and sell them in a system where they're expensive, recruit companions and work on upgrading or replacing your ship (as there are about 10 or so different ship types). Pretty typical RPG fare, except in space and with striking visuals and a great feeling of being the kid in The Last Starfighter, blasting away at outlaw fools and earning XP while doing it. There's also a surprisingly deep crafting system, where materials feel like they matter and where many things can be crafted. Those space crystals you mined earlier will be useful for crafting that one item you need to upgrade a companion perk. Oh, and yeah, some of the companion perks as so satisfying and good that I don't think I would've completed this game if it wasn't for at the very least the companion that has perks that help with finding secrets and making sure you've cleared a map completely.
However, as much as I loved zipping around the various and visually distinct solar systems, blasting any outlaw fool enough to stand in my ship's way, tinkering with especially the looks of my ship (since the customization options are great), running a few trade routes and just generally inhabiting this game's world, there are a few glaring flaws that prevent me from giving it a perfect score. The big one being the fact that there's just simply too much of everything. There's too much combat and it's just annoying when enemies absolutely refuse to stop spawning when you're just trying to explore a series of asteroids and find some secrets, and the secrets themselves can also be too much in how often they are hidden in the deepest, darkest crevice, at times making me wonder how anyone ever found some of these secrets without internet guides, both of which combining into making me exhausted with the game at times and making me have to stop playing it because my brain was tired from all of the combat and how incredibly difficult that one secret in the last map was to find even with the help of internet guides and videos. At almost 65 hours, the game is just plain too long, since the story isn't good enough to sustain that much game and the just mentioned fact that both combat and exploration can be so much that you end up drained and unexcited to keep playing. For story hounds, the plot of the game is okay, and I do appreciate that it's a direct story sequel that even has an explanation for why the game isn't a roguelite anymore ("cloning was abolished"), but the writing was clearly created by a german guy who is pretty good at english but isn't quite at a native level and the dialogue is often stiff even when it's not meant to be. Also, the cutscenes that are barely animated motion comic style with unfinished-looking concept art-level drawings are really just unfortunate and should've been left on the cutting room floor. Just do dialogue boxes if you can't do better than concept art motion comic. I'd also like to underline, and be very clear, that this is a more lightweight game than I might have made it sound. It does have all of the elements of Freelancer and similar games, but on a smaller scale and the game is overall more action-oriented than some other games in the genre. This game is great, but it's not as deep as some might hope.
In summary, this was the game I wanted, and I'm very happy with it and had an overall great time, even if there was too much of the game I wanted and I felt like the game dragged pretty badly towards the end. The endgame content with rifts and incursions and all isn't especially fun either, and I truly hate the boring design idea of only being allowed 1-3 legendaries (when your ship has something like 15 different equipment slots that you are not allowed to fill with legendaries), but the journey towards the endgame is consistently fantastic and just the near-perfect controls, the visually striking maps, the engaging exploration and a little bit of the cool dogfighting leaves me very satisfied with this game and I really hope that they keep doing what it seems like they've been doing for hte past decade, which is to keep iterating on their space dogfighting game starting from Galaxy on Fire to now. I hope they keep expanding their game code and skills and that their next game is an Everspace 3 that maybe offers a little bit of on-foot controls, because I had a fantastic time with this game and I hope they keep building towards bigger and better with each new game.